Future of Food - Let's Eat Better for Ourselves and the Planet

Season Three of The Future of Food examined how restaurants can survive during pandemic times. We looked for answers in many ways. Lee Schneider interviewed Sean Lynch, who set up a listing service for restaurants that were doing takeout and deliver. He spoke with Grace Guber about her experiences as a server and with Lex Gopnix-Lewinski about what it was like to own a restaurant in the last year. Creg Fielding, CEO of Fusionware, threw some light on how the supply chain works and how it failed during the pandemic. Brian Wang brought his perspective as a science writer and Atul Sood discussed how ghost kitchens may be the future of some restaurant experiences.

Ghost kitchens have been helping out many a restaurant during the pandemic. These are kitchens — often without a storefront or public face — that make the food you’re taking out from your favorite restaurant. Atul Sood is the Chief Business Officer at Kitchen United, a venture-backed startup that is deploying “ghost kitchens” to help restaurant brands serve their customers without necessarily having a storefront or physical restaurant. He knows his way around food delivery partnerships: He was the Director of Business Development for McDonald’s Global Digital organization. Some ghost kitchens have names you know — they’re the outsourced takeout division of your neighborhood place. Others exist only as ghost kitchens — they are not attached to a physical restaurant at all. Ghost kitchens were around before the pandemic and they will be around afterward. Just as chefs used to try out their ideas in food trucks that went from neighborhood to neighborhood, restauranteurs with experience and those new to the game are using ghost kitchens to test their culinary ideas on the public. It could be that your favorite restaurant of the future may not have a physical location that you can visit. It will be an entirely take-out experience.

Brian Wang joins Lee Schneider on the show today. Brian is a Co-Founder, futurist thought leader and a popular science blogger with one million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

How old is that potato? It's a question every restaurant has to answer. And when you shop for groceries, have you ever wondered if what you put in your cart is really fresh? These are supply chain questions that Creg Fielding can answer. He’s the founder and owner of Fusionware, a platform designed manage supply chains for food growers, packers, and shippers.

For the next few episodes, we're going to get into tech solutions for the crisis facing restaurants during pandemic times. Restaurants are more than a place to eat. They become cultural institutions, enhancing the value of the neighborhood. They will have to adapt to the changes the pandemic brings. Today's guests are a deli owner and a tech guy who loves restaurants. Augie's Authentic Montreal Deli Numa

Restaurants are the soul of a neighborhood. That makes the news hard to hear that this week we've had another order to close restaurants here in Los Angeles. Some owners decided that it’s just not worth it. They shut their doors. Maybe for good. Our guest for this episode is Grace Guber, host and producer of The Family Meal podcast, She shares per perspective about working in the restaurant business during the pandemic and suggests some ideas about what the future of restaurants might be.

Sean Lynch is a co-creator of Dining at a Distance, a platform that helps you find a restaurant you can order out from or contact online for pickup. It started in Chicago and spread quickly worldwide in response to the need for a simple, integrated hub listing restaurants that can feed you during the pandemic crisis. Future of Food Season 3 is looking at the challenges faced by restaurants in pandemic times. We'll be speaking with chefs, entrepreneurs, and foodies who are seeking the way forward in the restaurant business. Hosted and produced by Lee Schneider. Future of Food is part of the FutureX Network. Show notes and more at futurex.fm. Visit our website at futurefood.fm. Learn more about Dining at a Distance at diningatadistance.com.

Rebecca Webster is a member of the Oneida Nation. Along with her husband and two teenaged daughters, she farms 10 acres of land and has helped members of her tribal community reconnect with their past. The philosophy behind her work is that every time an indigenous person plants a seed, it is an act of resistance and an assertion of sovereignty.

Ivy Joeva interviews Scott Jurek, an elite ultramarathoner who eats for the win with a plant-based diet. Scott has won nearly all of ultrarunning's top trail and road events. He won the Western States 100-mile Endurance Run a record seven straight times. In 2015, he set the Appalachian Trail speed record, averaging nearly 50 miles a day over 46 days. He credits being a vegan with giving him these seemingly super-human powers of strength and endurance. Scott is the author of two books, Eat and Run and North.

When Molly and Melissa opened their restaurant Palette Food and Juice in Los Angeles, they knew they would source all their ingredients locally and offer a plant-based menu. Everything would be organic. They made the kind of food they wanted to eat, and found that locals liked it too. They took action on those words we hear so often: Buy local and eat a plant-based diet. During the pandemic, Palette Foods is offering online ordering and curbside pickup and delivery. Ivy Joeva interviewed Molly and Melissa outdoors at the restaurant, before the first lockdown in Los Angeles. Links: http://palettefoodandjuice.com http://futurefood.fm https://www.futurex.fm/future-of-food

Scientists have established that large-scale farming is one of the causes of climate change. Do you think that some of the forces behind big ag would want to hide the truth about their damage to the environment? As a matter of fact, that's just what they're doing. In this episode, Georgina Gustin a Washington-based reporter for Inside Climate News who has covered food policy, farming, and the environment for more than a decade, discusses who is behind this spread of misinformation, where you can find trusted sources of information about food and the climate crisis, and how you can create change for the better. Listen to The Future of Food on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, at FutureX, or the Future of Food website.

