AnthroDish

News media at large is in a challenging position this year: we’ve seen mass layoffs across digital media, local news, TV, print, even podcasts and documentaries. There’s shifts in audiences, loss of journalist jobs, and shaky foundations of social media platforms like Twitter and Substack that make even the strongest bylines at risk of being swallowed up. As a public, that means how we consume and analyze media changes too. Here on AnthroDish and across food media platforms, food is a jumping off tool that can offer alternative avenues to navigate complex sociocultural and political issues. My guest today is Hanna Raskin, founder of The Food Section, who is here to explore how her newsletter is creating a nuanced space for food media coverage across the American South. One of the leading voices for high-quality local food journalism, Hanna has received widespread recognition for her writing and reporting. She previously worked as a food editor and chief critic for The Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, which earned her the James Beard Foundation’s inaugural Local Impact Journalism Award. Since then, she founded The Food Section in 2021 as a twice-weekly Substack newsletter, and subsequently moved it onto its own independent platform in 2024. The Food Section has been named one of the best newsletters in the country by several prestigious industry organizations. Hanna sits down with me today to share her experiences building The Food Section after transitioning away from newspaper reporting, what the dimensions of local food journalism can offer that other beats cannot, and how to navigate the concept of rigour in a food media world that can otherwise easily swing from buzzy big media to surface level content creator coverage. Learn More About Hannah: The Food Section Website@hanna_raskin@hanna_raskinThe Food Section group

You may be familiar with the Greek island of Ikaria through the popularity of “Blue Zones” and the idea that these regions of the world can provide insights into living longer, healthier lives. Yet as with most trends around diet and health, there is so much unspoken about the nuances of what an Ikarian lifestyle and diet entails, and the cultural relationships that Ikarians have with their food and communities. My guest today is Diane Kochilas, who is here to share her insights on these relationships with food through her new cookbook, The Ikaria Way. Diane has been at the forefront of bringing healthy, delicious Greek and Mediterranean cuisine to a wide international audience for over 25 years. She is the host and co-executive producer of the award-winning PBS show, My Greek Table, and she runs the Glorious Greek Cooking school on her native island Ikaria. She’s released 18 cookbooks on Greek cuisine, and has consulted with American universties to bring healthy Greek foods to their dining programs. Today, Diane unpacks what it means to live and eat in the spirit of the Ikarians, discusses the differences between food preparation and preservation in Greece compared to other Mediterranean cultures, and unpacks how the anxiety and disconnection between North Americans and their food has shaped how we think about cooking and eating, and how she navigates these perspectives through her recipes. Learn More About Diane: Cookbook: The Ikaria Way Website: https://www.dianekochilas.com/ Diane Kochilas on YouTube

Thinking about “typical” types of veganism can reveal a lot of fascinating Western stereotypes or biases around what it does and doesn’t entail. And yet so many cultural cuisines from around the world are rooted in plant-based meals that have been passed down through generations to shape contemporary ethnic cuisines. So what happens when someone adopts a vegan diet and lifestyle, in terms of navigating heritage, identity, and family connection? My guest this week is popular recipe developer and creator Remy Park from Veggiekins, who is here to explore these themes and discuss her beautiful debut cookbook, Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore. Originally from New York/New Jersey area with an international upbringing, she shares vibrant plant-based recipes that take inspiration from her three cultures: Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese, and all the countries she’s lived in. Remy is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher as well as a holistic nutritionist. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Shape Magazine, British Vogue, BuzzFeed, Elle Vietnam, CBS News, and ABC News. Within the cookbook, Remy’s personal wellness journey is woven throughout her accessible plant-based takes on international and Asian-ish dishes. In our conversation today, we explore the traditional flavours and diets of her Asian cultures, and how the book formed a love letter to Remy’s family heritage, how she navigates food as communication across American and Asian understandings of snacks and salads, and the power of language in recipe development when healing from eating disorder experiences. Learn More About Remy: Veggiekins Website: https://veggiekinsblog.com/ Seasame, Soy, Spice Cookbook@veggiekinsYouTubeTikTok: @veggiekins

