One of the most frustrating parts of watching Gossip Girl growing up was witnessing the elaborate breakfast spreads that the families had each morning, only for the main characters to grab a piece of toast and run away with anguish. When we think about fiction, food isn’t always central to how a story is told. But what happens when it is? 

My guest this week is Margaux Vialleron, a French-born and Glasgow-based interdisciplinary writer and cook. She is the author of two novels: Breaststrokes (May 2024) and The Yellow Kitchen (July 2022). Her story, Fernanda’s Fish Soup, was runner-up in the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar short story competition. She also writes The Onion Papers, a hybrid newsletter about storytelling in the kitchen. Margaux’s work explores the landscapes of remembrance, the links between inner spaces and wild outer spaces, and food and seasonality as communal experiences.

In today’s episode, Margaux unpacks the power of food as a storytelling device in fiction, the consequences of character development relating to appetite and economics, and the power of the kitchen in writing and real life. Margaux is a beautiful writer, and I know a lot of the warmth in her work comes from the time she dedicates to food and eating in her character development, so it is a special treat to hear her perspectives on incorporating this into fictional worlds.

Learn More About Margaux: 

• Website: https://margauxvialleron.com/ 
• The Onion Papers Newsletter: https://theonionpapers.substack.com/ 
• Breaststrokes Novel
• The Yellow Kitchen Novel
• Instagram: @margauxvlln

Oftentimes, when we think about plant-human relationships, we’re thinking about our contemporary lives and how plants factor into it – be it North American plant-based diets or what we’re growing in our apartments. But our relationship with plants goes back for millennia, and accessing this historical and prehistoric knowledge is a glimpse into what life looked like for ancient humans.

My guest this week is Dr. Shalen Prado, who is here to explore what we know about plant-based eating during the medieval period of Scotland. Shalen is a settler-archaeologist living in Saskatoon and originally from the East Coast (Mi’kma’ki or Prince Edward Island). She researches ancient human-plant relationships and foodways. Shalen currently works as a Living Skies Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan and collaborates with the Bridge To Land Water Sky Living Lab.

In today’s episode, Shalen shares some of her research on the elusive Picts of Scotland and how she uses phytoliths and ceramic sherds to uncover what plant-based eating looked like for this group of people during the medieval period of Great Britain.

Learn More from Shalen:

• Instagram: @spradoplants
• Recent open-access article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104695
• Microbotanical research database: macmicrobot.omeka.net

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 of Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need from the Food You Eat. She creates educational resources to help people improve their diet and lifestyle choices, empowered and informed by the most current evidence-based scientific research. With Nutrivore, Dr. Sarah has created a positive and inclusive approach to dietary guidance, based on science and devoid of dogma, using nutrient density and sufficiency as its basic principles: Nourishment, not judgment.

On today’s show, we’re breaking down why diet-centric approaches don’t work, busting myths around food fears, and Dr. Sarah explains her Nutrivore mindset. It is an immense pleasure to have a conversation with someone with such nutritional knowledge and an approach to eating that is sustainable and realistic, so I am very excited to share this with you all.

Learn More from Dr. Sarah!  

• Book: Nutrivore  
• Website: https://nutrivore.com/   
• Instagram: @drsarahballantyne  
• Threads: @drsarahballantyne  
• TikTok: @drsarahballantyne  
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/drsarahballantyne/   

Get one of five free Nutrivore Guides Here!

• https://nutrivore.com/thankyou/?aff=49   

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 common denominator as humans and understands it holds the power to solve many problems we’re facing. As she sees it, good food policy automatically means good health, agriculture, labour, and environmental relationships.  

Joshna Maharaj is a chef, speaker, author & activist who wants to help everyone have a better relationship with their food. She believes strongly in the power of chefs & social gastronomy to bring values of hospitality, sustainability, & social justice to the table. Joshna works with institutions in Canada to build new models for food service. Her first book, entitled Take Back the Tray (May 2020), captures the lessons & experience from her work in changing institutional food systems around the globe. She is an enthusiastic instructor of both culinary and academic students, constantly finding ways to make food stories come alive. Joshna has just started a Master’s in Gastronomy in Dublin, Ireland and is enjoying the delights of being a student once again. 

In our conversation today, we talk about how to tackle the prickliness of food policy and what happens when we break down the silos of industry, government, and hospitality to build better values and relationships with food.

