AnthroDish (Sarah Duignan)

This week on AnthroDish, we're delving into the world of fitness and nutrition with Dr. Ben Wyman. Ben is a light-hearted, laid-back neurology resident physician from Hamilton, Ontario. He loves sports, fitness, nutrition, reading, and relaxing with family and friends.

In this episode, Ben uses both his professional training and personal experiences in the fitness world to explore some of the major topics. We discuss gym ideologies and belief systems that connect food practices with fitness goals and training, break down the pros and cons of supplementation use, explore the emerging dietary practice of intermittent fasting and get the scoop from Ben about the ways in which this can safely be used and interesting health benefits/drawbacks that may be connected with it.

As a side note, you may hear us mentioning our mutual connection Beth a bit throughout this – so if you hear that and are wondering who the heck we’re talking about, it’s former guest Dr. Beth Jolley (episode 6), who spoke about dietary trends at large a few weeks ago. 

If you’d like to learn more about the new research that might put a kink in the paleo diet philosophy, you can also find the news article and link to the original scientific report below. 

Media article https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/16/archaeologists-find-earliest-evidence-of-bread

Science article http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/10/1801071115

Want more AnthroDish? Find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anthrodish/, Twitter @anthrodish, or Instagram @anthrodishpodcast. 

I’ve known this week’s guest, Ben Cullen, for a number of years, and am always excited to talk food with him at any gathering we’re at. So naturally he’s been someone I’ve wanted to bring on the show for quite a while! Ben is the owner of the recently launched Cullen’s Foods, and a fourth-generation urban gardener. As the son of expert gardener Mark Cullen, Ben has worked with his father his whole life, but officially joined Mark full-time in January 2017. Together they write a weekly column for the Toronto Star on horticulture, and have a new book out, Escape to Reality: How the World is Changing Gardening, and How Gardening is Changing the World.

On the show, Ben discusses what makes gardening such an important tool to actively reimagine more sustainable, healthy, and happier futures. Ben has a unique perspective on the food world, as he spent some time working in the food industry following his agricultural education. We explore the nuances of these dual identities and the implications they have for his business, along with how he uses this knowledge to increase accountability and sustainability of food business in local spheres.

I love talking with Ben because we come to the idea of food sustainability from two different lenses. I think this is important, given the echo chambers of social media: it’s easy to get caught up in ideas and spheres that make us comfortable… and the ideas in commerce and business certainly don’t come naturally to a biocultural anthropologist like me! When we’re thinking about anti-consumerist futures, it’s important to look at how different backgrounds and experiences can help shape these futures together.

Enjoy the episode in the web player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or iHeartRadio.

Resources:

• Ben and Mark Cullen’s Escape to Reality: How the World is Changing Gardening and How Gardening is Changing the World
  
• Ben and Mark’s Toronto Star Column
  

Get Social with Ben!

• Cullen’s Foods Website
  
• Cullen’s Foods on Instagram

Welcome to Season 8!

It has been far too long and I am really excited to be back behind the old mic bringing you all new interviews this season. I am so grateful for the conversations that I’ve had so far for this season, and have some more planned that I am really looking forward to sharing with you.

True to any season launch for AnthroDish, I’m going to give you a breakdown of all the reasons why the season ended so abruptly at the end of March 2022 (and how it almost always happens that seasons end abruptly in the spring and launch in the fall).

Check out the solo episode to hear some more personal updates, and then brace yourself for all the amazing conversations that have been happening behind the computer scenes for the last many months! 

As anthropologists, it's sometimes rare for us to think about the role that design plays in spaces and lives of the people we work with - and certainly in our food futures! This week I'm exploring the role that design plays in the production and distribution of quinoa with the super cool Dr. Adam Gamwell.

Adam is a design anthropologist, or as he calls it, a design-centered human, with international experience in ethnographic and contextual research, narrative media production, cultural analysis, social strategy, and education. He is one of the co-founders of Missing Link Studios, which is a social impact agency that uses data-driven media production to create compelling stories, using podcasts, blogs, film, music, web interactions, and data journalism to do so. When he’s not producing digital media, he teaching participatory design research and entrepreneurship in Boston, and is always looking for ways to meld food, design research and media.

This was one of those conversations that really let me learn something in the process… I do a lot of work with communities for my PhD, and never really thought about the ways that design functions to shape food systems, or who is involved in designing these spaces. We’re looking specifically today at the production and distribution of quinoa in South America, where he did his doctoral research. It’s a super fascinating conversation that left me with a lot of inspiration about how we’re thinking about designing food systems for our futures, and the roles that various people play in it. 

Learn More about Adam! 

• Missing Link Studios 
• Adam's Website
• Twitter: @gamwell
• This Anthro Life Podcast

For some, the idea of fermentation is relatively new and topical. For others, it’s a deeply engrained part of their cultural background. I’m relatively new to learning about the process of fermenting foods, and a lot of my appreciation comes from this week’s guest, Alexis Goertz! Alexis is a fermentation coach and expert, as well as the co-founder of Edible Alchemy CoLaboratory. 

Edible Alchemy was founded in Winnipeg in January 2013 by Alexis and her friend and business partner Natalie Elizabeth, where they hosted workshops about the possibilities and inevitabilities of the microbial world. This led to a spread of exciting ventures, including the Probiotic Bacteria Bar, talks, discussions, tours, workshops, and more. Alexis moved to Berlin in 2014 and brought the first Bacteria Bar with her to see if there was any interest. Undoubtedly it brought a large following, and Alexis began to expand the Edible Alchemy CoLaboratory across two continents.

In our interview, Alexis shares her wealth of knowledge surrounding fermented foods and microbiome health. She explores the history and reasons that cultures ferment their foods worldwide, the importance of fermentation for gut health, and the ways in which fermentation scenes compare and differ between North America and Europe. We also talk all about how she’s helping to change the perspective on “scary” or “gross” words like bacteria, yeast and mould – so if those may you a bit squeamish, stay tuned, because she does an amazing job normalizing the idea of bacterias and moulds. She taught me SO much in our interview and has a natural passion and ease translating the science of fermentation in a fun, edu-taining way!

Listen to the episode in the player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Music!

Resources:

Main website: http://ediblealchemy.co

Online courses: https://ediblealchemyacademy.com/courses

Sandor Katz's Art of Fermentation: https://we.riseup.net/assets/378662/ArtFermentation.pdf

Social:

Instagram: @ediblealchemydotco

Facebook: @EdibleAlchemyColaboratory

Alright everyone, this is the first episode back after the holiday break, so I hope that this finds you rested, stuffed, and balancing all the new year expectations as well as you can be!  

For today’s show, I am chatting with chef Ruben Rodriguez, who is a Galcian-born chef and restauranteur of Nai Restaurant Group. Ruben immigrated to New Jersey with his family when he was 11 years old and found inspiration by the Galician food traditions he grew up with. This led to him eventually opening his own first Spanish tapas restaurant, Nai in 2010 in New York City’s East Village. Nai means “mom” in Galicia, which honours his mother and maternal ancestry through his cooking practices and has gone on to shape his more recent expansions through Nai Restaurant Group. 

He's on the show today to discuss his journey navigating the New York restaurant scene as he started out, and how it led to three new concept restaurants, Amigo by Nai, Café Emilia, and Kobo during the thick of COVID-19 lockdowns that involved honoring the mother-work of chefs from different ethnicities and backgrounds, and creating fun and creative strategies to make restaurants work with ever-changing health restrictions in that time.

Sarah's Upcoming DesignTO Event with Mason Studios and Pastiao:

• https://designto.org/event/nourish/

Learn More About Ruben:

• Ruben IG: @rubenboilsoctopus
• Nai IG: @naitapas
• Website: https://www.nairestaurant.com/

When I think of a quintessentially Torontonian food experience, I tend to think of The Depanneur. Founded in 2011, The Depanneur was a tiny old corner store that transformed into a place where interesting food things happen, featuring hundreds of talented cooks and home chefs serving thousands of eclectic meals through unique Drop-In Dinners, cooking classes, table talks, and supper clubs. It was also the birthplace of Newcomer Kitchen, a non-profit social enterprise that helped create social and economic opportunities for Syrian refugee women through food-based projects. 

Today on the show is the founder of The Depp, Len Senater, who speaks to the way he created space in Toronto’s increasingly gentrified hospitality world to maintain experimental approaches about food’s role in building community and celebrating diversity. He shares the story behind his recently launched cookbook, The Depanneur Cookbook, which launched as a Kickstarter campaign in November 2020. Equal parts documentary, manifesto, and cookbook, the book features delicious food, poignant stories, and beautiful photography by Ksenija Hotic. More than just a collection of authentic home cooking from around the world, it is the only cookbook that truly captures the incredible culinary diversity of Toronto.

Learn More About Len: 

• By The Depanneur Cookbook : https://thedepanneur.ca/home/the-depanneur-cookbook/ 
• The Depanneur Website
• Facebook: The Depanneur
• Instagram: @thedepanneur

Organic agriculture is a term we hear and use an awful lot, but do we stop to think about how complex and fascinating different organic farming systems are? This week's guest, Dr. Sacha Cody speaks with me today about organic agricultural movements in China, framing them as a form of exemplary agriculture. Sacha is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 

Australian-born, Sacha has spent the last 17 years in Asia, mainly across Greater China, working with senior executives at multinational corporations and decision makers in government in decision making and strategy building. Sacha has diverse research interests, he’s spent 18 months ethnographically immersed in China’s organic food movements, 14 months consulting with Huawei, China’s global telecommunications firm, and published articles on China ranging in topic from consumerism and corporate culture to exploring the role of the countryside in China’s modernity.

We explore some of the key discussions from his recent book, Exemplary Agriculture: independent organic farming in contemporary China, and explore some of ethnographic work within the organic food world of China, and some of the interesting and important tensions and relationships between urban and rural sectors of such a diverse country. 

 Connect with Sacha 

• LinkedIn
• Email: Sacha.Cody@alumni.anu.edu.au

As we start up season 9 of the podcast, I wanted to share some life and technological updates, as well as what you can expect of this season. Food feels very different from when I started this show in 2018, the "foodie" culture isn't proliferating, which isn't a shock given the challenges of food and living costs in North America.

This season we're going in with a clear eye for analysis on some of the major factors informing our food systems: the treatment of immigrants working in food, how climate change and drought stress impacts food growing, talking back to diet culture in the era of Ozempic, and finding ways to connect back to nourishment that feel more joyful.  

We've got a new look, a powerful line up of guests, and a really fruitful series of conversations for you! 

Follow Sarah/AnthroDish: 

• Substack: https://sarahduignan.substack.com/ 
• Instagram: @anthrodishpodcast
• TikTok: @anthrodish

Before we jump into today’s show, I wanted to give listeners a heads up that today is the last AnthroDish episode for 2023, but we will be returning with more episodes this season on Tuesday, January 9^th so be sure to tune back in this new year! 

Today we’re exploring a topic that I personally find sometimes quite challenging to access and fully understand the nuances of: international food policy. Discussions about international food regimes are critical for understanding how broad choices trickle down to local economies, though often we default to looking at global issues in isolation, rather than thinking about how trade, intellectual property rights, human rights, and many other aspects inform food policy. What happens when we address them in tandem to address global problems around food – and which world trade rules are shaped by certain organizations for food security efforts?

My guest this week is Dr. Matias Margulis, who is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching interests are in global governance, development, human rights, international law and food policy. In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive professional experience in the field of international policymaking and is a former Canadian representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for international NGOs and the Brookings Institution.

Matias discusses his most recent book with me today, Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security, where he unpacks how UN organizations chose to intervene in trade law making due to concerns about how specific trade rules could have negative consequences for world food securities. He unpacks the complexity of international organizations, their roles, and the limitations or exercises of power in their representations of international communities.

Learn more about Dr. Matias: 

• Shadow Negotiators Book: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35559
• Matias's Homepage: https://sppga.ubc.ca/profile/matias-margulis/ 

Spend too much time on the internet these days and you can walk away with a lingering sense of body shame, dietary uncertainty, and overall not-great-vibes. To me, this means it’s all the more important to reflect on our relationships with food and re-assess how we think about them. 

My guest today, Shana Spence, is one of the central people that I take a lot of inspiration from when it comes to healing relationships with food. Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut book came out this past August 2024, titled Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy. She currently works in public health for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, doing community nutrition lessons, and also owns her own company, The Nutrition Tea ®. She describes herself as an "all foods fit" dietitian and creates a platform for open discussion on nutrition and wellness topics that are inclusive, non-diet, and weight-neutral, all with an intersectionality of social justice. 

Today, Shana joins me to discuss some of the key themes and crafting of Live Nourished, touching on how diet culture persists in post-secondary educational spheres, the funny but persistent and weird ways that wellness permeates our eating choices, and how to break away from the idea of food as a moral choice, to think about nourishment in a more individual and cultural way.

Learn More From Shana: 

• Buy Live Nourished book
• Instagram: @thenutritiontea
• Website: https://www.thenutritiontea.com/ 
• Newsletter: https://thenutritiontea.substack.com/ 
• TikTok: @thenutritiontea

This week we are exploring the food scene in Los Angeles, California, with my guest Amanda Lanza who works with Cash Only Productions out there. 

Cash Only is a collective of culinary and community-minded creatives – most of whom work in different creative worlds outside the culinary world, but who all view food as the building block for their community. Cash Only started as a zine that honoured restaurants in LA that had been around for decades, but often went unrecognized or inconsistently honoured by internet hype machines – I’m sure we all know places like this, and the algorithm doesn’t do them any justice!

The collective has evolved to hold more space in the educational realm, with food-based discussions that provide language for food lovers or hands on workshops. They also help to highlight the various ethnoburbs of LA and the stories that come from them.

Amanda runs most of the operations, production, and creative endeavours for the project. She’s both a chef and a food anthropologist who is doing her MA at CSULA. She loves to work and explore the idea of what authenticity means in cuisine and what that looks like or takes shape as in LA food communities.

Cash Only does a terrific job focusing and honouring culinary heritage and origin stories, and how these have shaped food consumption and creation experiences in LA, and I can’t wait for you to learn more!

Learn More About Cash Only 

• Cash Only Website 
• Instagram: @cashonlyproductions

The start of October brings with it the beginning of non-GMO Month in the US and Canada, and who better a guest to kick this important discussion of than Brandi Bechard!

Brandi is an amazing CSA farmer, environmentalist, and the owner of a sustainable landscaping and garden coaching business. She originally hails from Windsor, Ontario, but has lived in cities and towns across Canada while pursuing contract work in environmental and natural resource sciences. She has worked in outdoor education, wildlife research, forestry conservation and on so many other environmentally-oriented projects! After spending a couple of years in research-heavy fields, she felt she wasn’t making a significant difference and had to compromise certain values that she held important to accommodate the career. She moved back to her hometown and started a business teaching others how to grow sustainable food amidst a desert of conventionally farmed land.

In our interview, we speak about her roots and what lead her to farming, break down some of the language surrounding organic and local foods, speak to issues of food security and access in Canada, and she shares more about edible landscaping and tips to help cultivate (heh…) a stronger relationship with sustainable food sources for beginners. Brandi has so much knowledge and experience to share, and is so peaceful to listen to, so I hope you learn as much as I did from this interview!

If you loved learning from Brandi and want to find out more from her, find her on Instagram @borealbrandi or on Facebook @BrandiBechard. 

