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

For our last episode this season, we're exploring what it means to cook from a third culture kitchen. There's been growing discussions online of what it means to be a third culture kid or a third culture individual. My guest today, Jon Kung, is one of the best people to speak to how third culture experiences can play out through food, cooking, and kitchen spaces.

Jon is a popular Chinese American chef, content creator, and podcast host of 1 For the Table with legendary drag queen Kim Chi. Jon has amassed a following of over 2 million people for their unique style of third culture cooking, which blends cultural traditions, flavours, and ingredients that hold personal meaning to them. After graduating from Eastern Michigan University with a bachelor's degree in theatre arts and creative writing, and then earning a law degree from University of Detroit Mercy, Jon changed career paths to focus on cooking. They worked in some of the top Detroit kitchens before launching their successful Kung Food Market Studio pop-up. As the pandemic forced the pop-up to shut down, Jon turned to social media to create instructional and entertaining cooking videos that explore the vast Chinese diaspora, and apply culinary techniques of traditional Chinese cooking onto global flavours and ingredients.

Jon is on the show today to discuss their debut cookbook, Kung Food: Chinese American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen. We explore what it means to cook through third culture lenses, the 2010s rebrand of American fusion cooking and its impact on the idea of authenticity and third culture expressions in food, TikTok food landscapes, how Jon translated their dishes and videos into a cookbook format, and Toronto's early 2000s obsession pizza obsession.

Learn More About Jon: 

• Jon's Cookbook: Kung Food: Chinese American Recipes from a Third Culture Kitchen
• TikTok: @jonkung
• Instagram: @jonkung
• YouTube: @jonkung
• Threads: @jonkung
• Website: https://www.kungfood.kitchen/ 

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

Food security is a topic that's very close to my heart, in part because of how complex and varied experiences of food access, affordability, and availability can be. This week, we're breaking down food security amongst LGBTQ+ communities with James Gibb. James is currently a human biology graduate student at the University of Toronto, whose research focuses on the biocultural forces affecting health and wellbeing for sexual and gender minorities (SGMs).

In this interview, we explore the ways in which food and diet impact health outcomes for sexual and gender minorities. Nutrition is an important factor that influences individual risk for a number of non-communicable diseases, specifically in preventing morbidity and premature mortality. Despite food insecurity being linked to a number of physical and mental health outcomes, James has found that there is little research hon the nature of nutritional health for SGMs. We explore some of the reasons that these gaps in research and health programming exist, and James makes some suggestions about how we can start to connect nutrition, health, and the social processes of stigma, isolation, and discrimination for SGM communities.

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  
  
  

A topic that I feel we haven't REALLY explored the way I'd like to is Canada's food identity. And that's something that my guests this week, Lindsay Anderson and Dana VanVeller know an awful lot about!

Lindsay and Dana are authors and freelance food writers based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their award-winning culinary travel blog, edibleroadtrip.com launched in 2013 and went on to win a Saveur Best Food Blog Award. In 2017, they published their debut cookbook, Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip through Appetite by Random House. It quickly became a bestseller, and was awarded the Taste Canada Gold Award for Regional and Cultural Cookbooks. Their latest project saw them travelling to Nunavut as consultants on a country food cookbook with the Department of Fisheries and Sealing.

In our interview, they speak to what makes the foods and cuisines in Canada just so diverse and complex, and they highlight some of their experiences during their road trip and cookbook writing process. They even explore their more recent project working in Nunavut a bit and share the ways in which their connections with food have grown through time.

These women are such talented storytellers and they made me really think about what Canadian cuisines are and how that shapes our identities.

Resources: 

Website: www.edibleroadtrip.com

Instagram: @feast_on

Facebook

Twitter

As someone who's worked in the food industry and has a partner and many friends that still work in the industry, the topic of mental wellbeing in these intense environments is of great importance to me and a topic I'm always keen to explore on the show.

My guest this week is someone who has done a terrific job creating a space in these environments for conversations around mental health and addictions. I'm speaking Hassel Aviles, a Toronto native with over 20 years of culinary experience in the food and beverage industry, specifically focused on restaurants, events, and entrepreneurship.

