Industrialization has undoubtedly and profoundly shifted our relationship with food globally, and it can be hard to remember the work being done outside of commercialized growing to remain connected to the land through vegetables. What stories are held in the diversity of vegetable species across the globe? Today's guest, Ali Francis, is here to explore their fascinating and curious lives!

Ali is an Australian-born journalist and former Bon Appétit reporter living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Cut, BBC, The Guardian, TASTE, and other publications. She's the co-founder of Best Food Blog, a journalist-owned publication about eating. Ali also writes Anyway!, a newsletter about building meaningful lives in these bizarre modern times. Her first book, The Curious Lives of Vegetables: An Artful Exploration of the Wonderful World of Edible Plants, Their History, and Their Crucial Role in Our Future is out now, and is a wild quest to uncover the stories we don't usually hear about plants.

In today's conversation, Ali touches on how her and the book's artist Adriana Picker tackled such an immense and robust task of sharing plant narratives through writing and gorgeous illustrations, what factors have contributed to the declining biodiversity of vegetables in the world, how colonial naming conventions shaped our relationship to vegetable varieties, and the important role that seed savers play in building more vibrant, flavourful futures.

Resources:

• Ali's Website

• The Curious Lives of Vegetables

• Anyway! Newsletter

• Best Food Blog

• Instagram: @alifrancis.me

As we start up season 11 of the podcast, I wanted to share some life and technological updates, as well as what you can expect of this season. We're in a landscape where the steakhouse is back, big meat, wellness, and Ozempic are in, there's recalls abounding across America that are spiralling into Canada for lettuce and berries and jalapenos and eggs. I'm frustrated about the state of global food systems, and the imperialist and fascist leadership that is swiftly impacting everyday lives. My focus this season is to look at what's going wrong, how it's impacting everyday people, and also how different cultures and experiences across the world are grappling with these imperialist changes.

Maybe it feels as heavy to you as it does to me. Maybe it feels like it's too much. But it iss underpinning my decisions about which guests to have on this season. Fight fire with really great people doing really important, practical work.

We've got a new look, a powerful line up of guests, and a really fruitful series of conversations for you!

Follow Sarah/AnthroDish:

• Website: https://www.anthrodish.com/

• Substack: https://sarahduignan.substack.com/

• Instagram: @anthrodishpodcast

• TikTok: @anthrodish

• Sarah's New TV Show, Mysteries of Ancient Medicine

When it comes to talking about food, we often to choose to look at what people are eating rather than how. And it's this distinction that today's guest, Amber Husain, explores more fully in her new book, Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live.

Amber is a writer based in South London, UK. In addition to Tell Me How You Eat, she has also written Meat Love and Replace Me. Her essays on politics, literature, and art have been published in Granta, The New York Times, Baffler, and more. She has a PhD from UCL in the history of art and mind-body medicine in the late 20th-century Britain. She teaches history of art, creative writing, and criticism.

In today's conversation, Amber explores some of the ways that appetites can be re-examined, and challenge persistent tropes of eating that narrow down to individual choices. Using socialist and feminist lenses, she speaks to food movements and moments in history that have revealed reasons to eat and live, and the empowerment that comes from using food as a question rather than an answer.

Resources:

• Book: Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live
• Amber's Website: https://amberhusain.com/
• Instagram: @amberhusa1n

Sustainability is a word you hear a lot, but it tends to go uncritically examined in application. So what can it encompass when it comes to food experiences, particularly for immigrants and newcomers to Canada? My guest this week, Isabela Bonnevera, is here to unpack this further.

Isabela is currently a doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB and engages with participatory methods to explore how immigrants are shaping sustainable food transitions in cities. She also examines how sustainable food policies impact food justice outcomes for immigrant communities. She's the co-founder of Feminist Food Journal, and we work together on Feminist Food Friend events as well.

This week, Isabela is here to explore the more participatory elements to her research. Using a method called photovoice, she has worked with a group of immigrant women in the Vancouver area to dig into the question of what makes food sustainable—or more accurately, what is "good food" and what does sustainable really look like when the word doesn't always translate into diverse cultural experiences with food? We speak to how this bottom-up approach ties into the broader policy frameworks, the findings of their photovoice explorations, and its implications for filling policy gaps.

Resources:

• LinkedIn
• Good Food Document and Videos
• Feminist Food Journal
• Previous AnthroDish episode!

When it comes to thinking about the future of food, is it possible to re-imagine our individual and collective appetites around what we want it to be? Taste is subjective, sure, but it's also deeply embedded in the land, histories, politics, and sociocultural dynamics we navigate throughout our lives. And as my guest this week, Alicia Kennedy, writes, our tastes are also shaped by how we value (or don't value) ingredients and their own histories.

Alicia is a writer from Long Island. She is the author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, and On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, which is out officially as of today through Hachette. Her newsletter, From the Desk, covers food, culture, politics, and media, and she is launching Tomato Tomato, a literary journal of food writing, in 2026.

Alicia is back on the show today to speak about On Eating, exploring the process of weaving the personal and cultural histories of ingredients through her chapters, the interrogation of early appetites and their influence on her food writing, the dynamics of feminine appetites in food media, and the importance of properly considering the labour of growing and producing food as a way to unpack Western appetites.

Resources:

• Book: On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites
• From the Desk newsletter
• Website
• Tomato Tomato magazine
• Instagram: @aliciadkennedy

When thinking about the food and agricultural landscape of Texas, the mind immediately goes to cattle, corn, and cotton—certainly not wheat. But as my guest this week, Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, shares, the region of North Texas had a robust wheat culture from the 1840s until the post-World War Two period. So what made North Texas a great place for wheat? And what are the implications of wheat as culture and cultivator?