Tim is also a senior researcher fellow at Tufts University's Global Development and Environmental Institute and an advisor at the Small Planet Institute, where he previously directed its Land and Food Rights Program. We’ve long wanted to do an episode at Future of Food about where to get good information about food and the climate crisis. We’ve wanted to identify which organizations might be giving us misleading information about food and climate. My interview with Tim is a first step toward understanding who controls what you know about the food you eat. Buy his book Eating Tomorrow.

In an interview recorded in a studio before the pandemic, Kaitlin Mogentale tells host Ivy Joeva of the journey that led to create a food company that transforms upcycled ingredients — the overlooked, nutritional byproducts of fruit and vegetable processing — into wholesome, better for people and better for the planet, pantry staples: Pulp chips. Waste Less, Thrive More, is the company motto, because Pulp Pantry believes that a thriving humanity depends on a thriving, healthy planet. Learn more at http://pulppantry.com

How can we support our immune health despite toxicity in our environment, especially in the context of a global pandemic? How are our systems of food production contributing to the destruction of ecosystems worldwide, and giving rise to disease outbreaks like the one we’ve seen with Covid-19? We had the privilege to "sit down" online with Zach Bush MD, to ask these questions, and get his insights on everything from the top anti-inflammatory foods, to how the air you breathe affects your microbiome. Zach Bush MD is a renowned, multi-disciplinary physician of internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care and internationally recognized educator on the microbiome as it relates to human health. www.zachbushmd.com

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned scholar and tireless crusader for economic, food, and gender justice. Dr. Shiva was trained as a physicist, and later shifted her focus to interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology which was dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times in close partnership with local communities and social movements. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, and to promote organic farming and fair trade. In 2004, in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K., she started Bija Vidyapeeth (Earth University), an international college for sustainable living in the Doon Valley in Northern India. Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia. Forbes magazine in November 2010 identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Among her many awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, the UN’s Global 500 Roll of Honour, and The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity in 2016. Navdanya promotes a new agricultural and economic paradigm, a culture of food for health where ecological responsibility and economic justice take precedence over today’s consumer and profit based extractive food production systems. The promotion of biodiversity-based agroecology for economic security and the mitigation of climate change, together with seed and food sovereignty are central to Navdanya’s vision of an Earth Democracy.

LINKS AND RESOURCES Loretta Allison https://www.lorettaallison.com/ Loretta Allison on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/spadeandseeds/ Fig Earth Supply https://www.figearthsupply.com/

Future of Food is part of the FutureX Podcast Network. Show transcripts, articles, and more at the Future of Food website. On the Kiss the Ground website you’ll find a resource called Find Your Path. It will help you see a path forward to activism. Try it! Resources Mentioned in this Epiode Ryland Englehart on Instagram @lovebeingryland @cafegratitude Make Soil Spy Community Garden Kiss the Ground Purchasing Guide Here is an intro to regenerative agriculture and ways to make your garden regenerative .

What if you had an opportunity for meaningful change each time you sit down to eat? In the ten new episodes for Season 2 of Future of Food, Ivy Joeva interviews activists and innovators who show us that at every meal we have the opportunity to wake up to the impact our diet has on the environment, as well as understand how our environment affects our physical health and well being. Why? The same foods that support healing the planet are also the supportive of our health, vitality and fertility. And the foods that are most costly to the environment, and contribute most to climate change, are also most taxing on our health. It's a cycle of food and life. But there's so much disinformation out there about climate change it's hard to know what to believe. This podcast is here to help -- answering your questions about the climate crisis and food. Find us wherever you get your podcasts and put the power to save the planet on your playlist.

Seaweed first made it on the menu as part of a macrobiotic diet, and was popularized by grocers like Erewhon. That was back in the 1960s, and since then, chefs have caught on, moving seaweed from a mere condiment to the center of the plate. Seaweed can be wild harvested, as they do at Maine Coast Sea Vegetables, farmed in the ocean, as they do at Sea Greens Farms and Greenwave, or farmecd in tanks on land, as they do at Monterey Bay Seaweeds. There are a lot or enviornmental and social positives about seaweed. It restores the ocean, and farming it can provide jobs. Get show notes and a show transcript at futurefood.fm. Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss an episode. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Making edible protein consumes resources. Not only is the world population growing — the United Nations predicts there will be nine billion people on Earth by 2050 — but rising income levels mean that more people can afford meat. When the demand for protein exceeds the plant's carrying capacity, there will be an environmental crash and people will go hungry. This reasoning is a driver of the "why eat crickets" argument. Our demands for protein cannot exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity. or we are done. You might say the pathway to survival involves choosing one of two human engineering projects. Crickets provide protein efficiently, and they also might provide health benefits by providing probiotic fiber. There's a massive shift in health and nutrition science going on, a deepening understanding how the gut biome enhances overall human health. there's evidence that diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers start in the gut biome. Will that convince you to eat crickets? Cricket protein might help fight diabetes by regulating glucose. Jarrod Goldin, a co-founder of Entomo Farms, cites evidence of the health benefits of cricket protein. He also cites a story from South Korea that suggests that hospital patients who ate food fortified with cricket protein got better, faster. Andrew Brentano, a co-founder of Tiny Farms, also interviewed in the podcast, talks about the market for cricket protein expanding from humans to dogs and cats. In engineering, water and energy savings are the easy calculations. It's the human engineering that is hard. What will it take for you to eat a cricket even if it is unrecognizable as a bug and supplied as a powder? Get a transcript and sign up for our mailing list at http://futurefood.fm