---
title: Popular Class Urges ‘Eating With Eyes Wide Open’
date: 2022-11-18T05:30:00-05:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/popular-class-urges-eating-with-eyes-wide-open"
section: Articles
---
# Popular Class Urges ‘Eating With Eyes Wide Open’

*November 18, 2022* — by [Karen Shih ’09](/author/karen-shih)


> Students Analyze Impact of Culinary Choices While Sampling Fare From Food-making Demonstrations

*3 L0 A0094 1920x1080 — Students watch as Senior Lecturer Charlie Apter makes fresh mozzarella during his perennially-popular class, "Eating With Eyes Wide Open," which teaches them to critically examine where their food comes from and broadens their palates with demonstrations in weekly labs.*

In front of a table featuring a bubbling bucket of beer in the making and a glass jar of fermenting kombucha, Senior Lecturer Charlie Apter presented a tray of faintly yellow mozzarella, still warm from the cheese-making process.

“Is there anyone who’s not a cheese lover?” he asked, prompting three hands to go up in his class. “How un-American,” Apter joked.

The soft, stretchy pieces he offered for tasting rivaled the flavor you’d find at a fine Italian restaurant—though they weren’t quite as smooth and round as a store-bought version. The mozzarella, which got its unusual golden hue from grass-fed Guernsey cow milk, transformed from liquid to solid in just over half an hour in a lab in the Animal   
Science Building.


*mozzarella*


*jars of pickles*




**Topics:** [Campus & Community](https://today.umd.edu/tags/campus-community)


**Tags:** [Animal and Avian Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/animal-and-avian-sciences), [Food](https://today.umd.edu/topic/food), [Student Experience](https://today.umd.edu/topic/student-experience)


**Units:** [College of Agriculture and Natural Resources](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-agriculture-and-natural-resources)