Resources mentioned in the show: 

• Wendell Berry: learn more about the agrarian and writer in this excellent interview by Yale e360 (which references some books of his as well): https://e360.yale.edu/features/interview_wendell_berry_a_strong_voice_for_local_farming_and_the_land

• The 3rd Plate by Dan Barber: https://www.thethirdplate.com/

One downside I find when I spend too much time on the internet is that there’s an overwhelming viewpoint that the system is broken and there’s not much we can do to change that – or that food, in general, is disconnected from all other components of our lives. But I think these attitudes forget that a lot of empowerment comes through advocating for better policies across the board. 

My guest today is absolutely LEGENDARY when it comes to just that: Joshna Maharaj. Joshna sees food as our common denominator as humans and understands it holds the power to solve many problems we’re facing. As she sees it, good food policy automatically means good health, agriculture, labour, and environmental relationships.  

Joshna Maharaj is a chef, speaker, author & activist who wants to help everyone have a better relationship with their food. She believes strongly in the power of chefs & social gastronomy to bring values of hospitality, sustainability, & social justice to the table. Joshna works with institutions in Canada to build new models for food service. Her first book, entitled Take Back the Tray (May 2020), captures the lessons & experience from her work in changing institutional food systems around the globe. She is an enthusiastic instructor of both culinary and academic students, constantly finding ways to make food stories come alive. Joshna has just started a Master’s in Gastronomy in Dublin, Ireland and is enjoying the delights of being a student once again. 

In our conversation today, we talk about how to tackle the prickliness of food policy and what happens when we break down the silos of industry, government, and hospitality to build better values and relationships with food.

Learn More from Joshna: 

• Instagram: @joshnamaharaj
• Book: Take Back the Tray

One of the pitfalls in sustainability movements is this assumption that we’re all working from an equal playing field, when the reality is that oftentimes we don’t have the home space or the time to grow our own food. What we don’t always ask is whether we can make the comproimses that allow us to meet those desires to grow our own food without the high demands often required of it conventionally. 

My guest this week is Natalie Paterson, who has brought together her Indigenous cultural background and her scientific training to explore what we can do with microgreens. Growing up in New Zealand, Natalie was inspired by her Māori upbringing to explore the value of growing your own food. Natalie completed a BSci in nutritional biochemistry and an MS in food science at Chapman University in Orange County, California. Natalie pursued food science (the study of food from farm to fork), as she recognizes that food is intrinsic within every facet of life, thereby holding the power to promote health while preventing and curing disease. 

Natalie speaks on her previous experience bringing scientific expertise to the market, identifying through her move to London, England, that there is often no connection between food, people, and nutrition. With the demand for at-home fresh vegetables persisting regardless of one’s location, Natalie speaks today on the ways that indoor hydroponic smart gardens can help make people’s cooking more simple, nutritious, and sustainable.

Learn more about Natalie: 

• Instagram: @natalie.s.paterson

I am incredibly excited to kick start our THIRD season today, complete with a brand new theme song by Lukas Wojcicki!  

SO with that all being said, let me introduce this week’s guest: K80 Jones of one of MY favourite shows, Food Heroes Podcast! K80 and I established a friendship over social media pretty early on when I started AnthroDish, and we’ve been each other’s cheerleaders ever since. It’s always incredibly cool to establish a connection with someone so far away and then have it turn into a real, tangible conversation around food, something we’re both very passionate about!

For those of you who do not know K80, she is an innovator and self-proclaimed food geek with over a decade of experience in the food industry. She created new product categories while working as a Food Technologist in the Organic and Natural food industry. Her concern for the future of food led to the creation of the Food Heroes Podcast.

Today on AnthroDish, we’re exploring K80’s passion for positive conversation around food systems and sustainability. We explore her past in the food industry and how that’s helped to fuel her show and the themes she tackles on it. We also have a really cool chat about what it’s like hosting and creating food podcasts, so if you’ve ever had questions for K80 or I about what it’s like creating these shows or some of our thought processes while we interview, stay tuned for that too! Many thanks to K80, it’s such a pleasure to connect with fellow podcasters around the topic of food, and I really enjoyed getting to know the woman behind the show more!

Listen to the episode in the player above, or find us on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and iHeartRadio!

Get Social with K80!

• Website: https://foodheroespodcast.com/
  
• Instagram: @foodheroespodcast
  
• Twitter: @foodheroespod

With the pandemic, we’re seeing much more clearly how food and beverage companies and restaurants treat their employees… and unfortunately in some cases, we’re seeing that many operate under traditional bottom line approaches, without building inclusivity and care into the foundations of their work.

My guest this week, Ryan Fortwendel, is someone who’s striving to do change what a successful beverage business looks like. Ryan is the CEO and founder of Minna sparkling tea beverages, and he’s on today to share the story of how his company is striving to create a better sparkling beverage, inside and out. As the former executive of e-commerce for Marc Jacobs, Ryan spent over a decade working in the fashion industry. After taking some time away from Marc Jacobs to start fresh in 2016, he noticed a shift in the beverage space in New York City – everyone wanted LaCroix and sparkling beverages were becoming more and more popular.

Being a health-conscious consumer, he understood the demand and saw a space to create a better-for-you sparkling beverage – using all organic and non-GMO ingredients, with no sweeteners or added sugars. He created the recipe for a delicious, lightly brewed sparkling tea with a clean and transparent label. Minna is an accessory to everyday life that looks good and tastes great, served in a beautiful art deco inspired can and available in three refreshing flavours: Tropical Green Tea, Citrus Black Tea, and Lime Hibiscus Tea.

As a gay founder, Ryan’s philanthropy inspired the name and the message behind the brand. Minna means “everyone’ in Japanese, and focuses on community engagement and inclusivity. Since launching in 2019, 1% of all sales from Minna beverages goes to non-profits that advocate for inclusion, such as Help Refugees and Choose Love, which are both non-profits that provide emergency aid and long-term solutions for people seeking refuge. Most recently, 20% of their online sales are going to non-profits that support COVID-19 relief efforts. As they grow, Minna is planning to diversify their use of funds to non-profits focused on helping those communities still fighting for equality.

It’s always exciting for me to see entrepreneurs working at changing how and why we do business – and how setting inclusive practices into the foundations of a company sets the path for building a brighter and community-driven future. I’m really excited for you to hear more about Ryan’s story!

Learn More About Ryan and Minna

• Website: https://www.drinkminna.com/
• Instagram: @drinkminna
• Instagram: @ryanfortwendel
• Facebook: @drinkminna

Today’s pop up episode features Bruce McAdams, a professor in the School of Hospitality, Food, and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph. He joined the faculty in 2009 after over 20 years of leadership experience in the Ontario hospitality industry. After starting his management career in operations and training with Darden Restaurants, McAdams joined Toronto-based fine dining company Oliver and Bonacini Restaurants. His most recent role was as the company’s Vice President of Operations.

McAdams has taught leadership to food and beverage management students at George Brown College in addition to his work at the University of Guelph. In 2017 he received an excellence award in service from the North American chapter for the Principles of Responsible Management Education through the United Nations for his work with the University of Guelph Sustainable Restaurant Project. He considers himself an advocate for a stronger restaurant industry and regularly speaks to major media outlets on restaurant issues.

Today we speak about some of his work on food waste and the impact that this has for those working in the hospitality industry, as well as some really fascinating research on the connections between food waste and the quality of life experienced in retirement living communities. 

Learn More About Bruce: 

• University of Guelph's Sustainable Restaurant Project
• Bruce McAdams faculty page
• Twitter: @rovingprofessor

This week, we’re exploring the idea of the food citizen, or perhaps more accurately, the absent food citizen, with Isabela Bonnevera. Isabela is a doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB, and engages with participatory methods to explore how immigrants are shaping sustainable food transitions in cities. She also examines how sustainable food policies impact food justice outcomes for immigrant communities. I met Isabela through her work as the co-founder of Feminist Food Journal, which is an award-winning magazine and podcast. Additionally, she is an editor of Urban Agriculture and Forced Displacement, a forthcoming volume for the Springer Urban Agriculture Series.

In today’s episode, Isabela unpacks the idea of food citizenship: who is involved in defining it, how immigrants are often framed or defined in food policies, the power of language to shape meanings of “healthy” and “cultural” foods, and the consequences of exclusion in food policy writing. I could quite honestly speak with Isabela forever on this topic, as she has really illuminated some under-considered elements to these issues.

Resources:

• Feminist Food Journal

• Isabela’s Article on Food Citizenship in Agriculture and Human Values

• The Good Food Project

• LinkedIn

In this pop-up mini episode I chat with the brilliant Chef Selassie Atadika, live at Terroir Food Symposium 2019. Selassie spent over a decade engaged with humanitarian work with the United Nations and years of self-teaching in the culinary arts before she went on to complete course work at the Culinary Institute of America. She is a founding member of Trio Toque, the first nomadic restaurant in Dakar, Senegal.

In 2014, Selassie brought her innovative approach to African cuisine back home with Midunu, a nomadic and private dining experience in Accra which embodies ‘New African Cuisine.’ Midunu celebrates Africa’s cultural and culinary heritage, aiming to create experiences where culture, community, and cuisine intersect. With an eye towards biodiversity and sustainability. Midunu employs local, seasonal, and under-utilized ingredients including traditional grains and proteins to deliver Africa’s bounty to the table.

Chef Selassie’s cuisine has been features at a State Dinner and the James Beard Foundation in the US. In addition to her incredible culinary visions, she also holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. Her ability to bring together her humanitarian, academic, and culinary knowledge into Midunu is incredibly inspiring, so I can’t wait for you to hear what she had to say! 

Learn more about Chef Selassie: 

• Instagram: @midunu
• Website: http://midunu.com/

If you’ve listened to AnthroDish regularly over the last few years, you’ll know that Ren Navarro is a champion of diversity and inclusion within the beer industry and beyond. When I first interviewed Ren back in 2020, we looked at her Canadian consulting services through B.Diversity, and the diversity problem within craft beer in Ontario. We’ve lived truly a lifetime of unprecedented times since then: we saw the proliferation of Black Lives Matter movements and heavy pressure for more equitable change, and DEI initiatives take stronger footing through many industries reckoning with their own complicity. Yet… we’re also living in a period where affirmative action has been struck down in America, and DEI is making headlines because CEOs have decided they’re done with it. 

So what does this mean for people like Ren who have built their businesses through this necessary and ongoing work? Who helps the activists pushing for safer and more supportive communities? What do the follow-up sessions look like for breweries that had DEI consults? Ren’s here to explore these questions, as well as the very real challenges that come with this work for her: burnout in a landscape where her job is good when things are bad in the world.

Learn More From Ren: 

• BDiversity Group Website: https://bdiversitygroup.com/ 
• Ren Instagram: @bdiversitygroup
• What Ales Us Trailer

Resources Ren Shared in Episode:

• Book - Taking a Break from Saving the World: A Conservationist's Journey from Burnout to Balance
• Emily and Amelia Nagowski interview on burnout
• Book - The Burnout Challenge 

Have you ever read a book you just couldn’t put down, and dreamt that you’d be able to chat with the author to steep a little bit more in their perspective? This week’s episode is a bit of a dream come true in that sense for me! I’m speaking with Charlotte Druckman all about her newest book, Women on Food. Based out of New York City, Charlotte is a journalist, food writer, and the creator of Food52’s Tournament of Cookbooks (aka the piglet). She is also the author of Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen, and Stir, Sizzle, Bake, and coauthor of Anita Lo’s Cooking Without Borders.

Women on Food unites the radical, diverging female voices of the food industry in an urgent, moving, and often humorous collection of essays, interviews, questionnaires, illustrations, quotes, and more. When reading the book before the interview, what was most striking was the energy that came from it – she’s not afraid to challenge conventions of what we think “good” food writing should be, and she’s actively redesigning the spaces in which we read and think about food through her anthology. In our interview, we explore some of the patterns she saw around the themes of power, race, and gender within each piece, and explore the process she went through writing some of her own original pieces within the book.

Before we dive into the interview, I wanted to share with local Toronto listeners that Charlotte will be in town this THURSDAY December 5th for a chat with Jenn Agg at VSP Consignment. I have the details posted below:

Toronto Event: 

Thursday, December 5th, 6:30 PM at VSP Consignment (1410 Dundas St W).

Email rsvp@monacreative.co to RSVP to the event and for more details. 

Learn More About Charlotte

 Women on Food Anthology

Instagram: @chardrucks

Twitter: @cettedrucks

Hey everyone! Just a quick solo episode coming from me today to share a peak of what's to come for season 4. We're making a few big (and small) changes that I'm really excited about! 

Season 4 starts NEXT Tuesday, Oct 1st so be sure to tune in to hear an incredible guest! 

This week’s guest, Boyede Sobitan, has created a really inspiring solution to this. Boyede is the founder and CEO of OjaExpress, a Chicago-based online marketplace and delivery service that sources cultural ingredients from specialty stores. As a Nigerian immigrant, Boyede experienced how difficult and inconvenient it was to find ethnic groceries to make his favourite meals from home. At the same time, he recognized the disparity of capabilities between the mom and pop stores that immigrant communities rely on, versus the more established big-box competitors. These smaller stores were simply not equipped with the technology or means to provide the same level of service that supermarkets could provide. To address this, Boyede founded OjaExpress to be the “United Nations of groceries” by making ethnic foods accessible for those craving a taste of home.

Learn More about Boyede and OjaExpress:

• Website: https://ojaexpress.com/
• Instagram: @ojaexpress

There are certain people in this world that I could just listen to forever, they’re an absolute wealth of knowledge and experiences and my first guest of season 4, Arlene Stein, is one of those people.

Arlene is the founder and executive director of the Terroir Symposium, a catalyst for creative collaboration and social and environmental responsibility in the hospitality industry. Since 2006, Terroir has convened international and Canadian industry leaders annually at a two-day symposium in Toronto – and since 2014 at off-shoot events across Europe and North America, for education, networking, and inspiration. From her current home base in Berlin, Arlene travels globally to research responsible food systems and gastronomic innovations. 

Arlene has that magical ability to build community and knowledge around food and root it to place, to land, to context in a way that is truly inspiring. But what makes her even more incredible is the ease that she brought to this conversation. At the core of what Arlene does is foster a sense of community for local and international networks that relate around food: she breaks down the silos for restauranteurs, chefs, artisans, producers, academics, and so many more through Terroir events and workshops to foster conversations and collaborations.

In today’s episode we explore what exactly the word terroir means and how the role that gastrodiplomacy can play into food systems and futures. I’ve included the links to Terroir’s main website and for the Toronto symposium below, along with social media pages if you’d like to learn more about Terroir!

Learn More

• Terroir Symposium (May 4th 2020 in Toronto!) 
• Terroir Hospitality
• Instagram: @terroirtalk (for global events) and @terroirsymposium (for the Canadian symposium)
• Twitter: @terroirtalk
• YouTube: Terroir Hospitality 

Today marks the kickstart to our 5th season! I don’t want to give too much away about this season, but so far we’re really digging into questions around meat and identity and also branching out into the very fun topic of beverages, which we haven’t covered much before! But that’s all the spoilers I’ll give.. I’m very excited.

