In the sitting room of the George Washington University’s historic F Street House, coffee and tea has been set out next to a set of simple, recycled white china. Multiple sheep figurines—gifted to George Washington President Steven Knapp and his wife Diane— sit on end tables, a reference to the sheep kept on their small farm in Maryland.
From the back of the house, the faint clang of pots sounds from the kitchen—designed by Ms. Knapp—where University Chef Rob Donis is preparing a meal for one of the many university events held at the house, while Ms. Knapp discusses her lifelong interests: food and nutrition.
“Our goal is to offer every guest at the house nutritious and delicious foods. One way to do this is to fill half of each dinner plate with vegetables and whole grains, instead of protein,” Ms. Knapp says beneath the stoic gaze of the university’s namesake rendered in a painting—on loan from GW’s collection like much of the art in the house.
“We need to be able to host anyone at the house from ambassadors to the president, but the menu is never steak, potatoes and green beans. Chef Rob and I work together to create a menu of fresh, local, sustainable foods.”
The healthy and sustainable approach to living has characterized Ms. Knapp’s priorities at the university since Dr. Knapp assumed his post as president in 2007.
As founder and chair of GW’s Urban Food Task Force (UFTF) and a member of the university’s first sustainability task force, Ms. Knapp has served as a catalyst for GW’s “food revolution.” This environment attracted former U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan to the university, fueled a makeover for Campus Dining, and raised awareness of the growing academic, research and student interest in food.
“When Steven [Dr. Knapp] was considering this job, we thought we might be able to have a larger impact on sustainability,” said the upstate New York native, who earned a B.S. and M.S. in human nutrition and education from Cornell University. “It’s important because food has such a huge impact on our lives—our choices make a difference in our lives and others across the globe.”
Ms. Knapp began working in food service as a teen, assisting a cook for a summer job. She was later inspired by the Moosewood Cookbooks—a series of farm–to-table recipes from the famed Moosewood Collective of Ithaca, N.Y.—and even lived in a communal house with a focus on vegetarian living.
“I’d like to see healthy options for a nutritious diet be available to all of GW. This should be the standard rather than the exception.”
- Diane Knapp, Urban Food Task Force Chair
“Back in the ’60s and ’70s organic food was a big deal, but only for a small group of people. It wasn’t a national movement,” she said. “I lived in a house of six people—and we would share meals and eat vegetarian. Then I really just started paying attention more and asking, ‘What’s going on with the new fun processed foods that are available? Are they good for us?’”
At the suggestion of a family friend and dietitian, she decided to pursue the science of nutrition and food at Cornell. That decision led her to 25 years as a registered dietitian working in hospitals, most recently as the director of clinical nutrition at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Calif.
She said that watching a young mother come into a clinic with a toddler eating a bag of chips and a baby drinking Coca Cola from a bottle opened her eyes to the continued need for education about nutrition, especially in communities where access to affordable, healthy food is limited or nonexistent.
“Parents want to feed their children well. Everyone wants to be healthy, but this is a complex and often emotional issue” Ms. Knapp said. “We need to heighten the knowledge and interest in food because the way the food industry has transformed our diets over the last 40 years has made it more difficult to choose healthy foods.”
She said that trans fats— which have been used for many years because they extend the shelf life of food—are a great example. Though the initial push to remove trans fats from modern diets was met with calls of alarm from the food industry, public health concerns eventually won out.
“We now know that consuming trans fats contributes significantly to cardiovascular problems,” Ms. Knapp said. “We now have package labeling on trans fats and they are mostly gone from our diets—there are still many, many ingredients in processed foods that we really don’t know enough about.
Though Ms. Knapp is thoughtful about her diet, she added that everything should come in moderation.
“There are some evenings when Steven picks up hamburgers and tater tots,” she said. “But I encourage people to read labels on foods—all those unpronounceable words are purported to be safe, but so were trans fats.”
Ms. Knapp’s commitment to food has extended to the community through the work of the UFTF, which hosts an annual Pop-Up Produce Market Health Screening Fair for residents of D.C. Ward 7 and supports events and initiatives such as Food Day and “Cooking with Chef Rob,” a series of videos aimed at helping students cook affordable, healthy meals in their residence hall rooms.
UFTF member and chef José Andrés has also been a supporter of Ms. Knapp’s efforts. He plays a role as special adviser to Dr. Knapp on food issues and taught the “World on a Plate” class, an exploration of food and culture.
She also has incorporated her concern for sustainability into F Street House, hiring Mr. Donis to prepare a healthy menu rather than catered fare, using cloth rather than paper napkins, refurbishing antique chandeliers, and maintaining a rooftop garden.
“I spent my second year at the university renovating the house with the help of Dawnita [Altieri, co-chair of the Urban Food Task Force],” Ms. Knapp said. “We made conscious choices to set up the house as sustainably as possible.”
She said the UFTF would continue to support the groundswell of education, programming and research around healthy eating and food on campus.
“It’s about making it convenient for people to make the healthy choices,” Ms. Knapp said. “Say you want to make chili, you can get hamburger meat and packaged taco seasoning and tomato sauce, but it’s going to be very high in salt. Or you can use half as much meat, low salt kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, onion and chili powder.”
“I’d like to see healthy options for a nutritious diet be available to all of GW,” she added. “This should be the standard rather than the exception.”