Ten free MIT courses and lectures for food lovers

Through MIT Open Learning, explore the artistic, scientific, cultural, and historical aspects of food.

Image: iStock

By Sara Feijo

This holiday season, feed your curiosity with 10 free online courses and lectures straight from the MIT classroom that dive into the artistic, scientific, cultural, and historical aspects of food.

1. Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full: Learn basic conversational Italian and explore the Mediterranean diet and Italian culture.
2. Chinese Cooking: Discover China’s science of food production and the symbology of food.
3. Reading Cookbooks: Time travel through meals past via historical cookbooks.
4. Kitchen Chemistry: Venture into an experimental and hands-on approach to applied chemistry as seen in cooking.
5. Metals and Cheeses — Unconventional Pairings: Explore the microstructure characteristics of metals in high-temperature/high-stress situations through hands-on experiences using a selection of cheeses.
6. Land, Water, Food, and Climate: Examine land, water, food, and climate in a changing world.
7. Food, Culture, and Politics: Unveil the connections between who we are and what we eat through the cross-cultural study of how identities, social relations, and economic inequalities are formed and maintained through food production, preparation, and consumption.
8. Good Food: Ethics and Politics of Food: Explore the values — aesthetic, moral, cultural, religious, and more — expressed in people’s food choices.
9. Food in American History: Understand industrialization and globalization by examining food in modern American history.
10. Food and Power in the 20th Century: Examine history through the lens of food.

These courses and lectures are available through MIT OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning. OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.