To start our exploration of meat, we’re looking into the future of it – and questioning how we define it in the era of climate change and sustainability efforts. My guest this week is Paul Shapiro, who is the author of the bestselling book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World through Simon and Schuster. He is also the CEO of the Better Meat Company, a four times TEDx Speaker, and the host of the Business for Good Podcast, all while being a long-time leader in food sustainability.

Based out of Sacramento, California with his wife Toni Okamoto Shapiro, Paul bases a lot of his work on finding common ground with folks across agricultural and tech industries while looking at the future of clean meat. He asks the question what if we could have our meat and eat it too? I know when I first heard about clean meat, I just assumed it was a plant-based alternative to animal meat… but it’s not! It’s real, actual meat that’s grown (or brewed?) from animal cells, as well as other clean animal products that ditch animal cells all together and are simply built from the molecule up.. Wild, right?

Paul’s book Clean Meat really captures the tales of the innovators and investors that are racing to commercialize the world’s first real animal products that are grown without animals. And today, we’re diving into what a world with cell-based clean meats might look like, the moral and ethical discussions surrounding the products, the responses from industries, and breaking down the idea of what “natural” foods are and can be. It’s such a fascinating world that I knew very little about going into this conversation – I can’t wait for you to listen and learn from Paul!

Learn More from Paul: 

• Clean Meat Book
• Paul's Website 
• Instagram 

In 2023, we’re facing increased food prices, tech-heavy innovations around lab grown foods for climate change, and heavily industrialized and packaged foods. Amidst that, though, there’s still interest in the world of fermented foods and returning to working with microbes to create a multitude of communities.

My guest today is Dr. Julia Skinner, who shares her work and research on fermentation. Julia is a former librarian and Library Science PhD turned food historian and fermentation expert. She is the author of the award-winning book Our Fermented Lives: A History of How Fermented Foods Have Shapes Cultures & Communities. She also runs workshops, events, and a newsletter through Root, which was born from a deep love for community and a belief in the power of food to tell stories, connect us to place, and build a bridge to the past.

Today we unpack the idea of community and what shapes it takes through the evolution of human knowledge of microbial worlds, and how the power dynamics of changing histories, taste preferences, and access to fermentation continue to play in our modern lives.

Learn More About Julia:

• Substack Newsletter: Root Kitchens

• Website: https://root-kitchens.com/

• Julia’s Book: Our Fermented Lives

• Instagram: @rootkitchens

This week I’m speaking with Sophie Reilly, a PhD student focusing on the archaeology of ancient foodways. Sophie looks at plant residues on ancient ceramics to examine how people prepared and consumed meals in the past. We talk today about her Masters research (from McMaster University), where she looked at plant remains from ceramic vessels in the Lake Titicaca Basin of highland Bolivia. She explored the ways that different plants became part of peoples meals in everyday and special occasions.

In this episode, we talk about about her Masters research project in Bolivia, exploring the role that food played in mobility and inter-regional relationships, how we can use archaeology to look at plant residues on ceramics, and the ways that local and non-local foods can symbolize relationships and identities. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about Dr Ellie Sattler. This episode also (surprisingly) marks the first time my cheeky daughter has made a guest appearance, so you're in for an extra goofy treat today! 

Love Sophie's work and want to know more?

Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @ReillyDigs

Resources:

The link the to Incan Resources can be found here:

• History of the Incas, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

• Narrative of the Incas, Juan de Betanzos 

• Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes, Mary Weismantel 

You may be familiar with the Greek island of Ikaria through the popularity of “Blue Zones” and the idea that these regions of the world can provide insights into living longer, healthier lives. Yet as with most trends around diet and health, there is so much unspoken about the nuances of what an Ikarian lifestyle and diet entails, and the cultural relationships that Ikarians have with their food and communities.  

My guest today is Diane Kochilas, who is here to share her insights on these relationships with food through her new cookbook, The Ikaria Way. Diane has been at the forefront of bringing healthy, delicious Greek and Mediterranean cuisine to a wide international audience for over 25 years. She is the host and co-executive producer of the award-winning PBS show, My Greek Table, and she runs the Glorious Greek Cooking school on her native island Ikaria. She’s released 18 cookbooks on Greek cuisine, and has consulted with American universties to bring healthy Greek foods to their dining programs.

Today, Diane unpacks what it means to live and eat in the spirit of the Ikarians, discusses the differences between food preparation and preservation in Greece compared to other Mediterranean cultures, and unpacks how the anxiety and disconnection between North Americans and their food has shaped how we think about cooking and eating, and how she navigates these perspectives through her recipes.

Learn More About Diane: 

• Cookbook: The Ikaria Way 
• Website: https://www.dianekochilas.com/ 
• Diane Kochilas on YouTube

I’m really excited about this week’s topic, because I find the connections between bees and humans such an interesting one, and we’re talking today about the power of bee-based medicines. My guest this week is Carly Stein, who is the founder and CEO of the wellness brand Beekeeper’s Naturals – whose mission is to improve the health of humans and bees alike. As a beekeeper and tireless advocate for the preservation of the waning global bee population, Carly is dedicated to using her company as a platform for making a difference and was recently recognized as a game-changing entrepreneur on the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list.

The mission of Beekeeper’s Naturals is to revamp your medicine cabinet – they rely on plant extracts and potent nutraceuticals from the beehive for their products – using ingredients like royal jelly, propolis, and bee pollen to craft solutions for everyday health issues – like brain fog, low energy, and scratchy throats. We speak today about the fascinating cultural history behind using bee-based ingredients in medicines in Europe and how her company fosters both human health but also bee population health. She’s got such an important and unique perspective on North American wellness, and I’m excited to share this with you!

For those who are interested, Carly’s team also sent over a discount code for you to use if you’d like to check out Beekeeper’s Naturals products! Enter ANTHRODISH15 at checkout for 15% off your purchase.

Learn More About Beekeeper's Naturals:

Website: https://beekeepersnaturals.ca/

Instagram: @beekeepers_naturals

Something we’ve been focusing on this season is unpacking what makes food accessible or inaccessible – be it money, gender, race, or their intersections. Veganism is an arena where there is a lot of time-consuming and money-draining products, and particularly so when a lot of discussions around how to be vegan are white-centered. My guest this week, Sam Turnbull, works to bust the myths around veganism’s inaccessibility by creating simple plant-based comfort food recipes (with 10 ingredients or less) that are inexpensive ($10 or less) and quick (in 30 minutes or less). Sam lives in Toronto and is the author of the popular vegan blog, It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken, and has over 70k subscribers on her YouTube channel of the same name.

Sam’s got a brand new cookbook out this week through Appetite called Fast, Easy, Cheap Vegan, where she’s focusing on 10-ingredient comfort food dishes like creamy basil gnocchi, citrus and coconut custard cups, and other recipes that can be whipped up in no time in ways that work with what you already have in your pantry. She’s on the show today to talk through her process of creating her new cookbook and her tips to creating a fuss-free, stress-free kitchen experience for those of us who are experiencing some burnout around meal preparation and planning.

Learn More About Sam! 

• Buy Fast, Easy, Cheap Vegan Cookbook
  
• It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken Blog
  
• YouTube
  
• Instagram: @itdoesnttastelikechicken
  

Here at AnthroDish, a lot of the focus in my conversations with people is around the eating behaviours of communities, or what food preparations say about individuals… but we don’t often get to think about what their food waste behaviours say about them. So what influences how people waste foods? Why do we have so many memes about that half empty and wilted bin of wilted spinach at the back of our fridges?

My guest this week, Dr. Tammara Soma, looks at food waste patterns and behaviours in Indonesia and in Canada. She is the director and co-founder of the Food Systems Lab, and is Assistant Professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University where she conducts research on issues pertaining to food system planning, community-based research, waste management and the circular economy. Her dissertation investigated the factors that influence urban household food consumption and food wasting practices in Indonesia, and the ways in which food systems consideration can improve urban planning decision-making.

Today, we’ll be exploring what influences people’s food waste, and how food systems planning methods can be used to better contribute to our food planning and security in Canada.

Learn More from Dr. Soma! 

• Twitter: @tammarasoma
• Food System Website: foodsystemslab.ca
• Co-founder: foodwastestudies.com

Have you ever heard about health foods or superfoods, and been curious to try them out, but not really sure how to go about it? My guest this week, Elizabeth Stein, is here to help alleviate some of that! Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of Purely Elizabeth Natural Foods, and is on the show today to share her story about how Purely Elizabeth came to be and how it’s working to innovate food and wellness spaces to be more inclusive, affordable, and tasty too!

Long before ingredients like chia or quinoa became popular, holistic nutritionist Elizabeth Stein dreamed of starting a natural foods company. Coupling her personal expertise and love for all things food and wellness, she founded Purely Elizabeth in 2009. Since it’s launch over 10 years ago Elizabeth has transformed the natural category by putting ancient grains on the map with their Ancient Grain Granolas, jumping from the #9 granola brand in the natural channel to #1 and selling over 17 million units worldwide.

Her latest achievement has Elizabeth going back to her roots in celebration of the brand’s 10 year anniversary with the launch of delectable, nutrient-rich Pancake Mixes, including a paleo-friendly, grain-free version and the FIRST featuring grass-fed collagen. Now, health-conscious foodies can enjoy this beloved breakfast food, guilt-free, and with more options to align with dietary and lifestyle choices. Elizabeth strives to promote a healthy food system through sustainability and transparency, and to be a force for good in everything that she does.

Learn More About Purely Elizabeth:

• Website: https://purelyelizabeth.com/
• Instagram: @purely_elizabeth
• YouTube
• Facebook: Purely Elizabeth

Across social media and TV advertisements, drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have risen in recent years and are quickly associated with weight loss and celebrity lifestyles. Yet semaglutide drugs (which includes Ozempic and Wegovy) are intended originally as a drug for use by adults with type 2 diabetes, to manage blood sugar levels along with diet and exercise. With the shifts towards weight loss, Ozempic has become a powerful representation of our relationships with food, and the stories of how its used and experienced by type 2 diabetics are not always at the forefront.

My guest today, Emily Wright, is here to share her personal experiences with Ozempic and the challenges she faced with severe complications from it, including gastroparesis. Emily Wright is a powerful educator, advocate, and public speaker. She is a member of two speaker’s bureaus and a regular guest lecturer at University of Toronto, Ryerson University, George Brown College, and elementary and secondary schools across the GTA. With a special ability to speak to people of all age levels, Emily uses her personal voice and story to confront stigma and create awareness across a spectrum of important social issues, including mental health and addition, homelessness, and bullying. Emily Wright has a Master’s degree in Teaching from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. She currently works as a curriculum consultant, speaker, and teacher for a Toronto, Ontario School Board.

Emily today uses her personal story to speak to the nuances of using Ozempic, managing type 2 diabetes, and how relationships with food and body can be profoundly impacted by Ozempic.

Learn More About Emily:

• Website: https://emilywright.ca/
• Toronto Life Story: https://torontolife.com/city/gone-girl-emily-wright/

If you grew up in the early 2000s, you might remember the American push for True Love Waits, abstinence only-sex education, and purity rings being sported by celebrities like Jessica Simpson or the Jonas Brothers. Known as Purity Culture, this Protestant evangelical movement emphasizes sexual purity through abstinence… but beyond sex, how has the culture shaped how women understand their bodies, experiences with food, or informed the broader American diet culture?

My guest this week is Rebecca Wolfe, who is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at UCSF. She is interested in the intersection of race, class, gender, religion, embodiment and eating disoders. Her current work is focused on the impact of the Protestant, Evangelical movement known as “Purity Culture” on the development and manifestation of eating disorders in people assigned female at birth and raised within the movement.

Learn More About Rebecca: 

• Twitter: @rebeccathewolfe
• Medium article on Purity Culture
• Email: rebecca.wolfe@ucsf.edu

Pregnancy is a fascinating time for many reasons, but key among them is the intensity of food taboos and perspectives on what is or isn’t good for neonatal health. My guest this week, Anu Lotay, is an anthropology PhD candidate at the University of Victoria and research director at VPIRG. She explores the unique and challenging field of pregnancy loss for women and their families in the Indian diaspora. She seeks to understand the roles of cultural, transnational family networks, gender differences, and experiences with Canadian healthcare systems to manage infant loss.

In this episode, we explore how the role of food taboos and beliefs impact pregnancy within Indo-Canadian women, and how pregnancy loss is understood or experienced in relation to food. Anu discusses how food is seen as not only physically nourishing or harmful during pregnancy for Indian women, but also how food prep and sharing is used to symbolize different experiences and shape relationships between pregnant women and their mothers or grandmothers. Indo-Canadian women engage with multiple and often competing guidelines for pregnancy and loss in Canada, and Anu expertly navigates this complex issue throughout the episode.

Listen in the player above, or find on any major podcast platform!

Resources:

• Khiara Bridges book: https://www.amazon.ca/Reproducing-Race-Ethnography-Pregnancy-Racialization/dp/0520268954

• AAA Meetings: http://www.americananthro.org/AttendEvents/landing.aspx?ItemNumber=14722&navItemNumber=566

Get Social with Anu

• Twitter and Instagram: @anulotay

• Website: www.anulotay.com

When it comes to wine, I have a tendency to retreat and panic: I don’t know anything, and I certainly don’t feel like I have the means to access the knowledge. I often wonder if that’s a common experience for people, based on the connotations that come with its consumption. My guest this week, Sarah May Grunwald, is someone I find quite admirable for the barriers she breaks down in communication about wine and winemaking practices. 

Sarah May Grunwald is a wine, food, and travel writer originally from California. She is a certified sommelier, WSET level 3 certificate holder, and former professor of wine. Sarah practices permaculture and keeps bees in the Roman countryside, where she produces olive oil and has seven rescue dogs and five cats. She leads wine and food tours in Rome and the country of Georgia and co-owns a Tbilisi-based food and wine tour company called Taste Georgia. She has been working in Georgia since 2014.

Today, she’s on the show to discuss Georgian wines' rich, deep, and fascinating history. Despite more attention being given to Italian or French traditions of wine, Sarah May taught me that wine’s birthplace is long considered to be in Georgia during the Neolithic. What makes us skip over this key piece of wine history? We explore the role of the qvervi vessel in the specific practices of winemaking in Georgia. These sociopolitical and geographic influences have informed how and where Georgian wine is made, and delve into the future of winemaking with climate change. 

Learn More About Sarah May Grunwald:

• Taste Georgia 
• Contadina (Sarah May's Newsletter)

This week's episode is an extra special (and extra fun!) one for us to share with you - we recently had the opportunity to attend the 2019 Terroir Food Symposium in Toronto, hosted by The Carlu We interviewed several guests and speakers around the theme for this year, choices. We spoke with chefs, writers, anthropologists, drink experts, academics, photographers, and more about the choices they make and how these impact their experiences and connections around food. 

The full versions of interviews from this event will be released over the coming weeks this summer, so stay tuned! This episode serves as an overview of some of the incredible work being done in our food and beverage industry, highlighting key issues and themes our food industry is tackling in 2019. 