Hassel founded the Toronto Underground Market (or TUM) in 2011, which is a community festival turned incubator designed for food entrepreneurs, chefs, and home cooks. TUM was attended by thousands each month, and produced enormous tourism for Toronto, birthing over three dozen food brands in the GTA (including restaurants, celebrity chefs, food trucks, and catering companies). She leveraged TUM to launch and co-found the successful and delicious La Carnita, which is now a global restaurant franchises.

In addition, Hassel is the co-founder of Not 9 to 5 with Chef Ariel Coplan. Not 9 to 5 is a Canadian non-profit focused on normalizing the mental health and addiction conversations while providing connections to resources for those working in the food and beverage industry. In our interview, we explore her experiences creating and growing Not 9 to 5, and discuss the reasons that this particular food industry culture is such an important place to tackle conversations around mental health and addictions. Here is my interview with Hassel.

Not 9 to 5

• Website
  
• Instagram: @not9to5_
• Facebook
  

This week's episode is extra special, as we have TWO phenomenal guests on: Dr. David Ebert and Dr. Amy Scott are here to talk about life and food at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia! This episode runs a bit longer than most, because I wanted to weave together multiple ways of looking at and celebrating the past, and the role that the past plays for contemporary Canadians. Louisbourg is truly one of the most magical places I've been to, and Amy and David play a huge role in why I love the Fortress so much.

In the first part of the episode, I speak with David Ebert, who is part of the management team for Parks Canada's Cape Breton team and the Fortress of Louisbourg. We explore the history of the Fortress, and he discusses what makes it such a fascinating part of Canadian and French history. David paints a vivid picture of what food and life were life for residents of the fortress during the 1700s, and the ways food is used now to make modern visits to the Fortress sensorial and interactive (aka super fun!)

During the second part, I speak with Dr. Amy Scott, an anthropology professor from the University of New Brunswick, and the project director of the bioarchaelogy field school at the Fortress. Dr. Scott has teamed up with Parks Canada for a long-term rescue archaeology project designed to document and protect the burial grounds out at Rochefort Point, where the shoreline has retreated about 90m in the past 300 years. I speak with Amy about the bioarchaeology side of things – we look at how we can learn about individual lives, stresses, health, mobility and diet just from their skeletal remains and burial context!

Parks Canada creates such an immersive experience and Amy's UNB team does a fabulous job connecting with the public and engaging in dialogues about climate change in Canada and how it impacts not only our present but our past. It was such an honour to speak with these two about their work because they're both so passionate and engaging!

Resources      

Fortress of Louisbourg Association: http://www.fortressoflouisbourg.ca/

Parks Canada Website: https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/ns/louisbourg

UNB Bioarch Website: http://unb.ca/bioarchaeology

Field School on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unbbioarchaeologyfieldschool/

Field School on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unbbioarchaeologyfieldschool/

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

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

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was extra-excited to share this week's interview with you! I'm speaking this week with the remarkable Haile Thomas, an 18-year-old international speaker, health activist, vegan food and lifestyle influencer, and the youngest Certified Integrative Health Coach in the United States. Haile is the founder and CEO of the non-profit HAPPY (Healthy, Active, Positive, Purposeful Youth). She founded HAPPY at age 12 to address the need for free and affordable plant-based nutrition and culinary education in under-served and at-risk communities, as well as in schools and through annual summer camps.

Haile has personally engaged over 15, 000 kids and thousands of adults around the world since she began her activism in 2010. She was inspired to pursue this passion after her family successfully reversed her father's type-2 diabetes without the use of medication, only with healthy eating and lifestyle choices, and upon learning that kids were increasingly being diagnosed with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. All of Haile's programs, projects, and initiatives are geared towards engaging, educating, and empowering young people to make healthy lifestyle choices and live their best lives.

Haile and her work have been featured on the Today Show, Food Network, CNN, Buzzfeed, MTV, NowThis, Dr. Oz, Teen Vogue, Fortune, O Magazine, and the Experience Magazine… to name a few!

In our discussion, Haile shares her experiences founding and running HAPPY, and how to spark a joy and curiosity in kids around food and nutrition (yes, even picky eaters!). She speaks to how her own business and personal connection to food has grown with her through time, and how that's impacted her business goals and desires. We also discuss what makes folks in her generation so successful in being advocates for social justice and equity on the world stage. Haile is a woman I am constantly inspired by, and it was a true delight to be able to speak with her for this episode!

