Around the Table: Food Stories from Science to Everyday Life

In this episode, Stanley interviews Professor Marion Nestle about her two latest books, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat (2018) and Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health (with Kerry Trueman) (2020). Prof. Nestle describes the various ways that food industries influence research, pay for their own experts, and avoid regulation, often following the infamous tobacco industry playbook. If you want to learn...

In this interview with Tess, sociologist Prof. Anthony Hatch explains why the problem of sugar is much greater than just being bad for our bodies. As a colonial commodity, sugar carries a legacy of slavery and racism that is still with us today. He describes sugar's relationship to black bodies, metabolic syndrome, and global trade, calling for political action: a boycott of sugar. This podcast is an eye-opening take on sugar from an environmental, ecological, and social perspective....

Dr. Madeleine Power is an expert in UK food aid and food insecurity, in particular its relationship with wider economic and ethnic inequalities. In this interview with Stanley, she discusses her research into food insecurity amongst Pakistani, Muslim, and white British groups in Bradford, UK. Dr. Power describes the variations of food insecurity amongst these groups (it's more complicated than you might think, and different than in the US!) she then talks about the York Food Justice...

In this interview with Stanley, Professor Lotte Holm explains why a sociological understanding of different people’s experiences around food, body-weight, and income is vital for implementing better policies around food. Much of her research focuses on populations in Denmark and the European Union, but understanding everyday struggles around food is a huge component of our global food and healthcare system. Prof. Holm is a sociologist at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO)...

In this interview with Stanley, Prof. Lars Holm discusses the importance of protein in our diet as we age. As we get older, our sensitivity to amino acids begins to deteriorate, which prevents us from absorbing as much protein as we could earlier in life. He also explains why the uptake of amino acids is better when the protein is eaten with meals and how protein relates to exercise. Lars Holm is Professor at the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of...

In this episode, Tess interviews Ashley Chard Dinella, a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and food marketing specialist. Ashley tells a story about not being able to diagnosis an illness as a child and finally turning to a nutrition expert who located the culprits. The subsequent twenty years of knowledge acquisition and experimentation eventually led her to intuitive, healthy eating as an overarching principle of her lifestyle. She also has a few tidbits of real-world advice for...

The Mediterranean diet has risen in popularity around the world. In this informative and inspiring episode, Stanley talks to Dr. Anna Bach-Faig, a leading scholar on the Mediterranean diet in Spain. As Prof. Bach-Faig explains, this diet is considered one of the healthiest diets out there, with strong evidence showing its role in preventing “cardiodiabesity,” or cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and type II diabetes. It’s also a unique diet because it tackles two key aspects of food:...

Dr. Cristina Giuliani discusses the physiology of taste in this episode with Stanley. As Dr. Guiliana explains, taste is way more complicated than you think: "it's a sort of sensory modality to evaluate food toxicity, to select high energy foods, and to prepare the body to extract energy from foods." Taste receptors are actually located in many different areas of our body, far beyond the tongue. For instance, one bitter receptor (TAS2R38) is not only located in the oral cavity but in the...

In this fascinating episode about Nauru, an island country in the central Pacific, anthropologist Dr. Amy McLennan discusses what it means to redefine the medical notion of "lifestyle" in a locally-contextualized way. In her own words: “In the world of medicine, lifestyle is often distilled into what you eat, what exercise you do, whether you sleep or not, if you smoke, and if you drink alcohol. [But] when you work with people on the ground in communities, “lifestyle” means something very...

Sabine Parrish (www.sabine.coffee), a doctoral candidate and anthropologist at the University of Oxford, describes how an unsavory gendered comment while working as a barista triggered her research into coffee and coffee shops. She discusses coffee in relation to sociality and gender, nutrition, and coffee competitions in the US and Brazil. She also co-owns a coffee shop in Cardiff, Wales. Check it out at www.mec.coffee and follow @sabine.coffee and @mec.coffee on Instagram and @sabinebeans...