Interviews 

• Brad Bodnarchuk, Half a Dozen Hospitality Podcast (2:45-6:14) 
• Jesse Baillie, Brand Ambassador for Top Shelf Distillers (6:47-8:18)
• Marianne Edwards, Sheldon Creek Dairy (8:40-11:25)
• Ricky Casipe, Ricky + Olivia (12:32-14:03)
• Liz Alpern & Jeffrey Yoskowitz, The Gefilteria (14:04-16:04)
• Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle Restaurant Critic and Host of Racist Sandwich Podcast (16:05-18:55)
• Ghillie Basan, Writer and Food Anthropologist (18:56-21:42) 
• Taylor Widrig, Mermaid Fare (22:05-24:04)
• Josh Vanderheide, Fieldhouse Brewing (24:13-25:49)
• Bruce McAdams, University of Guelph (26:45-31:11)
• Chef Bill Alexander, Little Chief Restaurant (Grey Eagle Resort & Casino) (31:48-34:33)
• Chef Selassie Atadika, Midunu (34:35-36:59)
• Ash Nayler, Official Photographer for Terroir (38:34-39:49)

Half a Dozen Hospitality Videos 

• Co-Interview with Remy and Dusty from Norfolk County
• Wrap Up with Brad 

Today’s AnthroDish interview is with Owen Campbell, a trans man with a passion for cooking, baking, and za’atar spice. He started his culinary journey with a small fib, in order to get a job at a soon-to-open restaurant on the West coast. After landing the job, and working his way up, he eventually left the restaurant industry to cook for a housing program in Vancouver’s downtown east side, where he remained, until he and his husband decided to move to Manitoba. After a brief “retirement” from the food industry, to start and finish a BA and then a Masters in Linguistics, he came back to his first love, food, to find a career in food security at Food Matters Manitoba.

We talk about his experiences working with youth in Winnipeg through Food Matters Manitoba, and some barriers youth face when accessing food. We speak about the gendering that goes on in different food realms, and how these impact queer and trans youth particularly. We also look at the food landscape in Winnipeg and discuss some of the challenges and creative ways he teaches youth to overcome these barriers.

You can find the Dan Jurafsky lecture he was referring to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_tceXVOcls

Want to learn more about Owen? Contact him here: owenrcampbell@gmail.com or check out some of his work with Food Matters Manitoba here:  http://www.foodmattersmanitoba.ca/2018/07/a-queer-cook-off/

Thinking about “typical” types of veganism can reveal a lot of fascinating Western stereotypes or biases around what it does and doesn’t entail. And yet so many cultural cuisines from around the world are rooted in plant-based meals that have been passed down through generations to shape contemporary ethnic cuisines. So what happens when someone adopts a vegan diet and lifestyle, in terms of navigating heritage, identity, and family connection?

My guest this week is popular recipe developer and creator Remy Park from Veggiekins, who is here to explore these themes and discuss her beautiful debut cookbook, Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore. Originally from New York/New Jersey area with an international upbringing, she shares vibrant plant-based recipes that take inspiration from her three cultures: Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese, and all the countries she’s lived in. Remy is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher as well as a holistic nutritionist. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Shape Magazine, British Vogue, BuzzFeed, Elle Vietnam, CBS News, and ABC News.

Within the cookbook, Remy’s personal wellness journey is woven throughout her accessible plant-based takes on international and Asian-ish dishes. In our conversation today, we explore the traditional flavours and diets of her Asian cultures, and how the book formed a love letter to Remy’s family heritage, how she navigates food as communication across American and Asian understandings of snacks and salads, and the power of language in recipe development when healing from eating disorder experiences.

Learn More About Remy:

• Veggiekins Website: https://veggiekinsblog.com/
• Seasame, Soy, Spice Cookbook
• Instagram: @veggiekins
• YouTube
• TikTok: @veggiekins

When we think about food security and food systems, it can easily be imagined as a large national or state or provincial level experience. Yet many young adults increasingly are experiencing the unique dynamics of food systems on campus landscapes, which offers a concentrated and specific food environment that can feel limited as food prices increase and food vendors on campus continue to produce some questionable (and now expensive) meatloaf. 

Yet post-secondary campuses are spaces of resistance and social justice, and it seems only fitting that students can push back to create food systems alternatives that navigate long-kept colonial structures in the academic institution.

 My guest this week, Dr. Michael Classens, is here to explore how these alternatives have played out through his and his students ongoing research. Michael is a white settler and Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at University of Toronto. He is broadly interested in areas of social and environmental justice, with an emphasis on these dynamics within food systems. As a teacher, researcher, learner, and activist he is committed to connecting theory with practice, and scholarship with socio-ecological change.

Today we’re discussing the work he and his students have been doing for the past few years focused on what he calls campus food systems alternatives – which are initiatives started/operated by (mostly) students that employ food as an organizing strategy to effect broader socio-ecological change on campus (and beyond). Examples include campus farms, student-run cafés, community fridges, and the like. 

Learn More About Michael: 

• Website: https://www.foodandchange.com/
• Email: michael.classens@utoronto.ca
• Twitter/X: @michaelclassens
• IG: @michael_classens

The past week or so has been a bit of a whirlwind for me personally, and I’m sure anyone who’s in academia and in the full swing of the fall semester can attest to! So what a perfect time to have my guest this week, Dr. Michael B.C. Rivera on the show.

Michael is also an anthropology podcaster and the host of the incredible Arch and Anth podcast, a three-a-week show featuring interviews with experts on human history, biology, and cultures. We’re doing a special guest swap this week – so we did a double header interview. Michael interviewed me over on his show, and I’ve linked that interview if you’d like to learn more about some of my PhD work, and then we took a quick break and switched hats, so I could ask him about his research.

Michael is a biological anthropologist and specializes in studying coastal human archaeology. He has previously worked at the Universities of Kent, Copenhagen, and Cambridge. He completed his PhD research in 2018 exploring life and human health in prehistoric Estonia and Latvia. His other activities involve teaching students, engaging with inclusion and equity issues in academia, and climate justice. Today, you’ll hear from him on how we can interpret the diets of prehistoric coastal peoples – did coastal resources mean different bodies, or different health trajectories? Tune in to find out the answers! 

Learn More About Michael 

• Arch and Anth Podcast Website 
• Instagram: @archandanthpod
• Twitter: @ArchandAnthPod
• Dr. Rivera's Twitter: @riveramichael
• Sarah's episode on AAAP

A topic we’ve hinted at in earlier conversations on the show is what it feels like to be a women working within the restaurant industry, but it’s one of those conversations that deserves a much deeper exploration, and today we’re doing just that. My guest this week is Katy Osuna, the co-creator and host of the James Beard Award-winning podcast, Copper & Heat. The podcast explores the unspoken rules and traditions of restaurant kitchens, and challenges exclusionary systems that have traditionally gone unquestioned.

 Katy herself is formally trained as both a cook and an anthropologist, with a Bachelors in anthropology and sociology. She then worked at a non-profit training refugees and others with barriers to employment in the food industry and helped them find jobs in Boise, Idaho. She left Boise for San Francisco to pursue the culinary arts and has been working in the restaurant industry for seven years, 2 of which were spent as a chef de parti at Manresa, a three Michelin star restaurant. In 2018, she left Manresa to start her podcast.

 This podcast quickly became one of my absolute favourites to listen to on commutes in 2019. Copper & Heat launched their first season, Be A Girl, in July 2018, which was a serialized narrative of Katy’s story about being a woman working in Michelin-star fine dining restaurants around the San Francisco Bay. In the series, she has conversations with friends, family, coworkers, line cooks, prep cooks, and other kitchen employees about the challenges of being a woman in the industry and the pressures that traditionally masculine kitchen spaces create for the people that work in them.

 We speak today on how she takes an anthropological approach to telling these stories of women in the kitchen on her podcast, and discuss her super awesome win at the James Beard awards this past year, exploring whether or not that’s changed her connection to the show and the stories she wants to tell in the future.

Get Social with Katy!

• Copper & Heat Website

• Katy’s Instagram

• Copper & Heat’s Instagram

• Twitter

Today’s episode is one of the pop-up episodes of AnthroDish which focus in on some of the speakers and guests of the 2019 Terroir Food Symposium. These are quick mini episodes that capture some of the perspectives of folks in the food industry around the theme of choices – the choices they make within their own work and its impact on their communities, businesses, and selves. 

This pop-up episode focuses on the incredible Canadian Indigenous born Bill Alexander, the executive chef at Little Chief Restaurant at the Grey Eagle Resort and Casino, located on the beautiful Tsuut’ina Nation in Calgary, Alberta.

Chef Bill believes that food brings people to the table, where we can talk about the necessary changes to build relationships, using cuisine to learn more about Indigenous cultures, land and food practices. 

Learn More about Bill Alexander: 

• Website
• Instagram: @littlechiefyyc
• Facebook: Grey Eagle Resort and Casino 
• Twitter: @greyeagleresort

What happens when someone gets diagnosed with type 2 diabetes? What happens after to that person's connections with their culture, identity, and family? 

This week we’re exploring the connections between type 2 diabetes and gender for women living in New Delhi with Dr. Jo Weaver. Dr. Weaver is an assistant professor in the department of International Studies at the University of Oregon. She is a biocultural medical anthropologist, who’s research addresses chronic diseases, mental health, and food insecurity in India and Brazil. She also co-hosts the podcast Speaking of Race (another fantastic show sponsored by the AAAs).

In our interview, Dr. Weaver highlights some of her key findings from her research with women managing type 2 diabetes in India. She explores the strong connections between cultural identity, gender roles, mental wellbeing and dietary shifts that these women experience after their diagnoses, and the connections between the lived experiences of these women and some of the biochemical markers for stress that she found during her studies. Dr. Weaver very poignantly sums up the complexity of diabetes as a social disease in this interview, and I’m excited for you to learn as much from her as I did.

Resources:

Dr. Weaver’s Book, Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India

Speaking of Race Podcast

Website

When you think about the concept of a TV dinner, there is a wash of nostalgia that can takeover how you remember the tastes and functions of the dinner itself. But the story of how these TV dinners came to our North American freezers is a fascinating and fun exploration into a lot of the social and technological progress of the 20^th century.  

My guest today is here to unbox the TV dinner, Jeff Swystun. Jeff is a globally respected branding expert and author. He is the former Chief Marketing Officer for Interbrand and Chief Communications Officer at DDB Worldwide. He has ghostwritten ten business books, and has authored two of his own. He has spoked at over 75 conferences and appeared on media outlets such as CNBC, ABC, NBC, CNN, CTV, BNN, and the CBC. 

Jeff is here today to discuss the exciting topics of his latest book, TV Dinners Unboxed: The Hot History of Frozen Meals. He explores what makes the TV dinner such a perfect tool to unpack the social, cultural, and historical contexts of our North American dining habits, tackles the mystery of its origins, and examines how feminism, the Baby Boom, and television worked together to change eating habits and family gatherings. 

Learn More About Jeff! 

• Buy his book: TV DINNERS UNBOXED: The Hot History of Frozen Meals 
• Website: https://swystuncommunications.com/ 
• Medium Page: https://jeffswystun.medium.com/ 

This week, I am chatting with Ary Maharaj, who’s speaking as the Outreach and Education Coordinator for the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC). Ary is a qualifying Registered Psychotherapist and a graduate of the University of Toronto’s Master of Education in Counselling and Psychotherapy program. Through his work at NEDIC, he’s striving to take a preventative, proactive approach to helping people with their relationships with food and weight, while buffering them from developing eating disorders.

In our conversation, we’re talking about how younger generations face challenges online with pervasive messaging on Tik Tok and Instagram, how to approach conversations with friends and family members who make comments about any body changes we’ve had during the holidays, and how we can approach food and body image discussions online in more respectful, accessible, and supportive ways. I will just say before this interview starts, that we do talk about eating disorders throughout this, so please consider this and if you are in a good space to listen to these themes before continuing to listen.

Resources: 

• NEDIC Helpine Services (Canada):

  Toll-Free: 1-866-NEDIC-20 (1-866-633-4220)

  Toronto: 416-340-4156 

• National Eating Disorders Association (US)
• NEDIC Website 
• NEDIC IG: @the_nedic

This week’s episode feels particularly special and close to home for me – because it kinda is! This marks my first episode getting to connect with someone from my hometown of Peterborough, Ontario. During the first year of the pandemic, I moved back to Peterborough to be closer to family while managing my daughter’s online schooling. It was a really difficult choice for me, because I had a lot of pride about living in Toronto and coming back to your smalltown can be challenging. But there was one place that kept filling me with joy (and delicious food) and hope during lockdowns – Hanoi House!

This week, I have Susan Tung, the owner of Hanoi House, on the show to share her story of opening not just one, but two locations of this Vietnamese restaurant in our small town. Susan grew up in the Cavan Monahan area (which is a bit outside of Peterborough and smaller still), where her parents owned a Chinese restaurant called Golden Wheel.

While Susan aspired to building a career in the health care industry, she kept getting drawn back into the hospitality industry due to her upbringing, but made some really smart and creative changes to bring Hanoi House to the Peterborough food scene that allowed not only for business success during a pandemic, but thrived enough for her to open a second location! This story is really special for me to share, because I think Susan represents a lot of the good I see in my hometown, and I’m really excited for you to all get a glimpse into story and the beautiful dishes she’s created.

Learn More About Susan and Hanoi House!

• Hanoi House Website
• Instagram: @hanoihouseptbo

I’m doing something a bit different this week - I had two incredible women whose identities intertwined with their vegan lifestyles, so I thought it would be cool to release BOTH episodes this week for a dual-perspective look at veganism! (And will continue to do this from time to time when similar topics keep popping up.) What I think is especially cool about the interviews this week is that these two women grew up in completely different worlds, and have some similarities and some striking differences in their plant-based lifestyles and mindfulness.

So my second guest this week is Melissa Melottey! Melissa is an actor based out of Toronto, ON, who is the host of the Qriket Live gameshow and the NamaSLAY podcast. We met at the Rose of Tralee, which is an Irish beauty pageant (yes, you read that right), and since then I’ve constantly been inspired by her uplifting attitude and her drive to make it in the acting business.

In this episode, we explore our Irish heritage and the ways in which these bland Irish palates started her lifelong journey and exploration of food. We also speak about how her relationship with food has been impacted by the physical and mental demands of being an actor, along with some of the interesting connections between mindfulness and food.

Check out her full episode in the player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or iHeartRadio!

Want to keep up with Melissa? Check her out here:

• Just Love by Melissa: http://justlovebymelissa.com

• NamaSLAY Podcast (I’m on episode 12 of her show, we talk all about anthropology and cults):https://soundcloud.com/justlovebymelissa

• Instagram: @melissamelottey or @justlovebymelissa

Get social with AnthroDish! to keep up with Melissa? Check her out here:

• Facebook: @AnthroDishpodcast

• Instagram: @anthrodishpodcast

• Twitter: @anthrodishpod

• And if you love what you’re hearing, please give us a rating and review on iTunes!

When you think craft beer, what - or who - is most likely coming to mind? It's an industry that is so dominated by straight white dudes, but that doesn't mean it needs to stay that way. My guest this week, Ren Navarro, is working on improving diversity in beer. Navarro is one of the most well-respected members of the Ontario beer industry, and has worked for years as the face of breweries within her respective sales regions and uses her fervent love of craft beer to bring it towards more diverse audiences.

Navarro is on the front-lines to initiate change both in and out of the industry. Using her perspective as a queer black woman within the industry, she has talked extensively about diversity in craft beer through her company, Beer.Diversity. Ren’s goal to educate, enlighten, and make craft beer approachable for a more diverse audience. Additionally, Ren is the co-founder and former co-organizer of the Society of Beer Drinking Ladies, which is a Toronto-based monthly beer event that provides a safe and relaxing atmosphere for female-identified people. 