Resources:

• Haile's Website
• Haile's Instagram

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

One medium I take a lot of inspiration from in terms of food storytelling is YouTube (as I'm sure many of you do as well!). Personally, it was the first platform that made me connect to cooking in a fun and accessible way, and reduced my fear of learning about the kitchen. Today we're talking all about video creation and food storytelling with one of my favourite YouTubers, Katie Quinn of the QKatie channel.

Katie is a video journalist, host, and cookbook author. Katie's YouTube channel has over 3 million views, and her slogan is #keepitquirky because she thinks life is more enjoyable when you don't take yourself too seriously. An Ohioan turned Brooklynite, Katie was based out of NYC for the past nine years. She has talked about food on NBC'S Today Show, as a contestant on the Food Network's "Chopped" and as a judge on Beat Bobby Flay. Katie attended Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris and is the author of the "Avocados" cookbook. Katie is currently based out of London, England, where any day of the week you can find her recording videos and finding new adventures or experimenting with new recipes. She is also the host of the delightful and refreshing Keep It Quirky podcast.

This interview with Katie was such a lovely way to start of the new year. We explore the many ways we can tell food stories through different mediums both digitally and with television, and how her connection to food transcends into how she connects with people and shares her story. We explore her experiences in culinary school and the influences these had on how she shared her own stories through video journalism, and the ways she feels her creativity has shifted and grown from cooking into a diverse array of platforms. It's always exciting for me to dig deeper into the places and values food holds for us, and Katie really opened up to exploring these with me in the interview. This lead us through how different mediums shape the stories we tell and the audiences we speak to! Her approach to food and cooking is infused with her Keep It Quirky slogan, and it was a dream to be able to speak with her about the ways her connection with food has developed and grown as her QKatie brand has also evolved over the years.

Get Social with Katie!

Katie's Website: https://www.katie-quinn.com/

QKatie on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSprAO1TNhIk6yz_pdhQK-w

Keep it Quirky Podcast: http://keepitquirkypodcast.com/

@qkatie for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook 

We've spoken a bit this season about the drug poisoning crisis and how breweries can work to support their neighbours using substances, but with this affecting so many across Canada, but I wanted to come back to this topic with some more dimensions as well. My guest this week is Danielle English, who's on to share more about harm reduction strategies and unpack the misconceptions and stigma that surround drug use and poverty. 

Danielle is a harm reduction and mental health advocate, who comes from a background of lived and living experience. She does grass roots activism and lobbies for policy changes that will support people who use drugs. Danielle advocates for safe drug supplies and safe spaces for people who use drugs, and uses her own experiences navigating the mental health system to demonstrate the issues with the province of Alberta's current resources. 

In today's conversation, Danielle explores the power, structures, and policies that are upholding harmful misconceptions about adequate and appropriate care for those who use drugs. Danielle provides resources, strategies, and lived experience knowledge to demonstrate how these are affecting many people throughout our communities, and how we can seek out resources and strategies to provide harm reduction to our own communities.

I will give a topic warning for this episode, as we discuss drug use, sexual abuse, and traumatic experiences that shape mental health. This interview is an incredibly important one for me, in how she speaks truth to so much fear and stigma around why people use drugs, and I encourage you to listen to her story.

Resources from Danielle: 

• 4B Harm Reduction
• Moms Stop the Harm
• Drug Data Decoded
• DULF Compassion Club and Safe Supply Access

AnthroDish is back and ready to kick off the new year and new season! We have a lot of really amazing interviews in store for you.

I want to start off the new season with a topic that I find endlessly fascinating: Neanderthals! I'm speaking this week with Dr. Anna Goldfield about what Neanderthal diets looked like and how that impacted their lives. Anna is a zooarchaeologist whose PhD research focused on Neanderthal nutrition and subsistence behaviour. In addition to all of her super cool research, Anna is one of the co-hosts of one of my favourite new podcasts, The Dirt, where she and co-host Amber get excited about all the weird, amazing, mysterious, and fascinating stories from our human past.

In this interview, we explore what Neanderthal diets generally would have looked like by breaking down some of the major findings of her doctoral work. She analyzed the faunal remains from Neanderthal (Middle Paleolithic) and anatomically modern human (Upper Paleolithic) archaeological sites to understand how these two populations used the food resources around them. What emerges is an interesting and nuanced understanding of what their diets might have looked like, and what food-related practices might have contributed to their extinction.

