What does it take to make the most out of the internet when you're building a micro or cottage bakery? My guest today, Teresa Finney, is here to explore this through her journey building At Heart Panadería. Teresa is a pastry chef and writer from the Bay Area in California, with family roots in Guadalajara, Mexico. Now based in Atlanta, Georgia, she runs At Heart Panadería, a contemporary Mexican bakery. She is also the author of Panadería: A Cookbook Zine, which contains five thoughtfully crafted original recipes from her cottage bakery.

In today's discussion, we explore how she began her cottage bakery in her at-home kitchen, the shifting relationship with the internet to spread the word of her new bakes, the importance of sourcing seasonal and local ingredients, the relationship between baking and the body, and the role she sees bakers playing in serving their communities.

Resources:

• Teresa's Website
• At Heart Panadería Newsletter
• Cookbook Zine
• Instagram: @atheartpanaderia

My guest this week, Dr. Hanna Garth, is here to speak to how food justice movements are affected by long-term misconceptions and assumptions about the communities they work with. Hanna is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, who studies food access and the global food system. Drawing on 15 years of research on the food justice movement in South Central Los Angeles, her second book Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement is out now with the University of California Press.

In today's conversation, we're discussing some of the central themes in her latest book, Food Justice Undone, such as the roles of liberalism and whiteness in maintaining power structures and dynamics in food justice movements, the racialized differences in food justice work, and the power of language, statistics, and small moments in shaping the landscape and politics of food movements.

Resources:

• Hanna's Website: http://www.hannagarth.com/
• Instagram: @hgarth
• Book: Food Justice Undone

My guest this week, Stephanie Voytek, is a registered dietician here to walk through some of the key issues around nutrition and anxiety in our current social media landscape. She has with a range of experience working in the field of nutrition, from providing education to the community through food access programs, working in the fields and kitchens on farms, and counseling folks with eating disorders. Her range of work experience allows her to understand people, and find the entry point for nutrition-related behavior change in each community and individual. Her work emphasizes pleasure as central to nutrition education, replacing nutrition prescription with food connection as a central intervention.

In today's conversation, we're diving further into the idea of pleasure and intuition as it relates to nutrition. These are terms that can get thrown around a bit willy-nilly in wellness spheres, but as Stephanie points out, there's actually a lot of scientific and evolutionary value in these concepts as they relate to our appetites and eating behaviours. We also speak to the significant impact that industrialized and post-WWII era food systems have had on our modern reckonings with food, and she provides tips on finding a supportive and good match when you're looking for a dietician service provider.

Resources:

• Stephanie's Newsletter, A Spoonful of Stories

My guest today, Sarah Oresnik, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. Their research interests centre around food insecurity and its impact on our health and wellbeing. Within their PhD, their focus is on how youth navigate food insecurity, looking at youth experiences in Southampton, UK. Sarah grew up in the kitchen learning recipes from their parents and grandparents, which has translated to their continued investigations and reflections on their own food environment.

In our conversation, Sarah shares about their current research working with teens in the UK to explore the merits and challenges of their school nutrition programs. They highlight the limitations of daily food allowances and electronic payment options, the impacts that food insecurity and cultural experiences have on shaping food preferences and values, and does a brilliant deep dive challenge the very idea of what "cultural foods" can be for teens in diasporic communities.

Resources:

• Email: [email protected]
• Open access paper: A syndemic perspective on food insecurity, gestational diabetes, and mental health disorders during pregnancy in Social Science & Medicine

Here in Canada, we have a food security crisis—and a cost-of-living crisis. While there are many, many factors that are shaping this continued issue across the country, one of the challenges of navigating food insecurity here is that we rely primarily on non-profit food banks to support those in need. One non-profit food organization in Toronto, Daily Bread, is on a mission to eliminate food insecurity and advocate for solutions to end poverty. Daily Bread prepares over 250,000 meals annually, including more than 43,000 heat-and-eat meals delivered through the Red Cross Mobile Food bank to individuals facing barriers like mobility challenges, inadequate housing, or mental health conditions that make traditional food access difficult.

In 2024, Toronto food bank visits hit an all time high of 4.1 million, and Toronto declared a state of emergency about food insecurity. In response, Daily Bread has seen their visits increase, with their Food Services Manager Michael Greenberg overseeing a kitchen that produced more than 270,000 meals between 2024-2025. Mike is on the show today to speak about the work he and his team do at Daily Bread to ensure that their food bank kitchen can logistically maintain itself with such high demands, the nutritional and social impact of food insecurity for clients who cannot prepare their own meals, and the vital role food banks play in advancing equity and dignity in food access.

Resources:

• Daily Bread website
• Who's Hungry Report 2025
• Instagram: @dailybreadto

To kickstart the second half of AnthroDish season 10, we're shifting to a topic I generally feel very intimidated by: wine. But, as my guest Cha McCoy reveals this week, there is a lot to unearth in making sense of why wine feels intimidating or harder to access. Cha is an entrepreneur, educator, and event producer. As a certified sommelier, she developed The Communion, a wine dinner series that offers an inviting, accessible approach to gathering and enjoying wine. This experience inspired her to open her first brick-and-mortar store, The Communion Wine & Spirits.