Today she’s on the show talking about her work through Beer.Diversity and we explore the culture around craft beer in Ontario. She highlights some ways in which breweries and the industry are starting to shift towards more diverse audiences, and the ways in which diversity makes for better beer and better working environments. Can't wait for you to listen, Ren was the most fun to interview! 

Learn More About Ren:

• Beer Diversity Website
• Instagram: @beer_diversity 
• Twitter: @35mmMonkey 

Today’s episode is one of the pop-up episodes of AnthroDish which focus in on some of the speakers and guests of the 2019 Terroir Food Symposium. These are quick mini episodes that capture some of the perspectives of folks in the food industry around the theme of choices – the choices they make within their own work and its impact on their communities, businesses, and selves. 

Today mini-episode features Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, two of the co-founders of The Gefilteria. Launched in 2012, it’s mission is to reimagine eastern European Jewish cuisine, adapting classic dishes to the values and tastes of a new generation. Jeffery and Liz believe that Old World Jewish foods can be beautiful, inspiring, and delicious. They produce limited runs of their signature artisanal gefilte fish each spring and fall, cooking a wide range of Jewish foods from the Ashkenazi culinary tradition for unique dining events.

They seek to inspire others to reimagine and rediscover this incredible cusiine in their home kitchens. While they don’t have a storefront, they host tons of classes and experiences in their community around Brooklyn and worldwide, and have a brilliant cookbook called the Gefilte Manifesto. Jeffrey and Liz are so delightful to speak with, and the conversation that unfolded is one that I still think about on a fairly regular basis! 

Learn More About The Gefilteria: 

• Website: http://gefilteria.com
• Instagram: @gefilteria
• The Gefilte Manifesto Cookbook
• Queer Soup Night
• Jeffrey's Website

I'm so excited that we've made it this far together, I can't thank you all enough for tuning in over the years, bringing in your expertise and your questions to make this journey even more dynamic than I could have possibly imagined when I first started it. 

To properly celebrate this, my friend Sydney Gautreau is interviewing me this week! We've been toying with this idea for a while, so when she proposed it as the way to celebrate 100 AnthroDishes, I couldn't say no. Even if I am the worst interview guest - I am normally the type of person to quickly turn questions back on interviewers because of my hosting tendencies. Yet the perks of having a friend interview is that she knows the types of questions to ask me where I feel genuiney encouraged to answer it in more vulnerable and real ways. 

So today, Sydney asks me to share more about my own experiences than I normally do. Which is scary, but also exciting. So here we go! 

PS, Sydney is a fabulous editor and writing coach outside of her hosting abilities - please check out her website if you are in need of some powerful editing and coaching that makes you feel more aligned with your own writing:

Sydney's Editing and Writing Coach Website: https://sydneygautreau.com/

Wrapping up an amazing season 4 with a solo episode this week - I reflect on some of the major themes and responses we got to episodes, and share a bit more on the personal side of things, particularly some lessons I've learned this fall about reconnecting to and through food. Plus there's an extra special guest on the show today... my daughter! 

We will be back with all-new episodes for season 5 on January 28th - until then, be sure to follow us along on social media and feel free to share ideas and guest recommendations that you'd like on the show. This show is made for you - so if you feel like we're missing voices and perspectives, we'd love to hear more about it! 

Thank you all for listening and joining us this year. It's always such a joy to be able to create these episodes and build a community of people that are invested in food sustainability, sovereignty, and challenging broken systems. See you in 2020! 

We’ve talked on the show before about how there are a lot of really white-centric connotations around the idea of “Canadian” food – a lot of people say there’s no such thing as Canadian food, or joke about poutine… and those whitewashing tactics in our food landscape are woven in more insidious ways into the fabrics of how nutrition and dietetics are taught and understood.

My guest today is Gurneet Kaur Dhami, a settler of Panjabi-Sikh descent travelling between Kanadario and Mi’lma’ki as she completes her Masters of Science in Applied Human Nutrition at Mount Saint Vincent University. She is currently completing her studies to become a dietitian and her thesis focus is on the experiences of racialized dietitians in Canada.

Gurneet is on the show today to share some of her work and knowledge on the main issues that racialized dietiticians face – not just in being dieticians but also in the process of becoming dieticians, and how the racist structures guiding nutrition and diet studies perpetuate racism and food security issues for BIPOC communities seeking nutritional guidance. 

Gurneet’s approaches to social justice and anti-oppression work within the many communities she works in are so multi-faceted, and I am really excited to share this conversation with you!

Learn More About Gurneet: 

• Website: https://www.gurneetkdhami.com/
• Support Gurneet on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/gurneetkdhami
• Instagram: @gurneetkdhami
• Twitter: @GurneetKDhami

When we think about “authentic” food experiences – what are we really explicitly looking for? Oftentimes the idea of authenticity can be exoticized to represent a particular type of ethnic cuisine at a specific time – or someone’s version of it. But in a diasporic world, there are ways to create a menu and recipes that reflect both local and seasonal food availability in a way that continues to weave food stories from the past into present life.

My guest this week is someone who is exceptionally good at blending the past and present into her dining experiences, Chef Ji Hye Kim. She is the chef and managing partner of MISS KIM in Ann Arbor, MI. Ji Hye is inspired by her ancestors and their stories told through ancient Korean cookbooks, as well as her farmer neighbors in Michigan. Miss Kim’s food is simple and good, with the menu dictated by seasonality and locality following Korean culinary traditions.

Ji Hye grew up in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to the States at the age of 13. After graduating from the University of Michigan and a successful career in hospital administration, Ji Hye switched to the hospitality industry in 2008. Having trained at various Zingerman’s businesses and Rome Sustainable Food Project, she ran an Asian street food cart before opening a brick and mortar location in 2016. As well as providing convivial service and delicious food, Miss Kim has been committed to doing away with tipped credit and paying a fair wage to all staff since opening.

Ji Hye is a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Best Chef Great Lakes in 2020. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and as independent restaurants across the country are at risk, she was admitted to and participated in the James Beard Chef Boot Camp for Policy Change and Food Lab Detroit’s Fellowship for Change in Food and Labor. Recently Ji Hye was chosen as one of Best New Chefs 2021 by Food & Wine. She believes that service is an honorable profession and envisions a more delectable, sustainable, and equitable future for the industry.

She’s on the show today to talk about her experiences entering the culinary world at a “later” age (it’s really not that late), and how she’s making space in her restaurants for new ways to think about food, community, and seasonality.

Learn More about Ji Hye Kim: 

• MISS KIM Restaurant: https://misskimannarbor.com/ 
• Miss Kim Instagram: @misskimannarbor
• Personal Instagram: @chefjihyekim

Today’s guest is Dr. Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire, an archaeologist who studies the Classic Maya. His research focuses on the political institution of the Classic Maya royal court, and investigates this by excavating the regal palace of La Corona, in Guatemala, and reading a ton of literature. In this episode, we discuss his doctoral research on Classic Maya royal courts, what foods were eaten during this time period, and the events that these foods would have been consumed at. We also talk about contemporary Maya foods and what it’s like eating an an archaeological base camp. You can find the conference he was discussing here:

https://goafar.org/afar-conferences/

Want more AnthroDish? Check us out on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthrodish/ or Instagram: @sinsarahdee

Today’s guest is Dr. Beth Jolley, a family medicine resident through McMaster University. Beth and I grew up in Peterborough, ON without ever knowing each other, and met when we were placed as roommates at the University of Guelph. Throughout our friendship, I’ve always known her to take a uniquely holistic approach to issues, integrating artistic and scientific perspectives into questions about life, health, and wellbeing.

On today’s episode, we sit down and talk about her experiences as a young doctor, and focus on nutrition and diet from her medical perspective. We talk about diet culture and main misconceptions or challenges in tackling this as a doctor, barriers to nutritional knowledge, holistic frameworks to look at health and diet, and eating behaviours at end of life. 

Resources from Beth: 

Ontario Nutrition: http://www.unlockfood.ca/en/default.aspx

Advanced Health Care Planning: http://www.advancecareplanning.ca/about-advance-care-planning/

Brazil’s Food Guide: https://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/Brazilian-Dietary-Guidelines-2014.pdf

Whenever I watch a baking show, or a movie that has a really delicious looking food scene, I’m always blown away by the type of story that you can tell just through video and images of food. What exactly does it take to create these visions of food looking so delectable, despite there being no sense of smell associated with them? And what happens when the cameras stop rolling and the food is no longer needed?

My guest this week, Alyssa Noui, is an LA based food stylist and culinary producer that is sharing her experiences to answer these questions. Alyssa grew up in a multi-cultural family near San Francisco in California, and was exposed to all sorts of dining experiences and cuisines in her youth. When she moved to Los Angeles, she worked on sets of culinary departments and found that the production in food provided the pace, organization, creativity, and camaraderie that she desired in food work. Alyssa started her own company, Supping Good, and working across live television segments, commercials, and feature films using her culinary skills to meet client expectations and stay on top of the latest trends to achieve the appetizing moments for the camera that we all love to watch.

She really believes in a sense of place and story that can be communicated with a meal and a well-dressed table, and shares today how she works to create that type of magic!

Learn More About Alyssa:

• Instagram: @suppinggood
• Website: https://www.alyssanoui.com/ 

Diet culture on the internet is excellent at sensationalizing our food to the point of panic. I’m sure many of you have seen the videos across TikTok and Instagram where someone positions themselves as an expert and demonizes strawberries, bread, or my beloved potatoes. But what happens when we take a more proactive and less restrictive approach to looking at food?

My guest today is the delightful Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, the founder of Nutrivore.com and the New York Times bestselling author of Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need from the Food You Eat. She creates educational resources to help people improve their diet and lifestyle choices, empowered and informed by the most current evidence-based scientific research. With Nutrivore, Dr. Sarah has created a positive and inclusive approach to dietary guidance, based on science and devoid of dogma, using nutrient density and sufficiency as its basic principles: Nourishment, not judgment.

On today’s show, we’re breaking down why diet-centric approaches don’t work, busting myths around food fears, and Dr. Sarah explains her Nutrivore mindset. It is an immense pleasure to have a conversation with someone with such nutritional knowledge and an approach to eating that is sustainable and realistic, so I am very excited to share this with you all.

Learn More from Dr. Sarah!  

• Book: Nutrivore  
• Website: https://nutrivore.com/   
• Instagram: @drsarahballantyne  
• Threads: @drsarahballantyne  
• TikTok: @drsarahballantyne  
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/drsarahballantyne/   

Get one of five free Nutrivore Guides Here!

• https://nutrivore.com/thankyou/?aff=49 
   

Today’s interview is really special for me to share with you all, because my guest is someone I’ve formed a really wonderful friendship with through the podcast community – I’m fairly certain we connected through one of my former guests, Trina Moyles – and being able to sit with her today after years of both of us growing our work and cheering each other on means a lot. So! Now that I’ve set the stage, I will introduce our fabulous guest for today… Tiffany Traverse!

Tiffany’s self described as a Secwépemc and Swiss-Italian Seed Keeper, chicken chaser, Zone 2 stretcher, and Fourth Sister to the land. She’s been experimenting and working on cultivating, saving, and sharing Indigenous vegetable and herb seed varieties through Fourth Sister Farms.

Today she speaks with me on the work she’s doing at Fourth Sister Farms and how it connects to a broader community of seed keepers across Turtle Island to foster Indigenous food and land sovereignty. We also speak to the importance of Land Back and the ways we can do more to help Indigenous land and water protectors continue their efforts.

Learn More About Tiffany and 4th Sister Farm! 

• Facebook: @4thsisterfarm
• Instagram: @4thsisterfarm
• Email: 4thsisterfarm@gmail.com

More Land and Seed Resources

• Community Seed Network
• Young Agrarians Land Matching 
• Sundance Harvest 

Whether you like the holidays or not, there’s no denying the comfort that winter baking brings. There’s a tremendous amount of art and chemistry that’s involved, but we often don’t think about the business side of bakeries as well. This week we’re exploring the business of baking with one of my all-time favourite bakers, Olivia Yetter!

Olivia is a Toronto-born cook at a vegan restaurant called Fresh. In her spare time, she owns and operates OY’S Joys, an artisanal custom made bakery based out of her home in Kensington Market. OY’s Joys focuses on hand crafted, homemade, flavour forward ingredients in their treats and plated desserts.

Olivia prioritizes using ingredients that have been grown or crafted locally, such as freshly milled organic flours, cold pressed oils, free range eggs, fresh fruits, and more. Sustainability is at the heart of OY’s cooking and baking. Though she’s not creating healthy treats, Olivia’s desserts are made with real food and have been carefully flavour profiled for an elevated taste experience. Olivia is quite experimental with her baking and always interested in trying to new flavours and experiences. We explore all of these ideas in this episode and break down what it means to be in the baking business, both for creativity and experience!

Get social with Olivia:

Website: oysjoys.ca

Instagram: @oysjoys

What really happens when a community undergoes a dietary transition, or shift? When speaking about Indigenous communities and their health, we often think of nutritional transitions as linear, and uncomplicated. But is this really a fair assessment of reality? 

This week I’m speaking with William Lucas, a medical anthropology PhD student at the University of South Florida. His research has explored issues of Latino community health topics such as food and nutrition, diabetes, HIV, and Hepatitis C. His current doctoral work integrates these through syndemics research, where he analyzes the interactions between nutrition, disease, and other social and cultural factors in Guatemala, a country which experiences some of the highest rates of childhood stunting worldwide. Originally from Los Angeles, California, William developed his anthropological interests through his exposure to food deserts and swamps, issues of community violence, and other social determinants of health, as well as an interest in how overall health is implicated in all these areas of research.

In our interview, we explore his work with a remote Q’eqchi’ Maya community in Guatemala. We explore nutritional transitions and the internal and external mechanisms that influence community attitudes about what constitutes healthy or unhealthy food, and how Western-style processed foods are perceived. William’s work is very unique in that there are some interesting attitudes around the idea of what healthy food looks like, and how this plays out for other health conditions for the Q’eqchi’.  

Resources

• A Partial Perspective on YouTube
• Instagram
• Facebook  
  
  

Do you ever wonder how scientists come to understand what we ate in the past, or how they know what types of farming and irrigation methods were used? Or wondered why it’s important to understand past diet and farming strategies in today’s globalized world? My guest this week is here to help answer some of these questions!

Today I’m chatting with Ayushi Nayak, who is a Doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Her research focuses on the nature of agricultural societies in the past that led to the hyper-diversity defining the Indian sub-continent today. Using different archaeological approaches, she explores diet, early farming strategies, population movement, and cultural changes.  Additionally, Ayushi is interested in decolonizing archaeological research and public engagement with cultural heritage.

We speak today about the ways she uses different methods to explore past people’s experiencing of farming, crop choices, and how they cooked and processed the foods they grew or collected. Ayushi strongly believes that developing a better understanding of human societies and choices in the past – particularly in times of flux – can help us prepare and mitigate against the rapidly changing world we live in today. I’m really excited for you to learn more about how she weaves the past and present together to tell these incredible food stories! 

Learn More About Ayushi:

• Twitter: @ayushi_nayak
• Instagram: @archaeonayak
• Website: https://www.shh.mpg.de/person/51755/25522

Have you ever had just one of those days where everything felt like it was on fire, maybe literally in the world or metaphorically in your own career… and you just wanted a quick way to chill? If you stumbled across a pastel beverage in a convenience store that could offer you chill in a bottle… would you go for it?