Listen to the episode in the player above, or find it on Stitcher, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio! And if you love AnthroDish, please drop us a line or leave us a rating and review on iTunes!

Resources Mentioned:

Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Anna's SAPIENS Column: https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/

John D Speff's Paper, "Putrid Meat and Fish in the Eurasian Middle and Upper Paleolithic: Are We Missing a Key Part of Neanderthal and Modern Human Diet?": http://www.paleoanthro.org/media/journal/content/PA20170044.pdf

Get Social with Anna:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedirtpod/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dirtpodcast

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedirtpodcast/?ref=br_rs

• Website: http://thedirtpod.com

I'm not going to lie - I took a break from interviewing this November to avoid burning out. I didn't want to resent having to interview people (when I truly LOVE connecting with them), and I didn't want to just ask the same questions on repeat without a positive energy coming through. So that meant relying on the episodes I had banked, and also means you get a solo episode from me today!

A good friend of mine operates by a "So What? Who Cares?" approach to her research and work, and I've quickly adopted that to sharpen the impact and relevance of my own work. This solo episode centres some of the main lessons and thoughts I've had about AnthroDish using the So What/Who Cares approach. It occurred to me this past month that I don't really share my own thoughts or reflections on the show the way that other podcast hosts do. Part of that is intentional, as I like to let these interviews speak to the ideas and issues I'm passionate about - but I thought it would be fun to put together some key takeaways I've personally had to wrap up the 2018 season, and share some of the changes I'm considering for the 2019 season.

With that being said, AnthroDish will be going on a two week HIATUS after this episode - I speak a lot about slowing down and connecting with the land and food we eat, but I've found myself rushing around a lot more lately, and want to remember to practice this myself. We'll be back on air January 8th, 2019 for the new season, and starting off with a super exciting interview with one of the co-hosts from The Dirt Podcast! So let me know your thoughts about the 2018 season on social media - what did you love/like/dislike, what themes do you really wish we explored, or what guests do you think would be great additions to the show? I so value the connections I've made since starting this show, and I want to honour what YOU as listeners want to hear from this show as much as I can for 2019.

Until then - I hope you enjoy this solo episode and time with your families for the holiday season. I know it can get stressful and busy (coming from a mum who's daughter was born on Christmas Day), but always remember that you can slow down, say no to parties or events that don't really feed your soul in any meaningful way, and focus your time on the people you really want to celebrate life with, whoever that community may be!

I first met this week's guest, Kalyn Fantasia, at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend (shoutout to Sarah Van Den Berg!). The theme of the party was "Identities," so we spent much of the evening moving from a group of relative strangers to friends that shared thoughts about their identities from the depths of their hearts.

When Kalyn shared her stories and experiences (all while kneading dough to make fresh gnocchi), I was immediately impressed by her strong connection to her history and cultures, and the ways she negotiated these while having many intolerances and allergies - and thankfully, she was happy to share these stories with you this week! Born and raised in Toronto, she is a multi-hyphenated artist/manager (depending on what day you ask her!) and she is an artist manager for local Canadian bands, as well as a photographer, amateur painter, and homemade foodie.

As a long time allergy kid with a growing list of food intolerances, Kalyn had always had a strong connection to the food she ate and a stronger understanding of the effects of food on her body. She spends at least 3 hours a day in the kitchen and finds pleasure in putting in the work to create comforting meals she can eat without worry. She's been recently exploring the ways in which family history, food, and identity are related, and how these interconnect with modern food and modern food intolerances. This conversation reflects her passions and interest in exploring all of these interconnections, and it felt like such a privilege to interview Kalyn about this.

With the holidays comes many social gatherings that are often centred around food. For some this may be filled with joy, but for others, this may cause a lot of stress and anxiety around eating or body image. That's why this week, I'm speaking with Dr. Andrea LaMarre on eating disorder recovery and health ay any size. Based out of Guelph, Ontario, Andrea is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo. She recently earned her PhD at the University of Guelph, where she studied eating disorder recovery from the perspectives of people in recovery and their supporters.

In this episode we speak about experiences of eating disorders and recovery, and Andrea breaks down some of the common assumptions surrounding these experiences – about what an eating disorder looks like conventionally, what bodies and experiences are legitimized and which are often left out, and ways in which researchers like her are challenging the social, cultural, and psychological barriers to accessing recovery. She's doing incredibly important work with thoughtful and engaging approaches for communities, and I think it's important to speak more to the diverse ways disordered eating can manifest in our lives and bodies - particularly during times of the year where we have less control or agency over what we eat.

