Chinese University of Hong Kong Launches Asia’s First Plant-Based Studies Course

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in partnership with social enterprise, Green Monday, has unveiled its first Plant-based Movement Studies for the 2018/19 academic year. A comprehensive plant-based lifestyle and movement education course through Lee Woo Sing College, one of the five colleges of CUHK, the general education curriculum – Future of Food: Plant-based Living – will be available to all students for credit grading.

Over 13 lessons, topics range from the livestock industry to global warming, plant-based nutrition, disease prevention, and the ethics of animal eating & farming. Undergraduates enrolled will be challenged to look at the relationship between “diet and environment, food and health, as well as the human-animal relationship in spatial and philosophical context.”

Each class will be broken into two sections that includes a lecture, as well as hands-on cooking. Students will also have the opportunity to apply their learned concepts via an outreach program operated under the Green Monday Foundation, David Yeung’s award-winning organisation, which drives advocacy campaigns to raise awareness on living a green lifestyle. Vegan and vegetarian culinary tutorials under the guidance of culinary professional Grace Wong, popular host of Vegan Mama Kitchen, will also be included in the coursework.

“Climate change and sustainable development are essential subjects in General Education,” said David Yeung in a statement. “CUHK and Lee Woo Sing College set a leading role in educating students in the mutualistic relationship between a vegetarian lifestyle and environment protection by launching a dedicated General Education course on vegetarianism as well as introducing food-tech as a possible solution. It is hoped that other institutes and schools will follow in CUHK’s footsteps to launch similar courses because time is not on our side and immediate actions is needed to arouse the awareness of the general public on climate crisis.”

Around the globe, the younger generation have become a force to be reckoned with, with students eco-activists taking to the streets to campaign and demand environmental change. Last week in Berlin, tens of thousands of teens skipped school to rally for change from climate-change disasters. A few days ago, thousands of teenaged demonstrators gathered on Parliament Square in London in a school strike to protest policymakers to take action. Similar movements have been seen in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Australia. CUHK’s course is an ideal offering for a Hong Kong youth looking for a better understanding of diet’s role in the climate change wars and how they can effect change in their daily lives.

Lead image courtesy of Green Monday.