This week, we’re exploring the rise of the calming beverage industry with the incredible food and beverage writer, Alicia Kennedy. Her writing focuses on climate, culture, and cocktails, with a heavy emphasis on veganism (it’s history, politics, and ever-evolving definition). Currently based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she’s been covering the island’s culinary scene and foodways since 2015. Additionally, she’s a contributing editor to Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan, a food columnist for How We Get to Next and EATER magazine, and she has a podcast called Meatless, which featured conversations with chefs and writers on issues around culture and meat consumption. So basically, she finds genius ways to explore politics and culture through food and beverage.

I first came across her work in an article she did for EATER which explores how new CBD-based and herbal beverages are expanding what the wellness industry covers, and its impact in the anxiety economy. It was one of those essays where the connections she pulled between beverage and gender and wellness truly just blew my mind. So I invited her on the show to talk about this a bit more – which we do today! 

If you loved this conversation, do yourself a solid and check out her writing, I can’t speak to how much I love her perspective enough! I included some of my favourite essays of hers below as well. 

Learn more about Alicia:

• Website: http://alicia-kennedy.com/
• Instagram: @aliciadkennedy 
• Twitter: @aliciakennedy 
• Meatless Podcast 
• EATER Essay on CBD and Calming Drinks 
• EATER Essay: One Mai Tai, Hold the Colonialism Please

This week’s episode is truly such an honour and treat for me to share with you all, as the guest this week is Shiza Shahid. Shiza is someone who is an incredible inspiration, a force for positive change in the world, and a woman who knows how to creatively shake up the status quo in business ventures so that they can be rooted in community building and diversity.

Shiza is already known as the co-founder of the Malala Fund, as well as NOW Ventures, but she’s on the show today to share some exciting details her latest venture, the direct-to-consumer cookware company Our Place. Hospitality is sacred in Shahid's native Pakistan and feeding someone is an expression of love. Shiza brings her home country’s passion for hospitality into all of her business ventures. She has a strong desire to leverage philanthropy, entrepreneurship, technology, and the media to drive scalable social impact in business. Our Place, her e-commerce brand, is making unique cookware rooted in the modern multi-ethnic American kitchen, cofounded with Amir Tehrani and Zach Rosner, further embodies this passion. Our Place sets itself apart from its competitors by focusing their efforts on sustainable packaging, non-toxic non-stick coating on their signature Always Pan free of Teflon and PFAs. The brand launched in September 2019 with its Essentials Collection at Hank's Mini Market in South LA in partnership with the LA Food Policy Council to end food deserts in the region. Their following collections focus on unsung cultural traditions such as Nochebuena and Lunar New Year and give back to the communities they source their products from.

Whether it's artisans in Oaxaca, MX or female-owned and operated factories in China - Our Place's main focus is doing things better, better for the environment, better for the community and better for their workers. Shiza shares today how Our Place came to be, the way her relationship with kitchen and culture influenced how she runs the business – from the product development to how it’s shared and styled. 

Learn More about Shiza and Our Place: 

• Our Place Website 
• Instagram: @ourplace
• Instagram: @shiza
• Facebook: @fromourplace
• Twitter: @ourplace

One of the most frustrating parts of watching Gossip Girl growing up was witnessing the elaborate breakfast spreads that the families had each morning, only for the main characters to grab a piece of toast and run away with anguish. When we think about fiction, food isn’t always central to how a story is told. But what happens when it is? 

My guest this week is Margaux Vialleron, a French-born and Glasgow-based interdisciplinary writer and cook. She is the author of two novels: Breaststrokes (May 2024) and The Yellow Kitchen (July 2022). Her story, Fernanda’s Fish Soup, was runner-up in the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar short story competition. She also writes The Onion Papers, a hybrid newsletter about storytelling in the kitchen. Margaux’s work explores the landscapes of remembrance, the links between inner spaces and wild outer spaces, and food and seasonality as communal experiences.

In today’s episode, Margaux unpacks the power of food as a storytelling device in fiction, the consequences of character development relating to appetite and economics, and the power of the kitchen in writing and real life. Margaux is a beautiful writer, and I know a lot of the warmth in her work comes from the time she dedicates to food and eating in her character development, so it is a special treat to hear her perspectives on incorporating this into fictional worlds.

Learn More About Margaux: 

• Website: https://margauxvialleron.com/ 
• The Onion Papers Newsletter: https://theonionpapers.substack.com/ 
• Breaststrokes Novel
• The Yellow Kitchen Novel
• Instagram: @margauxvlln

For those of you who know me, you know I am a big time lover of coffee – in that I both have a severe dependency on it, but I’m also fascinated by the process and art that goes into creating coffee. Needless to say, I am really excited to share this week’s guest, Monica Mustelier! Together with her husband, Joshua, she owns Little Havana Cafe, which is a Cuban coffee trailer in Toronto, ON.

On the roots of their business, Joshua has said "we didn't want Little Havana Café to be just another food truck where you can get a regular cup of coffee. We made a very conscious choice to be as authentic as possible while sneaking in sustainable and organic ingredients where we can, right down the the build of the trailer and all of its repurposed materials."

 In this episode, we talk all about Monica’s early life along with some important cultural identities she connects with, and how that’s shaped her passion and desire to run the café. We explore the roles that coffee has played for Cubans in Miami, break down what organic foods means to Cubans, and the ways in which she’s brought the some of the magic from her summers in Miami up north to Toronto through her coffee. So curl up with a good cafecito and check out the episode here in the player above, or on any major listening platform of your choice!

Get social with Little Havana Cafe!

Instagram: @littlehavanacafe

Facebook: Little Havana Cafe

Website: littlehavanacafe.ca

Resources Mentioned:

Afro-Latina Dance at the Junction: http://afrolatinodance.com/

Facebook Group Cuba in Toronto: https://www.facebook.com/Cuba-in-Toronto-374587655386/

Lula Lounge Toronto: https://www.lula.ca/

It’s been a while since I’ve put out an episode, so I am extra excited to get these episodes rolling out again. These are a continuation of season 6 that got a bit de-railed after a provincial lockdown up here in Ontario. Today, we’re back on our regular interviews, and this one is an episode I’ve been SO pumped to share since the moment we sat down for this talk.

When we talk about the food system and all its faults, the overwhelming trend in the last twenty years has been, well… we just have to eat local. But what does that actually mean, and is it accessible to eat local, or is it an elitist bandaid solution to the much bigger societal problems it’s trying to skirt?

My guest this week is the phenomenal food writer, creator, and educator Paul O. Mims, who is on the show to explore the elitism of local food movements and his unique and refreshing lens as a food writer. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Paul began cooking at six years old with his grandmother. He's run culinary programs at a public library, worked as a museum educator at New York’s premier food and beverage museum, taught at public schools worked as a community organizer conducting community food access programs, and even teaching cooking as a drag queen. Paul's unique and expansive career is so easily showcased in his food writing as well: he has that very rare ability of being incredibly concise but also able to bring so many considerations in when exploring key issues in the food world.

This week he’s on the show to explore one of the essays he’s written on Medium unpacking the local food scene. We look at how the local food movement started, and Paul explores how the public started to romanticize agriculture, and how white women’s moralities began to shape and take hold of the ethics of food consumption in the 21st century.  If you grew up in the era of Food, Inc, feeling stressed about Michael Pollan telling you what to eat and how to eat it, this is one of those conversations that really takes a step back and assesses the amount of damage that these movements and their elitism has had on the food world, and I have been so looking forward to sharing this with you.

Learn More About Paul! 

• Website: https://mrpaulomims.com/
• Instagram: @mrpaulomims
• Twitter: @mrpaulomims
• Medium: https://medium.com/@hausofoneal
• Okra Project essay: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/the-okra-project

This is the first episode in a special two-parter series dedicated to taking a closer look into the rise of plant-based meats. This week we’re looking specifically at the nutritional elements to plant-based meats with a dietician, and then next week, armed with some of this new knowledge, we’ll be exploring the psychology of plant-based diets, the marketing rhetoric around plant-based meat products like the Impossible or Beyond Meat burgers, and some of the consumer trends around plant-based diets and meat consumption in Canada. I was going to originally try and piece these all together into one episode, but I don’t think it does these conversations justice to do that… thus, two parter!

So this week, we have the awesome Lauren McNeill on the show. Lauren is a registered dietician who specializes in plant-based nutrition. She has a Masters of Public Health in Nutrition and Dietetics, with a collaborative specialization in Women’s Health. What’s really impressed me with Lauren’s work, is that she provides virtual nutrition counselling for clients across Canada, for those who are already vegan or vegetarian, and for those who simply want to incorporate more plant-based foods into their everyday eating patterns. Additionally, she’s a media-based dietician and is fantastic at sharing her knowledge through this – she. Has a large Instagram following, a blog, and a YouTube channel, where she posts plant-based recipes, along with nutritional and wellness information.

Today, Lauren breaks down some key differences between a nutritionist and dietician (because that’s something I always confuse!), and shares some nutritional information around plant based meats, along with some tips and tools to start exploring plant-based diets in general.

Learn More About Lauren! 

• Instagram: @tastingtothrive_rd
• Blog: www.tastingtothrive.com
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSdrSaku3OySNCJFf4Hd3bA
• Email: lauren@tastingtothrive.com
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/tastingtothrive/

We’ve heard stories about how chicken nuggets are riddled with questionable ingredients, but what gets missed when looking at industrial meat production is those who process a nation’s worth of meat and poultry, the immigrants working at Tyson meatpacking companies throughout Arkansas.

My guest today is Alice Driver, who has written a haunting exposé on the toxic labour practices experienced at Tyson, the largest meatpacking company in America. Alice is a J. Anthony Lukas and James Beard Award-winning writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is here today to discuss some of the central themes in her new book, Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Industry, which is out officially as of today through Simon and Schuster. She is also the author of More or Less Dead, and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez.  

In our conversation, Alice details the story of the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back after decades of deadly chemical accidents, hyper-surveillance, and unsafe working conditions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. She unveils how the landscape and politics of Arkansas are marked by the poultry industry, and the exploitation models that went into creating such difficult and hazardous working conditions for those who are often subjected to invisible labour. She recounts how workers fought back in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods despite the potential consequences, and what is needed to truly change meatpacking industry standards.

Learn More From Alice: 

• Book: Life and Death of the American Worker
• Website: https://www.alicedriver.com/ 
• Instagram: @alice_driver

Sometimes the stories we want to share through AnthroDish are bigger that just one person's perspective. We've been working to create more thematically based narrative-style episodes, using multiple interviews to explore how different folks look at the same topic. In this way, we’re able to get a bigger picture story about the ways in which food can be used as a tool for powerful social moments and conversations.

 Today we are sharing the story of FoodWorks, and what this program is doing to empower youth in the kitchen. FoodWorks is a social enterprise launched by Operation Come Home in 2016, in cooperation with Causeway Work Centre in Ottawa, Canada. The goal of FoodWorks is to provide meaningful work opportunities to youth while offering healthy meals to those who may need it. It began as a way to bridge the gap between youth and seniors in Ottawa through a meal delivery service, but the program has grown exponentially to better suit Ottawa’s food culture and needs through meal delivery programs that are open to all residents, while also providing catering services for events and restaurants.

The program hires youth who are recruited from Operation Come Home, and helps them develop their culinary skills with a world-class chef, Bruce Wood. All proceeds go to supporting Operation come Home’s mission of preventing homeless youth from becoming homeless adults. 

I spoke with four people who all work with FoodWorks or Operation Come Home in varied ways: Chef Bruce Wood, Eric Bollman, Mandi Lunan, and Katie Sanders. After learning about the program from Eric, I knew that it would be important to get different perspectives and voices on the show, given that their enterprise is so rooted in creating strong communities and empowering youth -- an individual interview just wouldn't cut it! I am excited to share the final product today with you, complete with some fun soundscape play woven throughout the narrative.

Learn More about FoodWorks

• FoodWorks Website
• Operation Come Home Website 
• FoodWorks on Instagram and Facebook
• Operation Come Home on Twitter 
• Idle Hands Art and Craft Event

With much attention finally being paid to sexual harassment and labour issues within the restaurant industries, it’s easy to view restaurant and food culture simply as being rooted in misogyny and patriarchy. But there are many feminist restaurant and coffeehouse spaces, some incredibly long standing, that serve to really challenge the structures and spaces we operate in. So what does a feminist coffeehouse or restaurant look like?

My guest this week, Dr. Alex Ketchum, is here to unpack that question more. Dr. Ketchum is currently a faculty lecturer at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation from McGill focused on feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses in the United States and Canada from 1972-1989. Searching through women’s lesbian, and gay travel archives, she creates a data base that built a series of maps showing where American and Canadian feminist restaurants and cafes were located.  She has a newly launched DIY guidebook, How to Start a Feminist Restaurant, that gleans the lessons of what makes an intentional feminist restaurant space work, and what to consider.

Today she’s on the show to explore some of the key findings from her research, and how she used them to launch the feminist restaurant project website to share her findings to highlight how past feminist restaurant owners navigated gender and racial barriers to opening restaurants, and what these takeaways can offer for today’s feminist communities.

Get Social with Dr. Ketchum!

• Website: www.alexketchum.ca 
• Twitter: @aketchum22

When you think about comfort food, what types of meals or dishes come to mind – is it mashed potatoes and gravy, the best of your grandmother’s kitchens, or a chickpea curry? Often we have this idea around “comforting” foods that is rooted so deeply in our family ties and meaty or hearty cultural dishes. Yet sometimes, comfort food can be a bit more imaginative, if you reframe it. 

Today I’m talking with Nat and Bec Davey, two writer sisters who like to use art and conversations to reframe more than themselves – you might say they practice socially conscious self-help. Sometimes they do this through conversations with each other, and othertimes they bring in artists, thinkers, and creators to help us along. They always leave their audiences with some new reframeable to chew on as we all work through life’s big and small stuff together.

Our conversation looks more directly at their cookbook, which is called A Different Kind of Comfort Food, and unpacking what traditions and expectations we have not only around what food can be classified as comfort, but also how language and structure can shapeshift recipes and the kitchen experience in more accessible and creative ways.

Learn more about Nat and Bec!

• Reframeables Podcast: https://ceresproductions.ca/Reframeables 
• A Different Kind of Comfort Food: https://ko-fi.com/s/9f96d0a310 
• Natalie's Substack: https://nataliedavey.substack.com/ 
• Rebecca's Substack: https://observables.substack.com/
• Reframeables Instagram: @reframeables

With the holiday season in full swing, I always like to come back to conversations about body image and disordered eating… because holidays are really intense for a lot of people, myself included, and we are often face to face with anxieties about ourselves, our families, and sometimes with our relationship to food.

My guest this week is Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist and the founder of The Eating Disorder Center. The centre is a therapy practice that provides support to people in Rockville, Maryland and worldwide via video chats. She also writes and speaks about eating disorders on Fox, NBC, ABC, and PBS, as well as writing for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

What I love about Jennifer is that she’s very no-nonsense and to the point about diet culture – she calls it like she sees it, and her online presence serves as a strong reminder to take a step back from the wellness and health industry messages we’re bombarded with on a daily basis and reset our minds in terms of what those messages are actually getting at. We chat today about debunking this idea of healthy eating, or of wellness culture fads in terms of diet and exercise, and she provides some really useful tips and boundaries you can use to confront these challenges in your day to day lives. She also has a forthcoming book deal that she shares a bit about – so tune in to find out more!