Listen to the episode in the player above, or download on any major platform!

Get Social with Andrea:

Twitter: @andrealala

Instagram: @andrealamarre

Website: www.andrealamarre.com 

Some of the many folks whose work has inspired Andrea: 

People who do work on dismantling body oppression:

Deb Burgard: http://www.bodypositive.com/

Desirée Adaway: http://desireeadaway.com/

Sonya Renée Taylor: https://www.sonyareneetaylor.com/

Virgie Tovar: https://www.virgietovar.com/

Be Nourished: https://benourished.org/

Nalgona Positivity Pride: https://www.nalgonapositivitypride.com/

Marcella Raimondo: http://www.marcellaedtraining.com/

Carmen Cool: http://www.carmencool.com/

Karin Hitselberger: https://themighty.com/u/karin-hitselberger/

Corbett O'Toole: https://www.corbettotoole.com/

Kaley Roosen: https://twitter.com/kaleyroosen?lang=en

Carla Rice: http://www.carlarice.ca/

Cocimientos: http://nedic.ca/provider/9895-cocimientos

Some eating disorder scholars who inspire me:

Rebecca Lester: https://artsci.wustl.edu/faculty-staff/rebecca-lester

Helen Malson: https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/HelenMalson

Karin Eli: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/people/540

Paula Saukko: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/paula-saukko/

As someone who researches water quality and health outside of this podcast, I've been wanting to explore the connections between water and food on AnthroDish for quite some time. This week we're finally diving into this theme (heh…sorry) with Andrew Lewin, a marine ecologist and the founder of the website and podcast Speak Up For Blue. A self proclaimed oceanpreneur, Andrew helps people become more aware of issues facing the ocean and helps guide them to make more environmentally and ocean-conscious choices. As the CEO of Speak up for Blue media and communications, he is building a network of podcasts on marine science and conservation.

In this interview, we explore the ways that climate change and ocean health interact with human fishing economies and vice versa. We break down what exactly a seafood tax deficit is and what it means for local marine systems, the impact of the Trump administration on marine system health in America, and explore the important emerging issue of seafood fraud and what that means for fish consumers. Andrew is great at breaking down the complex ways that politics and biology interact in fishing economies - this is certainly something I found daunting at first, but he does a wonderful job explaining these ideas in engaging ways.

Resources:

Documentaries (Available on Netflix!):

• End of the Line
• Blackfish
• The Cove
• Mission Blue

News:

• Deep Sea News: http://www.deepseanews.com/
• Southern Fried Science: http://www.southernfriedscience.com

Get Social with Andrew!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/speakupforblue 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speakupforblue/ 
SUFB Podcast: http://www.speakupforblue.com/podcast 
Email: andrew@speakupforblue.com

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

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

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!

I'll admit, I had a hard time capturing the conversation I had with this week's guest in one simple title - I'd argue none could do this justice! I'm speaking with Ashley Wood on today's show, the host of Manifest This! podcast and international Akashic Records reader. Ashley Wood is a healer, spiritual teacher, intuitive guide, and mother dedicated to empowering women to live their best life. She is passionate about vegan living, yoga, animals, and the outdoors. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada, with her husband Ben and daughter Ivy, and cats Bose and Feesh. Together, they create and produce Manifest This! and own Lot 49 Dairy Free Foods.

I first came across Ashley online when a friend recommend checking out her vegan food blog, and I instantly fell in love with the joy and peaceful nature within each recipe post - she provided a lot of inspiration during the two very snowy Winnipeg winters I made it through! Since then, Ashley has gone on to become an amazing mother and an internationally-recognized podcast host and Akashic Records reader. This gradual shift made so much sense, given that Ashley radiates a kindness and wisdom that comes through even during an inter-province Skype call!

We speak in this episode about her journey through life and the ways that her vegan lifestyle has influenced and interacted with different periods of growth from her: from the reasons she became a vegan and longtime connection to nature, to her early food blogging days to the creation of her podcast and shift in focus to something that aligned more with her own spiritual goals and passions. This interview paints a beautiful audio-portrait of a woman who's honesty and grounded nature has inspired thousands of women internationally to explore their spiritual side a bit more, and it was such an honour to speak with her on topics we both feel so passionately about!