One of the pitfalls in sustainability movements is this assumption that we’re all working from an equal playing field, when the reality is that oftentimes we don’t have the home space or the time to grow our own food. What we don’t always ask is whether we can make the comproimses that allow us to meet those desires to grow our own food without the high demands often required of it conventionally. My guest this week is Natalie Paterson, who has brought together her Indigenous cultural background and her scientific training to explore what we can do with microgreens. Growing up in New Zealand, Natalie was inspired by her Māori upbringing to explore the value of growing your own food. Natalie completed a BSci in nutritional biochemistry and an MS in food science at Chapman University in Orange County, California. Natalie pursued food science (the study of food from farm to fork), as she recognizes that food is intrinsic within every facet of life, thereby holding the power to promote health while preventing and curing disease. Natalie speaks on her previous experience bringing scientific expertise to the market, identifying through her move to London, England, that there is often no connection between food, people, and nutrition. With the demand for at-home fresh vegetables persisting regardless of one’s location, Natalie speaks today on the ways that indoor hydroponic smart gardens can help make people’s cooking more simple, nutritious, and sustainable. Learn more about Natalie: Instagram: @natalie.s.paterson

If you’ve been a regular listener to this podcast, you know that food is central to all of our discussions around identity, culture, belonging, and sense of place. My guest today is someone who excels at bringing these relationships to life through her YouTube channel, and speaks to the layers of personal experience she has had growing up and living across multiple countries and cultures. Maggie Leandre is here today, who is the host and producer of CharisMaggie on YouTube. CharisMaggie content showcases countries and cultures through lived experience. Maggie’s cultural background is Guyanese, Haitian, and Jamaican, and she uses her YouTube platform to share her journey of learning about her roots while unlearning biases and stereotypes that society portrays about different cultural groups and countries. Through her visually stunning videos, she explores cultural histories, creole languages, and ethnic cuisine. Today, we’re speaking about how she structures her video content to position food as a learning tool for diverse cultural cuisines and languages, and she shares some of the stories about her brilliant Kitchens of Toronto series on her YouTube channel. Season 2 just dropped a couple of weeks ago so be sure to check that out after this interview, too! Follow and Watch Maggie's Work! Watch Kitchens of Toronto Season 2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqCE4W95vsFq9QsD-7dbtw4XjsNW_ctP1 CharisMaggie on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CharisMaggieTV Instagram: @charismaggietvThreads: @charismaggietvWebsite: https://www.charismaggietv.com/

When I think of a quintessentially Torontonian food experience, I tend to think of The Depanneur. Founded in 2011, The Depanneur was a tiny old corner store that transformed into a place where interesting food things happen, featuring hundreds of talented cooks and home chefs serving thousands of eclectic meals through unique Drop-In Dinners, cooking classes, table talks, and supper clubs. It was also the birthplace of Newcomer Kitchen, a non-profit social enterprise that helped create social and economic opportunities for Syrian refugee women through food-based projects. Today on the show is the founder of The Depp, Len Senater, who speaks to the way he created space in Toronto’s increasingly gentrified hospitality world to maintain experimental approaches about food’s role in building community and celebrating diversity. He shares the story behind his recently launched cookbook, The Depanneur Cookbook, which launched as a Kickstarter campaign in November 2020. Equal parts documentary, manifesto, and cookbook, the book features delicious food, poignant stories, and beautiful photography by Ksenija Hotic. More than just a collection of authentic home cooking from around the world, it is the only cookbook that truly captures the incredible culinary diversity of Toronto. Learn More About Len: By The Depanneur Cookbook : https://thedepanneur.ca/home/the-depanneur-cookbook/ The Depanneur WebsiteFacebook: The DepanneurInstagram: @thedepanneur

Anytime I get to talk about water and seafood on this show feels like a really special week for me, as I have spent most of my life thinking about how we connect with or form relationships around water. My guest, Dr. Jayson M. Porter, this week takes a really nuanced approach to this through a recent article he wrote called Fish Hacks for Distillations, which is a magazine and podcast that covers science’s historical impact on culture and society. In his article, he looks at a fish called porgy, which has often been dismissed as a “trash fish” but holds an important anchor in Black maritime culture in America. Jayson is an environmental writer and historian at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Institute at Brown of Environment and Society. His research specializes in environmental politics, science and technology studies, food systems, and racial ecologies in Mexico and the Americas. He is also an editorial board member of the North American Congress for Latin America (NACLA) and Plant Perspectives: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Outside of academia, he loves to connect with other black environmental educators, write creative non-fiction stories, and design environmental-literacy curricula for broader audiences of all ages. In today’s episode, he shares some of the stories and lenses he brought to writing this article, how he wove his family’s personal histories through his Poppy’s fish hacking with the broader ecology of ocean landscapes, Black-operated fisheries, and explores the nuances (and limits) of scientific and historic knowledges that can shape the questions we ask about our individual and collective pasts. Learn More About Jayson: Read the Fish Hacks article in Distillations: https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/fish-hacks/Twitter: @jaysonmauriceporter

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: Misunderstood VegetablesBecky’s WebsitePodcast: Field to ForkIG: @beckyselengutThreads: @beckyselengut