Learn more about Jennifer! 

• Website: The Eating Disorder Center
• Instagram: @jennifer_rollin or @theeatingdisordercenter

In the daily grind of work under capitalism, I’m sure I’m not alone for dreaming of something more to life. Usually, this takes the shape of going somewhere new in the world on vacation or picking up a new language and imagining what life would look like if you lived in that country and spoke that language with ease. For my guest today, this dream became a concrete and humbling reality. Tax preparer and food writer Steve Hoffman details his journey with his family in his beautiful new memoir, A Season for That: Lost and Found In The Other Southern France.  

Steve is a French speaker and shameless Francophile who tirelessly works in his memoir to unearth the reality of his family’s gradual acceptance into a tiny winemaking village in the Languedoc region of southern France. His writing has won multiple awards, including the 2019 James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Artful Living magazine. 

In our conversation today, Steve shares some of the lessons he picked up about the unique winemaking and culinary traditions he experienced in Languedoc-Rousillon region, the role that food and ingredients played in helping his family become accepted in the village, the values of home cooking versus French cooking, and what it took as a food writer to get to a point with his memoir where he could approach his family’s story with an honesty and earnestness I’ve not seen the likes of in other food memoirs.

Learn More About Steve: 

• Steve's Book: A Season for That
• Instagram: @sjrhoffman
• Facebook: @sjrhoffmanwriter
• Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/ 

Today is the beginning of some pop-up mini episodes of AnthroDish that are focusing in on some of the speakers and guests of the Terroir Food Symposium. These are quick pop-up episodes that capture some of the perspectives of folks in the food industry around the theme of choices – the choices they make within their own work and its impact on their communities, businesses, and selves.

I’m calling these pop-up podcasts because they were all done on the side of a very busy main hall during the food symposium’s event day at The Carlu.  I will warn you that the sound quality of these is not the best, but the conversations I shared with so many amazing food industry folks were really inspiring and worth a listen!

This first pop-up episode focuses on Brad Bodnarchuk, who is the creator and host of the Half a Dozen Hospitality Podcast – we met at the pop-up podcast bar and shared the space during the day at Terroir. I couldn’t have asked for a better or kinder person to work all day with - he’s so passionate about his community and the work he’s doing through the podcast and events around BC is really wonderful to see.  

Be sure to subscribe to his awesome podcast, Half a Dozen Hospitality! You can also check out his show on Instagram @bradbodnarchuk or check out his videos on YouTube!

Listen in the player above to our conversation, or on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher!

If you’ve been listening to AnthroDish for a while, you know that the topic of disordered eating is one that holds tremendous meaning for myself both personally and from a research perspective. I am always passionate about exploring the spectrum of eating disorders with experts and had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Jillian Lampert on the neurobiology of disordered eating. Jillian is the Chief Strategy Officer for the Emily Program, a US-based program that is recognized for its compassionate and personalized approach to eating disorder awareness, treatment, and lifetime recovery. She is also the co-founder of the Residential Eating Disorders Consortium, and the Treasurer for Eating Disorders Coalition. If you ask Jillian  what her goal in life is, she says its to raise her 14 year old daughter to grow up loving herself. So basically, she's awesome.

It is clear when Jillian speaks that she has a passion for sharing her story and educating others about eating disorders. In our conversation, we discuss which sorts of people are more vulnerable to develop eating disorders. She explores how we have varied responses to hunger and satiation, and how that impacts our behaviours around eating. Something I really appreciate about her as a science communicator is her ability to break down neurobiological research in an engaging way, so I am excited for you to hear about all the cool work she’s been a part of. 

Learn more about Jillian!

• Website
  
• Twitter: @EmilyProgram
• Instagram: @emilyprogram

This episode is pretty meaningful for us, because we’re celebrating our official one year anniversary as a podcast today! We launched our first two episodes last July 2nd, and it's been an incredible year with a lot of beautiful conversations and lessons.

Today’s episode is going to be a solo episode, and next week we’ll resume with our regular season episodes and Terroir pop-up episodes as well. I wanted to take an episode just to share some reflections I’ve had now that it’s been a full year of being a podcast, exploring some of the big takeaways I've learned about building a show and keeping things connected to their roots in satisfying ways. I also speak a little about my own food journey, and how this podcast has directly and indirectly caused me to shift my perspective and connections with food - tune in to learn more! 

Often when we make our grocery runs, time and money are on our mind – which can quickly lead to following a stringent list of household classics and crowd pleasers. But sometimes, in the corner of your eye, you might catch a new to you vegetable and wonder what the heck it is, or how it works. My guest today, Becky Selengut, is here to provide knowledge and humour in getting to know these misunderstood vegetables more.

Becky is a chef, author, instructor, and podcaster based in Seattle, and her latest cookbook is Misunderstood Vegetables: How to Fall in Love with Sunchokes, Rutabaga, Eggplant, and More out everywhere today. Her earlier books include How to Taste, Shroom, Good Fish, and Not One Shrine. When she’s not the chef aboard the M/V Thea Foss, Becky is also the cohost of the local foods podcast Field to Fork, forages for wild foods, makes a mean Manhattan, and shares her life with her sommelier wife April Pogue and their loony pointer mix Izzy and vocally gifted cat Jinx.

Becky is on the show today to explore the story behind her new cookbook, discussing what makes a vegetable misunderstood, how she works with learners and readers to make food and cooking more approachable and fun, the ways that foraging and misunderstood vegetables can connect us back to land and nature, and why it’s important to think about seasonality when writing a cookbook. While Becky’s humorous and playful approach makes these elusive vegetables less daunting, she also shares some underlying messages about how food and our own understandings of belonging are intertwined too.

Learn More About Becky:

• Buy Misunderstood Vegetables (or ask your local bookstore to bring it in!)
• Becky’s Website
• Podcast: Field to Fork
• IG: @beckyselengut
• Threads: @beckyselengut

This is the AnthroDish Podcast, a weekly show about food, culture, and identity! If you're new to AnthroDish, start with this episode. I'm your host, Sarah Duignan, and I'm so excited to share these interviews with people who have a personal or professional interest in food. This episode covers what sorts of topics will be covered on the podcast, when it comes out, and a little bit about myself and what to expect. Want to know more? Check out https://anthrodish.ca/ or like on Facebook @AnthroDish

For many, the years spent at university can be a challenging time due to academic stressors as well as personal and emotional difficulties. During this important and liminal period, food security is crucial for health and psychological wellness, as well as academic performance and success. This week’s guest, Tara Hattangadi, is a recently defended Masters student who’s work explores the impact of food insecurity on mental health and wellness of university students.

Tara’s research sheds light on the importance of food security and demands that sufficient support during this key period be made widely available to all students – which includes university wide programs to facilitate equitable access to healthy foods. 

In this episode, we talk about her masters research and the exploratory route she took to engage in this very massive, under-researched problem of food insecurity amongst university students in Canada. She outlines what food insecurity looks like for students and why it’s important that we look at university students as an at-risk group. Poor diet has both short and long-term implications on mental health, student success, and social wellbeing, and Tara seeks to highlight how to improve access for students struggling to find healthy and affordable food. 

Resources:

• The Meal Exchange Cross-Campus Study: https://www.mealexchange.com/hungry-for-knowledge/

• Tara's Three Minute Thesis (3MT): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj5SPFfMRwA

• An article, published in CBC News early this year, about food insecurity among students at the University of Saskatchewan: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/40-of-u-of-s-students-face-issues-around-food-insecurity-study-shows-1.4470573

• Another really great read, published in Medium, about student food insecurity: https://medium.com/@saragoldrickrab/whos-hungry-making-sense-of-campus-food-insecurity-estimates-4b65cd1ecf2c 

Social:

Instagram: @tahrannosaurus or @sustainabindi

We’re living in a very surreal and increasingly digital world these days, and I don’t know about you all, but I’m finding myself taking a step back each day trying to figure out what this means for how our society is shaped and what our futures will look like. We see a heightened presence of fitness and wellness apps, with extended free trials, or nutrition trackers that give you healthy recipes… but how do they see health? Who gets left out of these fitness and health ideals, and how is tech playing into or heightening the racial and gendered issues around health and food?

My guest this week is the brilliant Dr. Tina Sikka, who’s here to shed light on some of these questions! She is a Lecturer in Media and Culture at Newcastle University in the UK. Her research interests include the sociology of science and technology – which includes environmental science, nutritional science, food culture, and health. She also looks at feminist praxis and the study of race. In addition to her academic work, Tina has written for such outlets as Jacobin, Lady Science and Alternet. Her most recent book is titled Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable (Springer Press, 2019).

Her views on the connections between technology, human health and nutrition, race, gender, and environment are so insightful and I learned a lot from this conversation – I’m so excited for you to learn from her as well!

Learn More about Tina! 

• Dr. Sikka's University Website: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/staff/profile/tinasikka.html
• Twitter: @tsikka
• For the Alternet: Neoliberal capitalism and the limits of individual choice
• For Lady Science: Why we need a feminist climate science and how we might get it

This week on AnthroDish, I am interviewing freelancer writer and journalist, Shailee Koranne. Based out of Toronto, ON, she writes about pop culture, bodies, cultural production, politics, and identity, and has written for major news outlets like VICE, Huffington Post Canada, Bitch Media, GUTS, and the Aerogram. On top of all the amazing writing she does, she also studies Equity Studies at the University of Toronto. 

I was introduced to Shailee through a mutual friend and read a piece she wrote for Bitch Media called “The Fried Chicken Dilemma: Ugly Delicious wants us to love our foods and ourselves" where she explores the negative role that food-related stereotypes have on the relationships between people of colour and their cultural foods. She has a writing style that expertly intertwines her personal experiences of racism and food stigma with broader themes of racial stereotypes and identity.

On today’s episode we discuss how food stereotypes inform and maintain historically racist attitudes and biases, particularly for Asians in North America, as well as the role that food plays in everyday racial microaggressions. We also talk about how cultural foods are sterilized and removed from their contexts in order to present them to white and Western diners, and the implications of "trend" culture (i.e. charcoal ice cream, superfoods, and any restaurant with a line up around the corner in Toronto) on cultural foods. Shailee discusses how she learned to unpack and unlearn some of the harmful attitudes through her writing on the topic as well. I’m so excited for you to check this interview out, as Shailee has some really amazing insights and powerful reflections on the ways in which food shapes and changes personal and cultural identities.

Check out the episode above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, or Castbox. 

Love Shailee and want to read more of her work? Check her out on social!

Website: www.shaileekoranne.com

Instagram: @shailee.jpg

Twitter: @shaileekoranne

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that when I was a kid I was completely obsessed with ancient Rome, given that I’ve gone on to work in anthropology. So this week’s interview was an absolute dream come true for me, as I was finally able to explore these worlds with someone who knows ancient Rome so well! I’m speaking with Farrell Monaco, who is an archaeologist, baker, and food intaker. Farrell's  work centres on foodways, food preparation, and food related ceramics in the Roman Mediterranean.

Farrell takes archaeology a step further, and is well known for her experimental archaeology projects, where she painstakingly recreates Roman recipes using instruction and ingredients sourced from the archaeological record. When possible, she uses original Roman food preparation and cooking technologies as well. Farrell focuses on the sensory aspects of Roman food preparation itself to better understand the labour, sights, smells, textures, and flavour profiles.

Her recreations are published on her wildly successful food blog, Tavola Mediterranea and have been featured online by institutions such as The British Museum, the Penn Museum, covered by the BBC, Atlas Obscura, Radio New Zealand, and Heritage Radio Network. She frequently hosts edible archaeology workshops and lectures, most recently hosting workshops at Taste of Rome in Rome, and Terroir Tuscany food symposium. Recently, she has worked as a team member on Roman Food archaeology projects with CEIPAC at Monte Testaccio, The Pompeii Food and Drink Project, and the Porta Samo Necropolis Project. Each project has provided critical data and insights into Classical Roman daily life, economy, politics, foodways and cultural identity.

I’ve been following her journey for a while through Tavola Mediterranea and it is such a pleasure to be able to unpack and discuss the ways in which food — and particularly bread — played such an integral role in the economy, culture, and lives of people living in ancient Pompeii, and explore the ways these histories have unfolded and influenced our current cultures.

Listen in the player above, or find on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and iHeartRadio!

Get Social with Farrell:

• Tavola Meditteranea website — check out to learn more about The Old School Retreat and other upcoming events and classes!
• Instagram: @tavolameditteranea
  

Eating is so central to our ways of connecting as people and communities, but how we show up and make space around food is a practice of care and art. My guests today, Trudy Crane and Chloé Crane-Leroux are a mother-daughter duo best known for their individual foods, fashion, and lifestyle content. Montreal natives, these two are bursting with creativity and a deep appreciation for romanticizing the little moments in life.

They’re here today to talk about their stunning new cookbook, The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking, a collection of recipes inspired by their European travels and the lessons around fresh, local ingredients they learn and shaped into delicious plant-based meals. We speak today about how they can pull inspiration from the beauty of the world around them – architecture, landscapes, a moment making pancakes together – and turn it into an artful experience of the table through their photography, ceramic-making, and recipe crafting.

Learn More About Chloé & Trudy:

• Buy their Cookbook: The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking

• Chloé Crane-Leroux Instagram: @chloecleroux

• Trudy Crane Instagram: @trudy.crane and @lookslikewhite

Industrial food systems tend to use mono-crop and unilinear approaches to supplying the Global North with food. But what happens when we consider more diverse crops? My guest today, Shreema Mehta, will discuss the traditional, climate-smart crops that are overlooked by the industrial food system. She started Climate Cookery selling tamarind hot sauce and has since expanded it to a newsletter that explores increasing biodiversity and supporting knowledge of underutilized crops.

Resources:

• Climate Cookery newsletter
• Instagram: @climatecookery

Today we’re taking a step back in time and exploring some interesting food trends from the past. Every so often, there is a massive migration period for herring towards the Swedish West Coast. These seasonal migrations allow for coastal fishing of herring that is much more abundant than regular methods. During one Herring Period of the 18th century, Atlantic herring began migrating to the western coast of Sweden in seemingly infinite numbers, until they suddenly disappeared in 1809. In response, the Swedes imported the art of smoking herring kipper-style from Britain, but then lost this practice, with very little mention of it in the historical literature. So why did this happen, and how can we learn about it from the past?

My guest this week is Anton Larsson, who is here to share his research on the rise of Western Sweden’s industrial herring smokehouses. Anton is a PhD student in Archaeology at Stockholm University. Originally from Uddevalla on the west coast of Sweden, Anton fuels his research by his roots to the region. He shares how he explore the mystery of these industrial smokehouses rise and fall in the 18th century Sweden, and what we can learn about food systems, traditions, and industries from this particularly interesting episode from Swedish history. He also demonstrates the value of using archaeology in historical contexts to piece together new perspectives and understandings of how communities and cultures interacted with their landscapes, and why staying closer to home for research is good practice.