Learn More About Ashley!

• Manifest This! podcast: https://manifestthisshow.com/

• Akashic Records Readings: https://ashleywood.life/

• Instagram: @_ashleywood

• Email: hello@ashleywood.life

Books Ashley Mentioned:

• Eat, Feel Fresh by Sahara Rose

• Veganomincon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz 

Get Social with AnthroDish: 

Instagram, Facebook: @anthrodishpodcast

Twitter: @anthrodishpod

Website: anthrodish.com 

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

The idea of fish industry tends to feel big, vague, and hyper-masculine – it's easy to think of tales of fisherman and ideals of masculinity. But as my guest this week shares, there are so many complexities to how gender, fishing, and identities intersect. 

My guest this week is Dr. María L. Cruz Torres. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University and a cultural anthropologist whose areas of teaching and research include: political ecology; impact of globalization upon local communities and households; gender and work; sustainability and the environment; migration; food systems; and the environmental and social aspects of natural resource management. Her research has always combined a mixed methods approach of qualitative ethnography, ecological analysis, archival research, and household surveys.

She speaks today about the "shrimp ladies" in southern Sinaloa, Mexico, who are locally known as changueras. Through her new book Pink Gold: Women, Shrimp, and Work in Mexico, María describes how women shrimp vendors sell seafood in open-air markets that form an extralegal but key part of the local economy built around this "pink gold." She shares the stories of how the women struggled and evolved from marginalized peddlers to local icons depicted in popular culture, and how their roles in Sinaloa and Mazatlan offer fresh insights into gender and labour, street economies, and commodities as culturally valuable experiences.

Learn More About María: 

• Website: https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/maria-cruz-torres/ 
• Book: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477328026/

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/

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

As both a mother and anthropology student, I've been so fascinated by how food and pregnancy connect - and stoked to finally share a discussion on this topic! This week I'm speaking with Lindsay Grenier, a research assistant at McMaster University.

Lindsay did her Masters research as part of the Mothers2Babies study, which is a long term maternal nutritional health study through McMaster University. She currently works as a research assistant at McMaster, where she focuses on maternal health and nutrition. Her research interests revolve around women's health and social issues, particularly during pregnancy, along with health literacy, knowledge translation, and social determinants of health.

In this interview, we discuss food guidelines and taboos for pregnant people in Canada, and explore the ways in which social and biological factors shape access to nutritional knowledge during pregnancy. Knowledge translation is a big priority for a lot of academics in recent years, so we break down what this term means for prenatal health and nutrition research, and how cultural belief systems impact the attitudes and behaviours surrounding food consumption and avoidance during pregnancy.

Resources:

Mothers To Babies Study info:

• http://m2bstudy.wix.com/study

• https://www.facebook.com/M2BStudy/

Canada Food Guide/Pregnancy nutrition resources:

• https://www.facebook.com/HealthyFamiliesHamilton/

• https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/healthy-eating/prenatal-nutrition.html

• https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/canada-food-guide/choosing-foods/advice-different-ages-stages/pregnancy-breastfeeding.html

• https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/healthy-eating/prenatal-nutrition/healthy-weight-gain-pregnancy.html

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/

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. 

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 

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

This week I had the great fortune to discuss feminism and farming with Trina Moyles! 

Trina is an award winning freelance writer, journalist, and author with a passion for telling stories about social justice and environmental issues. Her first book, Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World (University of Regina Press) was released in early March 2018. The book is receiving critical praise from authors, scholars, and publications, including Raj Patel (author of Stuffed and Starved) who calls the book "haunting, powerful, and important".

Her journalism and narrative non-fiction work have been published extensively in newspapers, magazines, and online platforms, including The Globe and Mail, Alberta Views, Maisonneuve, Swerve, Vela Magazine, Motherboard, Briarpatch Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Vue Weekly, GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine, Modern Farmer, Yes! Magazine, Permaculture Magazine, and Narratively.

Over the past ten years, Moyles has worked intimately with rural organizations and communities in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Canada, and East Africa on human rights and grassroots development projects. With an academic background in Cultural Anthropology and International Development, she focuses much of her research and writing on human rights education, food security, sustainable agriculture, and gender equality.