Learn More from Joshna: 

• Instagram: @joshnamaharaj
• Book: Take Back the Tray

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, A Season for That: Lost and Found In The Other Southern France.  

Steve is a French speaker and shameless Francophile who tirelessly works in his memoir to unearth the reality of his family’s gradual acceptance into a tiny winemaking village in the Languedoc region of southern France. His writing has won multiple awards, including the 2019 James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Artful Living magazine. 

In our conversation today, Steve shares some of the lessons he picked up about the unique winemaking and culinary traditions he experienced in Languedoc-Rousillon region, the role that food and ingredients played in helping his family become accepted in the village, the values of home cooking versus French cooking, and what it took as a food writer to get to a point with his memoir where he could approach his family’s story with an honesty and earnestness I’ve not seen the likes of in other food memoirs.

Learn More About Steve: 

• Steve's Book: A Season for That
• Instagram: @sjrhoffman
• Facebook: @sjrhoffmanwriter
• Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/ 

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 combines the understanding of magic, metaphors, and transformation in the small moments of our day-to-day life.

Learn More About Julia: 

• The Fermentation Oracle: Readings and Recipes Book
• Instagram: @bookish.julia @rootkitchens @culinary.curioisity.school
• Substack: https://rootkitchens.substack.com/ 

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 equitable change, and DEI initiatives take stronger footing through many industries reckoning with their own complicity. Yet… we’re also living in a period where affirmative action has been struck down in America, and DEI is making headlines because CEOs have decided they’re done with it. 

So what does this mean for people like Ren who have built their businesses through this necessary and ongoing work? Who helps the activists pushing for safer and more supportive communities? What do the follow-up sessions look like for breweries that had DEI consults? Ren’s here to explore these questions, as well as the very real challenges that come with this work for her: burnout in a landscape where her job is good when things are bad in the world.

Learn More From Ren: 

• BDiversity Group Website: https://bdiversitygroup.com/ 
• Ren Instagram: @bdiversitygroup
• What Ales Us Trailer

Resources Ren Shared in Episode:

• Book - Taking a Break from Saving the World: A Conservationist's Journey from Burnout to Balance
• Emily and Amelia Nagowski interview on burnout
• Book - The Burnout Challenge 

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 Dr. Vikram Baliga, a horticulture professor in Texas. He studies conservation and has spent most of his career studying food systems, urban water use, and olive tree crops. Vikram also owns a peach orchard and tells a lot of dad jokes – most notably on his fun science podcast, Planthropology. Vikram joins me today to talk more about his research on olive tree growth in Texas – what about the climate makes it a suitable space for their growth, how olive trees respond to weather changes and stressors, and considerations around water use as climates continue to change. He’s also an expert scientific communicator, so you’re in for a really engaging conversation today!

Learn More About Vikram:

• Planthropology Podcast: https://planthropologypodcast.com/ 

• Tiktok: @theplantprof

• Instagram: @the.plant.prof

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 Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking, a collection of recipes inspired by their European travels and the lessons around fresh, local ingredients they learn and shaped into delicious plant-based meals. We speak today about how they can pull inspiration from the beauty of the world around them – architecture, landscapes, a moment making pancakes together – and turn it into an artful experience of the table through their photography, ceramic-making, and recipe crafting.

Learn More About Chloé & Trudy:

• Buy their Cookbook: The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking

• Chloé Crane-Leroux Instagram: @chloecleroux

• Trudy Crane Instagram: @trudy.crane and @lookslikewhite

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, New York. Her debut book came out this past August 2024, titled Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy. She currently works in public health for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, doing community nutrition lessons, and also owns her own company, The Nutrition Tea ®. She describes herself as an "all foods fit" dietitian and creates a platform for open discussion on nutrition and wellness topics that are inclusive, non-diet, and weight-neutral, all with an intersectionality of social justice. 

Today, Shana joins me to discuss some of the key themes and crafting of Live Nourished, touching on how diet culture persists in post-secondary educational spheres, the funny but persistent and weird ways that wellness permeates our eating choices, and how to break away from the idea of food as a moral choice, to think about nourishment in a more individual and cultural way.

Learn More From Shana: 

• Buy Live Nourished book
• Instagram: @thenutritiontea
• Website: https://www.thenutritiontea.com/ 
• Newsletter: https://thenutritiontea.substack.com/ 
• TikTok: @thenutritiontea