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 ReductionMoms Stop the HarmDrug Data DecodedDULF Compassion Club and Safe Supply Access

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/

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@the_bodylib_advocate

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 20 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: @rubenboilsoctopusNai IG: @naitapasWebsite: 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 9 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@feeding9billion, @arrellfoodinstitute on IG), Lenore (@DrLenoreNewman on X)https://geg.uoguelph.ca/faculty/fraser-evan 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! https://ceresproductions.ca/ReframeablesA Different Kind of Comfort Food:https://ko-fi.com/s/9f96d0a310 https://nataliedavey.substack.com/@reframeables

Alcohol has been navigating a new social landscape in America and Canada since COVID hit. While there were signs that alcohol consumption was rising with lockdowns, there’s also been more spaces for conversation around the use of alcohol as a drug, or trickier relationships with drinking and binge drinking, amidst a backdrop of the drug use crisis that is sweeping across families of all types with changes in drug supply and challenges with cost of living. It is a lot to navigate, so I brought back my favourite beer and diversity expert to talk through it, Ren Navarro. Ren runs B.Diversity Group, and is certified by some of the world’s largest alcohol programs, including Prud’homme, WSET, Cicerone, and AFicioNAdo (an alcohol free certification). She has appeared on national television talking about the historical aspects and new trends in alcohol, and the benefits of stronger communities. In 2018, Ren created Beer. Diversity., a company and advocacy group whose focus was for folks to be able to have open conversations, one beer at a time. With the evolution of this company into non-alcoholic spheres, she introduced B.Diversity in early 2023. This amalgamation aims to create safer spaces in which to have more open and honest conversations to support and create meaningful change in a multitude of industries. Today she’s on the show to speak to what has shifted with the beer industry since she was last on in early 2020 (pre-COVID, which is wild!), and her transition into championing diversity and inclusion through working with breweries to train and aid those affected by the opioid and drug crisis in Canada. We also discuss the variety of non-alcoholic beverages on the market, along with how to learn about and access them, and the lessons she’s learned as she’s evolved her company while continuing to bring diversity to the forefront of learning and working relationships. Learn More About Ren: Website: https://bdiversitygroup.com/ IG: @bdiversitygroup Get in Touch/Book a Consultation: https://bdiversitygroup.com/contact Pateron: https://www.patreon.com/BeerDiversity

When we think about food security and food systems, it can easily be imagined as a large national or state or provincial level experience. Yet many young adults increasingly are experiencing the unique dynamics of food systems on campus landscapes, which offers a concentrated and specific food environment that can feel limited as food prices increase and food vendors on campus continue to produce some questionable (and now expensive) meatloaf. Yet post-secondary campuses are spaces of resistance and social justice, and it seems only fitting that students can push back to create food systems alternatives that navigate long-kept colonial structures in the academic institution. My guest this week, Dr. Michael Classens, is here to explore how these alternatives have played out through his and his students ongoing research. Michael is a white settler and Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at University of Toronto. He is broadly interested in areas of social and environmental justice, with an emphasis on these dynamics within food systems. As a teacher, researcher, learner, and activist he is committed to connecting theory with practice, and scholarship with socio-ecological change. Today we’re discussing the work he and his students have been doing for the past few years focused on what he calls campus food systems alternatives – which are initiatives started/operated by (mostly) students that employ food as an organizing strategy to effect broader socio-ecological change on campus (and beyond). Examples include campus farms, student-run cafés, community fridges, and the like. Learn More About Michael: https://www.foodandchange.com/michael.classens@utoronto.ca@michaelclassens@michael_classens

In 2023, we’re facing increased food prices, tech-heavy innovations around lab grown foods for climate change, and heavily industrialized and packaged foods. Amidst that, though, there’s still interest in the world of fermented foods and returning to working with microbes to create a multitude of communities. My guest today is Dr. Julia Skinner, who shares her work and research on fermentation. Julia is a former librarian and Library Science PhD turned food historian and fermentation expert. She is the author of the award-winning book Our Fermented Lives: A History of How Fermented Foods Have Shapes Cultures & Communities. She also runs workshops, events, and a newsletter through Root, which was born from a deep love for community and a belief in the power of food to tell stories, connect us to place, and build a bridge to the past. Today we unpack the idea of community and what shapes it takes through the evolution of human knowledge of microbial worlds, and how the power dynamics of changing histories, taste preferences, and access to fermentation continue to play in our modern lives. Learn More About Julia: Substack Newsletter: Root Kitchens Website: https://root-kitchens.com/ Julia’s Book: Our Fermented Lives Instagram: @rootkitchens