In this interview, we explore the ways in which feminism and farming intersect, and the research that inspired her book. Trina discusses what it means to be a farmer - particularly who has or hasn't been traditionally viewed as a farmer in different cultural contexts. We speak about the varied ways in which feminism has shaped farming in day to day life for women, and the ways resiliency may help shape the future of farming with increasing threats of climate change across the world. It's a truly fascinating interview with an inspiring and passionate writer! 

Want to learn more about Trina and her book? Check the links below! 

Personal website: www.trinamoyles.com  
Book website: www.womenwhodig.com 
Facebook: @trinamoyles
Instagram: @womenwhodig
Twitter: @trinamoyles

This week we're doubling up on AnthroDish episodes! We've been so fortunate to have a tremendous interest in guests and themes, and really didn't think it would be fair to keep these to ourselves for too long! 

This week's second episode features the inimitable Dino Tinapay, a self-taught expert of Toronto's food scene and my go-to pal when I need a new restaurant recommendation. Dino sat down with me in my kitchen one evening to share his experiences dining solo and his tips and tricks to see cities through food.

We explore his early food influences growing up in the Philippines and how that shaped his food curiosity, then move into the ways in which atmosphere and time of day can shape solo food experiences. As Dino has worked in the restaurant industry for some time, we naturally move towards exploring how 9 to 5ers have shaped food culture in big cities (spoiler - there are some really fascinating ways this has shaped our culture!), how servers read table dynamics, and Dino's tips for getting to know new cities through food. Dino is such a fun and insightful guest, I can't wait for you to check out this interview!

Check out the trailer for Food Wars here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt_y5OofQwc

Check out the NY Times piece that inspired this conversation here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/travel/solo-eating-in-paris.html

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/

Health, nutrition, and food are spaces that can be fraught with harmful and perpetual misconceptions of the body, to the point where many people of the global majority may not always feel safe or heard. My guest this week, Patrilie Hernandez, is someone who works to create more weight-inclusive and nutritionally holistic practices at the forefront of these spaces.

Patrilie (they/she) has over 14 years of professional experience working in the health and nutrition sector as an educator, advocate, project manager, and policy analyst. They combine their academic background in culinary arts, anthropology, nutrition and health with lived experience a sa large-bodied, neuroatypical, queer, multiracial femme of the Puerto Rican diaspore to disrupt the status quo of the local nutrition and wellness community, where they advocate for a weight-inclusive paradigm centring on the social determinants of health. Patrilile is the founder of Embody Lib and partners with nutrition, medical, health, and wellness providers to integrate weight-inclusive strategies that can help improve the health and wellbeing of historically marginalized communities.

In today's conversation, we explore how her exceptional background informs her multi-dimensional approach to nutrition and food, unpack colonial and white supremacist lenses that have long-informed nutritional and food spheres while still looking at the value of science and health, and how their Embody Lib work platform helps people of the global majority reclaim their health and wellbeing.

Learn More About Patrilie!

• Website: https://www.embodylib.com/
• The Body Liberation Learning Platform
• Follow Patrilie on Instagram: @the_bodylib_advocate

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

Today I am interviewing Brian Rankin, a professional photographer and "ex-punk" living in Toronto, Canada. He currently works as a photographer for Holt Renfrew, and his work was recently featured in an editorial for Yoko Mag, entitled "Tangled Up In Blue." He grew up in a small town in Ontario and spent his summers out east in an even smaller town. When he's not doing cool photography work, he's playing guitar in a punk band or riding his bike without a helmet. Today we sit down and talk about his personal experiences with food, how his upbringing *sort of* shaped his art and cooking, and what it's like to be a photographer during the ride of social media food photos.  Love Brian as much as I do? Check him out here:

@brianrankin, brianrankin.ca and his band at: roachlord.bandcamp.com

Today's guest is the inspiring Syd Boyes. Syd is currently the Sport Development Coordinator for RowOntario and is a former professional rower for Canada. In 2011, Syd made the under 23 Canadian rowing team (lightweight women's double) and in 2016 she made the senior team that went on to compete at the World Championships. Throughout her rowing career, she has faced good and bad years making weight categories, which lead her to develop a complicated relationship with food and her body. Since quitting rowing, she has become an amazing advocate for women in sports. Today we talk all about nutritional demands of high performance athleticism, body image and food restriction issues arising from weight categories in rowing, and self-love and recovery tactics for young athletes struggling with these issues.