In this episode, Tess talks with Dr. Emily Ventura, co-author of the new book Sugarproof: The Hidden Dangers of Sugar That Are Putting Your Child’s Health at Risk and What You Can Do, and a mother and daughter in Washington state who have tested out some of the Sugarproof techniques and recipes. This episode follows Thursday's, where Stanley interviews Prof. Michael Goran and Dr. Emily Ventura about Sugarproof. If you haven't listened in, start there! For more info, visit:...

In this episode, Stanley talks with Prof. Michael Goran and Dr. Emily Ventura, PhD, MPH, about their new book Sugarproof: The Hidden Dangers of Sugar That Are Putting Your Child’s Health at Risk and What You Can Do. They give a comprehensive overview of some of the risks of sugar consumption in childhood as well as practical tips and techniques for reducing sugar consumption in the family. Stay tuned for a follow-up episode, released over the weekend, where Tess and Dr. Emily Ventura...

Dr. Esther González-Padilla is a nutritional epidemiologist at Lund University in Sweden. In this interview with Stanley, she talks about sugar and micronutrient dilution, i.e. "the displacement of the intake of nutrient-dense foods by the overconsumption of energy-dense foods (rich in fat and sugar and poor in nutrients)" (learn more). She also explains why nutrition research can be so complex, especially when studies rely on participants self-reporting their diets. This is Dr....

Anne Katrine Kleberg Hansen, a medical historian and food-lover in Copenhagen, Denmark, talks to Tess about how the New Nordic food movement has changed how she eats in her everyday life, how those around her eat, and how it has impacted her neighborhood. This episode is paired with one from Anders Kristian Munk, another Dane who has written about the New Nordic movement.

Anders Kristian Munk is an ethnologist and computational social scientist interested in cultural phenomena in Europe. He uses computational methods to study patterns in large amounts of data. In this interview with Stanley, Munk discusses one cultural phenomenon that he has been following for over 15 years: the New Nordic food movement. The New Nordic food movement was made famous by the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, which focuses on fresh, local, seasonal foods and traditional...

Giles Yeo is a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Cambridge with over 20 years experience researching brain control and body-weight (learn more). He speaks in this episode about the relationship between Covid-19 and obesity. As this research is unfolding, Yeo gives us some potential hypotheses and explains what data is still needed. He also points to the socioeconomic inequalities evident in the pandemic. [Note that this episode was recorded on May 29, 2020]

Stanley interviews Claude Fischler, a French social scientist, Senior Investigator Emeritus with CNRS, the French National Science Center, and a former director of the Interdisciplinary Institute for Contemporary Anthropology in Paris. In this episode, he talks about the importance of food to humans, beginning with why he decided to pursue the study of food. He defines commensality, explaining where this word comes from and how it manifests today. He also discusses the contemporary eating...

Season 2 is here! In this season, we have bite-sized interviews with experts in food and nutrition, and other issues that impact the biological body. We will pepper these with interviews with households on the topics discussed. Write to us! DM us on Instagram @aroundthetablepod or send us a message at anchor.fm/aroundthetablepod

We cover some of the themes that came out through our interviews, from creativity in the kitchen to inequality, obesity, and Covid-19. For those of you that don't know, Stanley is a nutritional anthropologist whose work centers on the evolutionary basis for, and cultural diversity in, nutritional health. This includes both undernutrition and obesity, and the diseases associated with them. Tess asks him a few questions about the future of food and science when it comes to obesity and...

Stanley interviews Dr. Amy McLennan, a human scientist and social researcher in Australia, who discusses how Covid-19 has impacted the meat industry, exposing issues of structural violence and inequality. She also discusses the implications for the global meat supply chain, including what it means to live in a society that has aimed to eliminate food storage. Once you give it a listen, here are some additional articles about some of the topics covered, including the US vs. Australian meat...