Today, Cha talks about her new book, Wine Pairing for the People: The Communion of Wine, Food, and Culture from Africa and Beyond. This book is unique in how it approaches the concepts of terroir, and the pairing ideology of what grows together goes together. Cha expands wine pairings, where traditional foods and cuisines from Africa, Asia, and the Americas are given pairings of wines that celebrate heat, tang, spice. In our conversation, Cha shares her refreshing approach to terroir for regions of the world that aren't known for their grape wines, and describes how certain taste preferences are shaped, what flavours are valued or looked over under colonial approaches to wine pairings.

Resources:

• Book: Wine Pairing for the People
• Cha's Website
• Instagram: @chasquared
• LinkedIn: Cha McCoy

Edomae sushi is an Edo style of sushi making that underscores marinating, curing, and aging techniques. Within that, there is one chef, Cheng Lin, standing out for his attention not only to these techniques, but bringing an emphasis on seasonality and sourcing of ingredients.

Born and raised in Fujian, China, chef Cheng Lin began his culinary career in 1997 when he moved to New York City and worked in restaurants such as Hatsuhana, Sushi Seki, and Blue Ribbon. Continuously looking to refine his skills at trailblazing culinary concepts, he eventually joined Chef Masa Ito and Kevin Kim at ITO Tribeca. Chef Cheng Lin was captivated by the comic "Shota No Sushi," a tale of a boy whose passion for sushi mirrored his own, and dreamt of creating a haven for sushi enthusiasts that he would call Shōta. Now, over two decades later, Chef Cheng Lin helms Shōta Omakase in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and it is the culmination of his near 30-year commitment to perfecting the art of sushi making. Combining traditional Edomae-style sushi with modern flair, and a painstaking dedication to sourcing the highest quality ingredients, Chef Cheng Lin shares his love through attention to detail, refined technique, and unmatched flavor.

In today's conversation, we explore his commitment to sourcing ingredients that honour the traditional techniques used in Edomae-style sushi, considerations of seasonality when selecting which fish to incorporate on the menu, and how Cheng and his staff have adjusted to their dining services in the wake of receiving a Michelin star within one year of opening.

Resources:

• Shōta Omakase Restaurant Website
• Instagram: @shotaomakase
• Chef Cheng's Instagram: @sushi.chef.cheng.lin

My guest today, Sonia Strobel, is here to explore the idea of community-supported fisheries. Sonia is co-founder and CEO of Skipper Otto, a Community Supported Fishery based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Through her innovative, sustainable seafood subscription model, members pre-purchase a share in the catch before the fishing season. This unique partnership between fishers and consumers guarantees harvesters a fair price for their catch, protects a traditional way of life in BC's coastal and Indigenous fishing communities, and disrupts a seafood system fraught with social and environmental injustice. Skipper Otto is a certified B Corp and certified Living Wage employer. They educate consumers about important issues in fisheries and the value of eating with the ecosystem while advocating for just policy reform.

Today, we discuss these vital themes, and Sonia shares stories from her own family's fishery as well as the additional challenges faced by Indigenous-owned fisheries in Canada. We speak about some of the main challenges facing the seafood industry in Canada amidst climate change and American tariffs, how Skipper Otto is navigating these challenges to support their fishing families, the proactive measures they are taking to increase transparency and build more sustainable fishery management, and considerations that the public should bring with them the next time they're seeking out fish foods for dinner.

Resources:

• Skipper Otto Website
• Instagram: @skipperotto

Why are we seeing such a boom in non-alcoholic drink options, and how do they stand out from wellness beverages as their own specific category?

I invited my dear friend Ren Navarro back to AnthroDish to explore these trends in the beverage industry. Ren is a culture consultant, drinks expert, and founder of B. Diversity Group. With over 20 years of experience in corporate management and over a dozen years in the beer industry, she's helped everyone from family-run breweries to multinational brands build spaces people want to be a part of. What started as honest conversations over pints has evolved into company-wide transformations: policy audits, inclusive hiring systems, value statement creations, and real community engagement across industries. Whether she's teaching, advising, or helping revamp policies, her mission stays the same—build cultures that reflect the values people say they believe in. She loves tattoos, goats, and gives pretty good hugs.

Today, Ren and I explore some of the experiences, tastes, and forms that non-alcoholic beverages are taking, what hop water is, and why these non-alcoholic options offer much more inclusive and diverse experiences than their wellness counterparts.

Resources:

• Website: https://bdiversitygroup.com/
• Instagram: @bdiversitygroup
• Previous episodes:
  • On Craft Beer's Diversity Problem
  • Creating Safer Communities for Breweris and Vulnerable Neighbours
  • Beer (and Everyone) Still Has a Diversity Problem

My guest this week, Emma Atkins, is here to explore the role that refrigeration has played in our food waste. Emma is a PhD researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her research looks at how fridges influence food waste, whether through design or its place in a food system geared towards overconsumption. She has a background in policy and advocacy, and recently wrote two reports tackling policy solutions for food waste and quality of food donations with Foodrise, which is a UK and EU-based NGO. Her website Food Waste Stories features articles about food waste in art, culture, policy, and academia, and advocates for a sustainable food system.

In today's conversation, I speak with Emma about how fridges have evolved from earliest 1920s designs to become embedded in our modern food culture, the relationship between fridges and Costco hauls, the extreme fridge organization trends on TikTok, and the possibilities of more sustainably-minded fridge designs to reduce food waste in the future.

Resources:

• Food Waste Stories website
• Instagram: @foodwaste_emma
• Policy Document: Used By - How businesses dump their food waste on charities
• Policy Document: Actions to End Food Waste