Around the Table: Food Stories from Science to Everyday Life

30/01/2021

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 influence regulation, often following the infamous to***co industry playbook. If you want to learn more, check out Prof. Nestle's regular blog (which we love) at https://www.foodpolitics.com/ and find her on Twitter .
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor, of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she officially retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been awarded honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky (2012) and from the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College (2016).

21/01/2021

In this interview with Tess, sociologist Prof. Anthony Hatch from Wesleyan University 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. (Listeners take note: we had some sound tech issues with this one, so we hope you can forgive the clicking sound!)
Listener's may also be interested in Madeleine Power's discussion of food justice in the UK, Esther González-Padilla's description of sugar and micronutrient dilution, and Michael Goran and Emily Ventura's latest book on how to help children eat less sugar.

04/12/2020

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 Alliance, which was started as a network to ally local organizations concerned about hunger in York and the Independent Food Aid Network is a national UK network that represents independent food banks around the UK.

04/12/2020

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.
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify!

06/11/2020

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 Birmingham, UK.

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

30/10/2020

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 our listeners.
Ashley runs Zoetic Wellness Consulting, which designs corporate and personal wellness solutions.

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

20/10/2020

One of our collaborators, Dr. Anne Katrine Kleberg Hansen , sent this pic of her mushroom forage in Denmark 😋😍 Send us your food love!
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

15/10/2020

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: what-we-eat as well as the how-we-eat. She explains how the pleasure of preparing and sharing meals with significant people is associated with health promoting effects, such as contributing to less over-eating. The diet also is linked to brain function and the cognitive decline associated with aging. To top it all off, the Mediterranean diet is a very sustainable diet, with a significantly lower environmental impact than the standard Western diet.
Dr. Bach-Faig is Professor at the Health Sciences Faculty at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She is a former Mediterranean Diet Foundation research group director for the Institute for Catalan Studies' Catalan Nutrition Centre (CCNIEC) and currently forms part of FoodLab, the UOC's food, nutrition, society and health interdisciplinary research group. You can follow Prof. Bach-Faig on Twitter at .

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.
@ Catalonia, Spain

02/10/2020

In our latest episode, biological anthropologist Cristina Giuliani sheds light on just how complex our taste receptors really are.
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

01/10/2020

Side story.... watermelon is best when given to your father by an old Italian man, right out of his garden, and then passed on to you.

22/09/2020

In this interview with Stanley, anthropologist Dr. Amy McLennan talks about her research on the island of Nauru. She starts out be redefining “lifestyle” medicine to fit this local context. It’s a fascinating listen where you’ll learn a lot!
Dr. McLennan is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s 3A Institute (3Ai), where she works at the intersections of technology, society, and wellbeing.
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

15/09/2020

Need a coffee break?! Listen in to Anthropologist Sabine Parrish talk about all things coffee, from global coffee competitions to nutrition .coffee .coffee
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

08/09/2020

One more post to get you excited to listen to last weeks episodes on sugar if you haven’t already!
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

05/09/2020

If you didn’t tune in Thursday, you should definitely catch up today so you can hear from this mother and daughter pair who tested out the Sugarproof Challenge!! If you have kids, you’ll love this. Even if you don’t, you might want to try the challenge on yourself!!

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.
Thanks to Mae Mu for sharing their work on Unsplash.

03/09/2020

This episode is awesome, especially if you have kids and want to try to eat healthier. Goran and Ventura are so knowledgeable, and very accessible. They talk to Stanley about the some of the risks of childhood sugar consumption and methods for cutting it down from their new book Sugarproof. Learn more

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

31/08/2020

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).” She also explains why nutrition research can be so complex, especially when studies rely on participants self-reporting their diets. Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

31/08/2020

This week we are talking sugar: why it’s a problem and what to do about it. Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.
Thanks to Jordane Mathieu for sharing their work on Unsplash.

20/08/2020

New Nordic food is a personal favorite of ours... we hope you’ll jump on the bandwagon after listening to this week’s episodes! Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

20/08/2020

Anders Kristian Munk is an ethnologist and computational social scientist interested in cultural phenomena in Europe. In this interview with Stanley, Munk discusses one cultural phenomenon that he has been following for over 15 years: the New Nordic food movement, which focuses on fresh, local, seasonal foods and traditional cuisine re-made in new ways. Munk talks about how New Nordic food compares to other local diets, such as the Mediterranean Diet, and speaks to the potential for food innovation present in Scandinavia. This recording is truly embedded in the local: you can hear the birds chirping throughout!
Stay tuned for a follow-up "Household Dynamics" podcast hosted by Tess about eating and experiencing New Nordic cuisine!
Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

14/08/2020

Giles Yeo is a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Cambridge with over 20 years experience researching brain control and body-weight. He speaks in this episode about the relationship between obesity and covid-19. Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.
#2020

04/08/2020

Sociologist Claude Fischler discusses commensality, French food culture and the field of food studies in our first episode of season 2! Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

04/08/2020

Search for “Around the Table: Food Stories” on Apple or Spotify.

22/07/2020

Where did we go?! Well, we’ve taken a little break to catch up on other projects, which I personally do while eating as many takeout tacos as possible! (These are from my all time favorite, in Providence, RI) I’m working on season 2 of the podcast this week... “Bite-Sized Experts” will debut the first week of August. I’m seriously always amazed by what people have to say... I hope you’ll enjoy too! Follow us to stay tuned!

24/06/2020

Around the Table is on a Coffee Break!!! We will be back in a couple weeks with a whole new series: Bite Size Experts and Household Dynamics. You can still listen to all of season 1 on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.
Btw, this isn’t really coffee, it’s an adaptogen antioxidant blend of cacao, reishi, cordyceps, and ashwaganda. With a little goat milk. 😋

16/06/2020

Final Episode of Lock Down Food (our first season) is up! 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 Covid-19. Just a reminder that all thoughts are preliminary: we put this podcast out to think and muse as things unfold.

16/06/2020

Yup. We did it. We made a podcast and a first season. What a rollercoaster it was for me!! This is a lot of work! Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

14/06/2020

09/06/2020

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. Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

09/06/2020

Writer Stephanie Morphew, who has also been working in the restaurant industry, talks about what’s happening to restaurant goods during lock down, and what the future of good food might look like after covid19. Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

09/06/2020

Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

05/06/2020

The co-owner of in Connecticut talks to us about making hand sanitizer at the distillery, foraging in the springtime, and inventing delicious-sounding new cocktails. Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

05/06/2020

The co-owner of in Connecticut talks to us about making hand sanitizer at the distillery, foraging in the springtime, and inventing delicious-sounding new cocktails. New Englanders: check out their tasting room and beautiful grounds this summer! Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

03/06/2020

Sociologist Heather Hamill discusses having covid19, cooking with her children, and appreciating the kindness of neighbors during lock down. Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.

03/06/2020

Dr. Giles Yeo, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, talks about food insecurity during covid, Brexit, and about posting his cooking under , a London campaign to draw positive attention to Chinatown, which was one of the areas most devastated by lock down. Available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and link in bio.