Diet culture on the internet is excellent at sensationalizing our food to the point of panic. I’m sure many of you have seen the videos across TikTok and Instagram where someone positions themselves as an expert and demonizes strawberries, bread, or my beloved potatoes. But what happens when we take a more proactive and less restrictive approach to looking at food? My guest today is the delightful Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, the founder of Nutrivore.com and the New York Times bestselling author...

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

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

As far as public conversations around fermenting, we’ve come a long way as a society in our understanding of what that is in 2024. So with that, deeper explorations into the practice of fermentation and its role in building communities get a lot more interesting. Dr. Julia Skinner is returning to AnthroDish today to discuss the magic and art of fermentation, a central theme in her latest work, The Fermentation Oracle. This book is an oracle deck, recipe guide, and meditative practice that...

If you’ve listened to AnthroDish regularly over the last few years, you’ll know that Ren Navarro is a champion of diversity and inclusion within the beer industry and beyond. When I first interviewed Ren back in 2020, we looked at her Canadian consulting services through B.Diversity, and the diversity problem within craft beer in Ontario. We’ve lived truly a lifetime of unprecedented times since then: we saw the proliferation of Black Lives Matter movements and heavy pressure for more...

Climate change is a daunting reality for many of us – there’s a lot of anxiety around understanding what’s happening and how it affects our communities and the foods we grow. While there’s no magic bullet, there is a lot of great scientific researchers working hard to share what they know about this. For example – you may not immediately think of Texas when you think of olive oil production, but this is one of few American landscapes suitable for growing olive oil trees!  My guest today is...

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

Spend too much time on the internet these days and you can walk away with a lingering sense of body shame, dietary uncertainty, and overall not-great-vibes. To me, this means it’s all the more important to reflect on our relationships with food and re-assess how we think about them.  My guest today, Shana Spence, is one of the central people that I take a lot of inspiration from when it comes to healing relationships with food. Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn,...

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

As we start up season 9 of the podcast, I wanted to share some life and technological updates, as well as what you can expect of this season. Food feels very different from when I started this show in 2018, the "foodie" culture isn't proliferating, which isn't a shock given the challenges of food and living costs in North America. This season we're going in with a clear eye for analysis on some of the major factors informing our food systems: the treatment of immigrants working in food, how...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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;...

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,...