Rebecca is here today to talk about her new book, People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas, out now through Univeristy of Texas Press. She is a professor of history at Texas Christian University, and writes on food, labour, and women. She is also the author of Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, and Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South.

In today's conversation, we're exploring the forgotten history of wheat harvesting in North Texas, including how it complicates the story of plantation economies and enslavement histories in the south, the profound impact of mechanization on milling and distributing wheat, and the post-war influences that led to wheat's decline, despite having lasting cultural importance for Western appetites and baking.

Resources:

• People of the Wheat book
• Rebecca's university website

My guest today, TW Lim, is here to explore how nation food constructions have played out in Singapore through the hawker centres the country is known for. TW writes on the relationships between politics, history, and culture and how they have shaped eating habits in Singapore. By day, he writes about technology, but he also writes about food and value, or the "regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something."

While known to many other countries as a "food paradise" over the last 50 years, TW unpacks how Singaporean food worth and value is decided upon in a country where is food identity. In his new book, Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore, he looks at the development of hawker centres, home kitchens, and restaurants of Singapore that gets at the culture and business of food in Singapore.

In today's conversation, we look at the early government policy of Singapore and its lasting impact on the development and maintenance of hawker centres, grappling with notions of authenticity as economic and cultural values around food and eating shift through time, labour and wages for multi-generational hawker workers, and how Singapore as a food paradise holds up a mirror to the food habits of USA and Asia.

Resources:

• Website: https://humblescrivener.com/
• Newsletter: Let Them Eat Cake

My guest this week, Peter Kuitenbrouwer, is here to share some of the ways that our relationship with maple syrup is linked to culture, religion, and land in Canada. Peter is the author of the recent book, Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada's Sweetest Obsession. Peter grew up on a farm in Quebec, with his career as a journalist taking him to jobs in Montreal, Ottawa, Mexico City, New York, and Toronto. Among other adventures, he covered the Oka Crisis in Quebec, crossed the Atlantic on a container ship, sailed the Great Lakes on a bulk grain carrier, and was detained by guerillas in the forests of Chiapas, Mexico. In 2021, he became a Registered Professional Forester. He presently works as a journalist, teacher, and forester. His family makes maple syrup in their sugar bush in Madoc, Ontario.

Today, Peter speaks to some of the important foundations in appreciating the history of maple syrup, including historical and contemporary Indigenous maple-syrup making practices, the specific cultural and religious elements that made Quebec the largest producer of maple syrup in the world, what the "maple syrup mafia" really is, the impacts of technology and climate change on flavour, and more.

Resources:

• Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada's Sweetest Obsession
• Peter's Website

When heard about the work that chef India Doris is doing with her new restaurant, Markette, in bringing Caribbean heritage and flavours to European-style fine dining, I was delighted to have the chance to speak with her. India is the co-owner and Executive Chef at Markette, which is a modern European restaurant based in Chelsea, New York, along with The Argyle, a cocktail lounge located directly below the restaurant. This past fall, she was awarded the Young Chef Award at the 2025 Northeast Michelin ceremony.

Originally from London, India has lived and cooked throughout Europe at acclaimed restaurants in Spain, France, and the UK, such as London's La Trompette and Bibendum at the Michelin House, in addition to time spent studying butchery in Scotland. Upon settling in New York City over ten years ago, India worked as Chef de Partie at The NoMad before joining renowned, late Chef James Kent at his debut restaurant, NYC's MICHELIN-starred Crown Shy, and later rising to Executive Sous Chef at sister concept, two MICHELIN-starred SAGA. At Markette, India's seasonally-rotating menu is heavily inspired by her time spent in Europe and upbringing in the UK, as well as by her Caribbean heritage – showcasing her creative, yet timeless point of view.

India has accomplished so much, and it's clear in chatting with her that this is only the beginning. In today's conversation, we explore her early days in the culinary world and its lasting influence on how she approaches her work, the ways she navigates fine dining culture in her Markette menu by infusing autobiographical elements into dishes that reflect Caribbean culture, flavours, and histories, and how she built a sustainable environment for her staff through a respect-first approach to the kitchen.

Resources:

• Markette Website: https://www.marketterestaurant.com/
• Instagram: @marketterestaurant and @indiadoris

For anyone that grew up without a strong sense of connection to cooking or eating cultural foods, it can be daunting to get into the kitchen and make your own relationship with food. But for today's guest, Jamie Tracey, that lack of relationship was enough incentive to try an honest approach to building something that would last.

Jamie is a self-taught creator and Canadian cook that created Anti-Chef, a culinary experiment that plays out in real time on his YouTube series. It captures the good, bad, chaos, and triumph that comes with learning and loving to cook. With more than half a million subscribers, Anti-Chef follows Jamie as he dives headfirst into the hilarious, messy, and human side of trying something new. From Julia Child's most intimidating recipes to Michelin-level masterpieces and celebrity "cage matches," Jamie takes his audience along for the ride—mistakes, meltdowns, and all.

In today's conversation, Jamie discusses what food disconnects can look like, how he leveraged his film background and lack of cooking skills to create his heartfelt and entertaining YouTube series, the Canadian food culture and its impact on shaping how he thought about food and eating in the 90s, the process of self-taught cooking and its impact when you have an audience watching your highs and lows, and the lessons he's learned from cooking through Julia Child recipes for the show.

Resources:

• ANTI-CHEF on YouTube
• Instagram: @antichefjamie
• TikTok: @antichef