Learn More from Anton:

• Twitter: @antonyaolarsson
• Website: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/anla3265-1.447274

How many of you have started trying your hand at baking bread since the start of the pandemic? With our lives totally upheaved and our work-related identities really being called into question, it’s allowing us some time to explore different sides of ourselves, and sometimes connect more deeply with our communities even in isolation.

My guest this week, Dolly Meckler, is doing just that! Dolly is a content creator, story teller, and social media strategist based out of NYC and LA. She has a burning desire to bring laughter and entertainment into peoples lives through story – she produces and creates the online webseries and podcast Hello Dolly!, and is the co-founder of Snaplistings. Through her professional experience, she has become an expert in all things digital, social and video, while establishing a social presence and voice for some of the biggest properties in entertainment at HBO + YouTube.

Over the last few weeks however, she has used her time in quarantine to learn how to bake challah, a Jewish bread, and has been selling them to Los Angeles locals. After posting about the challah on Instagram, dozens of of followers asked if they could buy themselves one of the "Challah Dolly's" (a play on "Hello Dolly,"). She’s on the show today to share more about her experience learning how to make and share challah, and how she’s bringing in her digital and social media expertise  to not only nurture her own Jewish and creative identities, but bring joy and silver linings to the public as well.

Get Social with Dolly!

• Instagram: @dollymeckler
• Website: http://www.dollymeckler.com/
• Hello Dolly Webseries and Podcast 
• Snaplistings 

You’re probably wondering what the heck we’re about to explore today… and indeed, it’s going to be all about farts and gassy foods.  

My guest this week is Danielle Gendron, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. Danielle and I work together on some research projects, and have been friends for a while through that. She first pitched this idea to me back in the spring, and I laughed at it, almost dismissively. But then I started thinking more about what she had to say, and realized we absolutely had to explore this on the show.

Danielle’s Master’s research topic was about food sovereignty, where she explored the significance of territory-based food systems to Gitxaala First Nation culture and their ways of knowing. Through her work, she traced one particular food, seaweed, through the Gitxaala food system from harvest to processing to consumption. During her experiences there, she soon found out that eating a lot of seaweed can make you very… gassy.

It’s something that feels silly but is, as Danielle says, a legitimate thing to explore. So we’re exploring this more today with a bit of fun – while Danielle does share some really important lessons and experiences she had working with Gitxaala First Nation, we’re focusing more on the idea of farting itself – what makes it such a taboo subject, why do we always giggle when it comes up, and why isn’t it being studied at all in anthropology? Why do we have internal dilemmas about sharing our stories and research about gassy foods and the farts they produce?  

Tune in to hear more! 

Resources 

• Farting in Anthropology PopAnth post by Kirsten Bell 
• Danielle Gendron's research at UBC 

When we think of what a food system is, we tend to think of it as a static structure, rather than a complex system of people working at different levels, or the diversity of communities working towards sustaining foodways. This week, we’re discussing how to create more diverse and equitable food systems in America with Vanessa Garcia Polanco. Vanessa is a current graduate student in Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. She is an alumna of the Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute and the University of Rhode Island.

 As a member of Food Solutions New England and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Vanessa has served at the local, state, and regional levels to promote democratic empowerment, racial equity, and visibility of immigrants in food systems. She worked as a chair for communications and outreach at the Rhode Island Food Policy Council and as a program assistant at the URI Cooperative Extension.

In our discussion, we explore the idea of what a food system is and the limitations of the term, the ways in which language and actions in food studies can disempower or disenfranchise people of colour and immigrants’ agency, and how Vanessa challenges these ideas with her own research and writing. I first came across her work on Twitter through a hashtag she started called #FoodJusticeFridays and was struck by her activism and perspectives on the food system, so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with her – as I’m sure she’s going to be out changing food policy and economics one day not so far from now!

Resources:

A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism by Eric Holt Giménez

Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Challenge 

Farming While Black by Leah Penniman

To Serve a Larger Purpose 

Get Social with Vanessa!

Twitter: @vpgvisions

Vanessa’s Website: http://vgp1996.wixsite.com/vanessagarciapolanco

Hashtags to Follow: #foodjusticefridays #dominicanfoodstudies #foodisneverjustfood

Our relationship with food in North America is such a deeply fascinating, contrasting, nuanced and complicated one. There’s so much to consider – both in the sheer population size and geographic scale of our food systems, but also in how we make sense of the foods we do and do not have access to. My guest this week, andrea bennett, tackles these big questions in latest new book, and is here to discuss some of the central ideas around it.

Andrea is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and senior editor at the Tyee, and has recently released a collection of essays called Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence through ECW Press. The essays in Hearty offer a snapshot of the North American cultural relationship to food and eating, deep diving into specific foods and tracing them through time, such as chutney, carrots, and ice cream, but also explores appetite and desire in food media, the art of substitution, seed saving and the triumphs and trials of being a home gardener, how the food system works (and doesn’t), and complex societal narratives around health and pleasure. 

In today’s discussion, we look at the relationship between vegetables, imagination, and food media, trace the labour that goes into food through different North American geographies, and how poverty, scarcity, and restaurant work informed their art of substitutions in recipes that translated into a nourishing sense of local community through time.

Learn More From andrea:

• Buy Hearty

• Instagram: @andreakbennett

This week I’m speaking with the very cool Emily Harman, a sommelier and wine consultant. Emily is the independent owner of VinaLupa, a sommelier consultancy which she began in 2015 by working with restaurants and hotels in London England, advising them on aspects relating to wine and providing training to food and beverage teams. Since then, the business has grown and expanded, now reaching across a number of countries and markets in the UK, Germany, and USA. She is also one of the hosts and creators of JUICE podcast, an entertaining and accessible podcast in which Emily and her co-host Guen Douglas share stories, knowledge, and banter on their favourite bottles of wine.

Today we explore the topic of natural wines and sustainability with a bit more depth – she kindly explains what the term “natural wine” encompasses, some of the challenges and benefits to these modes of production, and the integral role of farming and landscape. She also explores what makes our current era such a fascinating and fun time to be a wine consultant, and the ways wine culture is shifting for the better. For those of you listening who may be a bit daunted by the subject, Emily is wonderful at breaking down the hurdles of language and the broadness of the topic in a clear and fun way!

Resources: 

• VinaLupa
• JUICE Podcast
• Instagram: @vinalupa
• Twitter: @emilyharman

The phrase “dude food” likely brings to mind a range of very specific images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal, crazed sports fans demolishing radioactively hot wings, barbecued or bacon wrapped…anything. But there is SO much more to the phenomenon of dude food than how outrageous the plate looks.

My guest this week, Dr. Emily Contois, is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa. Dr. Contois is here to explore dude food and chat about her fresh out this week book, Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture. Her book begins with the dude himself – the man who retains masculine privileges but doesn’t meet traditional standards of economic and social success.

Dr. Contois explores how the Great Recession’s aftermath contributed to this collision of dude masculinity and food producers and markets, and the lasting impact this gendering of food has had on food production, consumption, and informs the way we carry out our personal identity contests and media lives.

She is truly one of my absolute favourite food researchers out there – I mean she has papers out that explore Guy Fieri’s Flavourtown, and she’s got these accessible syllabi and reading lists for food media studies that really get the weird ways social media and Instagram have interacted with our own identities and selfhoods… so suffice to say I’ve been very excited to share this interview!

Learn More about Dr. Contois

• Get a copy of her book, Diners, Dudes, and Diets!
• Website: https://emilycontois.com/
• Twitter: @EmilyContois

We’re all at this point used to food terms being thrown around in the grocery store – organic, GMO-free, natural, superfoods… but what do these really mean? Superfoods is a term that I’m also fascinated by. My guest this week is award winning producer, director, filmmaker, and writer, Ann Shin, who explores this in her documentary, The Superfood Chain. In addition to this, she is well known for directing the documentaries The Defector: Escape from North Korea and My Enemy, My Brother about the true story of 2 enemies from the Iran-Iraq War.

 She asks these questions we tend to take for granted – are superfoods really great for you? How does the global demand for superfoods impact indigenous cultures who grow these foods and depend on them as staples? The SuperFood chain is a beautiful cinematic documentary that investigates how the superfood industry affects the lives of farming families in Bolivia, Ethiopia, the Phillipines, and Haida Gwaii.

We explore these questions around what makes a superfood super, and how these demands for superfoods in Western cultures impact global communities, along with some tools and examples of how governments and food producers respond or adapt to shifts in food demands, and the process of making the film itself for her and her family.

Learn More About Ann Shin! 

• The Superfood Chain Documentary 
• Instagram: @thesuperfoodchain or @ann.shin1
• FathomFilm (for more of Ann's documentaries and films)
• Watch The Superfood Chain on TVO 

When most of us think about peanut butter and jelly, we’re immediately filled with memories of childhood lunches. And while it’s certainly a nostalgic snack, at its core it is a healthy snack – when it’s made from whole ingredients! So how can you make a nut butter and jam snack that’s not only tasty but also good for you? My guest this week, Jeff Mahin, is here to talk about this!

Jeff is one of the co-founders of Split Nutrition, the first-ever pairing of nut butters and fruit spreads in an easy, on-the-go snack packs made with real ingredients. He’s also a cyclist and chef, as the creative force behind Stella Barra Pizzeria, Summer House Santa Monica, Do-Rite Donuts, and M Street Kitchen. Jeff partnered with renowned nutritionist Dr. Philip Goglia to develop the first ever dual nut butter and jam packets for Split Nutrition, which are nostalgia snacks with cleaner and better-for-you ingredients. Split’s mission is to make convenient and nourishing options for active families everywhere. They hit this balance of bringing comfort back into our snack and fuelling food while providing a hearty source of proteins and healthy fats in their raw roasted nut butters, and essential sugars from their cooked jams.

Jeff shares his own story of health and his journey towards becoming a cyclist, and how this ultimately shaped how Split Nutrition came to be. I’m always really excited about seeing how people of different perspectives can come together to shape new knowledge, so it’s super cool to learn about how his experiences as a chef pair with a nutritionist’s understandings of food to form a really holistic and dynamic food product. Through this, they’re challenging what healthy food looks and tastes like, and most importantly, changing who has access to healthy foods by creating space for all sorts of lifestyles. He speaks to how Split Nutrition works to celebrate activity and community, including donating over 200k packets to schools, food banks, and folks in need during the pandemic. 

Get Social with Split Nutrition

• Website: https://www.splitnutrition.com/
• Instagram: @splitnutrition and @jeffmahin
• Facebook: @splitnutrition

For more anthrodish, you can find us at anthrodish.com. Sound editing and production was done by Lukas Wojcicki at lukasound.com. AnthroDish is produced in partnership with the American Anthropological Association. Thank you so much for tuning in, we’ll catch you next week!

If there’s one thing a lot of us have been doing since the start of COVID last spring, it’s returning to our kitchens – sometimes to help us grieve, sometimes to find joy, and sometimes just for needed sustenance. But there’s something about baking in particular that has re-emerged as an incredible source of joy and heart.

My guest this week is Jerrod Blandino, and he is here to talk about how his personal experiences baking have transformed into something much bigger and community based.

Jerrod is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Too Faced, a beauty brand he launched with Jeremy Johnson in 1998. Blandino got his start working behind the Estee Lauder makeup counter in the 1990s, and through working one-on-one with clients, he quickly discovered the transformative power that makeup had on women. While he loved working behind the counter, one of his main goals was to create a fun and unique makeup brand that would inject joy back into an industry that was rigidly defined by rules. With a credit card, laser-like focus, and a dream to celebrate and empower women, Too Faced Cosmetics was born.

Over twenty-two years, Blandino’s out of the box creativity helped pave the way to make the bran grow into a multi-million dollar business. Aside from Beauty, Blandino’s other greatest passion in life is baking, and many of Too Faced’s product names are a nod to this - if you’ve ever used Too Faced products, you’ll immediately think about the captivating food-inspired and infused scents that many of their products have – there are cocoa contours, peach eye shadow palettes, and cinnamon bear lip plumpers… it’s really like a candyland dream come true!

In 2019, he began baking more seriously, and started an IGTV series, #BakeupwithJerrod, which has racked up thousands of views and features celebrity guests. Today, Jerrod is here to talk about his revamped IGTV Bakeup series, and shares how he takes inspiration from the beauty of the natural world to bring to his beauty and baking experiences. I don’t know if it’s obvious yet, but I’m a huuuge fan of Too Faced cosmetics, so being able to interview Jerrod on the intersections of beauty and food is really a dream come true for me!

Learn More About #BakeupwithJerrod!

• IGTV Series: @jerrodblandino (use #BakeupwithJerrod to share your baking!)
• Website: Too Faced Cosmetics
  

With increasingly wearable and seamless tech experiences, there is a growing ability for us to monitor almost every phase of our day: what we eat, how much we eat, how we exercise, and how it all aligns with our bodies in a personalized level. These all can come together to create a perspective of what health “should” be, rather than what it could be or what it is for a lot of people with diverse gender and ethnic identities, as well as for those who have disabilities.

My guest this week is Dr. Tina Sikka, returning to the show today to talk through some of the big tech and health issues she researched for her new book. Dr. Tina Sikka is Reader in Technoscience and Intersectional Justice in the School of Arts and Culture at Newcastle University, UK. Her current research includes the critical and intersectional study of science, applied to climate change, bodies, and health, as well as research on consent, sexuality, and restorative justice. 

Dr. Sikka’s book, Health Apps, Genetic Diets, and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2023), uses autoethnography, science and technology studies, and new materialism to examine what constitutes ‘good health’ and explore possibilities for enacting health justice. If you caught her last interview, you’re in for a treat, as she discusses how health and personalized nutrition apps work in a very biomedical system to shape health experiences into a hegemonic practice. We also look at her realistic approaches to alternatives in a tech-heavy world, and how to navigate online communities that are trying to make sense of health and nutrition as much as we all are.

Learn More About Dr. Tina Sikka: 

• Dr. Sikka's University Website: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/staff/profile/tinasikka.html

• Tina's Book: Health Apps, Genetic Diets, and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism

• Twitter: @tsikka

• Threads: @tsikka

When you think about dirt, what comes to mind? Probably not eating it! We teach our children not to put dirt in their mouths from the moment they start crawling away from us in infancy, and we throw insults like “eat dirt” at people when we want to really stick it to them. Yet… humans have eaten earth, on purpose, for more than 2300 years. Humans also crave starch, ice, chalk, and a whole roster of unorthodox food items. Some even claim they become addicted and can’t get by without these non-food food items… but why is that so?

My guest on the show this week is medical anthropologist Dr. Sera Young, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Health at Northwestern university, who earned her PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University. She draws on nutrition and medical anthropology training to take a biocultural approach in understanding the questions around eating and craving earth, a practice known as pica, and more broadly looks at how mothers cope to preserve their health and their family’s health. She wrote an award-winning book called Craving Earth: Understanding Pica to explore the idea of phenomenon of eating dirt or earth.

Today we explore the evolutionary history of humans eating dirt and look at who in particular is most likely to eat it, and the potentially harmful and healthful effects they have. She reveals how pica is remarkably prevalent across every human culture, the substances that are most frequently consumed, and the many methods used to obtain them (even the Internet!).

Some of my favourite episodes are these ones, where we look to the food histories of the past to help understand current food-related behaviours, so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! 

Learn More about Dr. Young's Work:

• Website
• Twitter: @ProfSeraYoung
• Craving Earth: Understanding Pica 
• HWISE Water Security Research