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 I interview the lovely Rylee Booroff. Currently living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Rylee has has been following a vegan lifestyle for just over 8 years. Prior to moving out east, Rylee managed a vegan restaurant in Toronto. Today we talk about her experiences as a vegan and it's lasting impact on her life and wellbeing, explore whether or not veganism's popularity is lasting or trendy for North Americans, and new movements in the Halifax plant-based scene.

The articles mentioned in the show are linked here: 

https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2018/03/13/canadians-under-35-three-times-more-likely-than-older-generations-to-be-vegans-or-vegetarians-survey-finds.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/antler-protests-1.4611851

http://canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cfs/article/view/233

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

For the FIRST interview on AnthroDish, I sit down with my old friend Michael Duguay and talk about food, music, and the spiritual and creative similarities between the two practices. He shares his experiences with addiction and recovery, and how these have respectively influenced his relationship with food. At the time this interview was taped, we had just heard about the passing of Anthony Bourdain earlier that morning, and so we speak to his legacy and the ways in which a meal can become a ritual or sacrament, creating a context and memory. At one point in the interview, Michael says that when he writes a song, it's the result of every song he's ever listened to, and I think the same could be said about his life.

Check out the latest updates on his music on his Facebook page, @michaelcduguaymusic. The podcast he mentioned, Muses and Stuff, can be found here: https://musesandstuff.ptbopodcasters.ca/

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

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/

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 20th 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/ 

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/

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 9th 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/ 

What happens when two food scientists get bored in a pandemic? It turns out, they start to brainstorm how they would feed a colony of humans on Mars. What might seem like a trivial question is actually a more nuanced exploration of how we can sustain ourselves on Mars, and what we can learn from this thought experiment back on Earth, too.

My guests this week are Drs. Evan Fraser and Lenore Newman, two food scientists that started a series of conversations to pass the time during lockdowns, which then turned into something much more important. Dr. Evan Fraser is the director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, and Dr. Lenore Newman is the Canada Reseach Chair in Food Security and the Environment at University of the Fraser Valley. They developed the series of conversations into their book, Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet, and Transform Agriculture on Earth. Using leading-edge agricultural technology, the answers to their questions are weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting – like lab-grown chicken breast or cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast! Evan and Lenore structure their book through online conversation, and show how setting the table off-planet can allow for thinking about how to supercharge efforts to produce sustainably here at home as well. 

Learn More About Evan and Lenore:

• Book: Dinner on Mars
• Social Media: Evan (@feeding9billion on X, @arrellfoodinstitute on IG), Lenore (@DrLenoreNewman on X)
• Evan's University Website: https://geg.uoguelph.ca/faculty/fraser-evan  
• Lenore's University Website: https://www.ufv.ca/food-agriculture-institute/meet-the-team/lenore-newman.html
• Conversation Canada Article on Dinner on Mars

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

Here in Ontario, we're just hitting the warmer spring weather after a grey and cloudy winter, and anyone living up north can attest to the amount of daydreaming we do about our future and past summer plans. During that daydreaming, memory and nostalgia can play a significant role in establishing an ideal summer, with tastes, scents and flavour playing powerful roles in thinking about what foods were prepared and shared. During the summer, the simple and mouth-watering foods tend to satisfy better than during a blustery snowstorm — but how can one capture the ritual and ceremony of joy and make it last throughout the year?

My guest today is Katie Laliberté, who is here to share the nostalgic and delicious experience that informed the forthcoming Heydays at the June Motel: Beach Town Classics, which is co-authored by Freddy Laliberte, Evan Baulch, and Emma Bulch. Katie helped to open Heydays Restaurant in Sauble Beach in 2020, after many years of supporting restaurants in Toronto. She is a writer and sometimes book-seller and is currently working on a restaurant romance novel as well.

 Today, Katie explores the pandemic landscape origins of Heydays Restaurant through its ongoing partnership with The June Motel, how her Connecticut roots informed the unique coastal comfort food cuisine within the cookbook, and how the restaurant and book serve as an invitation to take the beach home with you, to create summer memories to last a lifetime.

Learn More about Katie!

• Buy the Heydays Cookbook

• Instagram: @heydaysrestaurant

• Website: https://heydays.thejunemotel.com/