AnthroDish

This week we have a very special episode for you, as it's in collaboration with GUTS magazine helmed by Jake Mike Boy, and it's a discussion on reconnecting to the lost Irish recipes and tradition of black pudding making. I'm interview Kate Ryan, a multi-award-winning food writer and founder of Flavour.ie, which is a platform dedicated to championing Irish food and food culture. Originally from Bristol in South England, Kate moved to Ireland in 2005 and began writing about Irish food in 2011. She specializes in longform food features, with her writing regularly appearing for The Echo, BBC, Irish Examiner, and Business Post's Food and Wine Magazine (Ireland). Her writing has also appeared in Scoop Food Magazine, Vittles, TheTaste.ie, Irish Foodie Magazine, and more. Her new book, Blood, Guts, and Black Pudding: Ireland's Dying Art of Blood as Food, charts the complete history of Ireland's pudding tradition, from pre-Christian times to the modern era, celebrating the many ways that blood has been cooked, eaten, and enjoyed.

For those interested in reading her book, Kate and her publishing team at Nine Bean Rows have generously given AnthroDish listeners a special discount code to purchase – use ANTHRODISH20 to receive 20% off Blood, Guts, and Black Pudding when you purchase directly from Nine Bean Rows.

Resources:

• Kate's Book: Blood, Guts, and Black Pudding
• Flavour.ie
• Instagram: @flavour.ie
• Guts Magazine on Substack: https://gutsmagazine.substack.com/

Links to the Mauril app & website : Download on iOS | Download on Android | mauril.ca

This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign managed by the agency Podpass for Mauril, developed by CBC/Radio-Canada.

This week, Julia Skinner is back to talk about what shapes food security can take, beyond the academic metrics we're used to. Julia is a former librarian and Library Science PhD turned food historian and fermentation expert. She is the author of the award-winning book Our Fermented Lives: A History of How Fermented Foods Have Shapes Cultures & Communities. She also runs workshops, events, and a newsletter through Root, which was born from a deep love for community and a belief in the power of food to tell stories, connect us to place, and build a bridge to the past. She's on the show today to talk about some of the themes in her new cookbook, Essential Food Preserving: The Comprehensive Guide to Canning, Freezing, Drying, and Fermenting Vegetables, Fruits, Grains, Nuts, Beans, Meat, Dairy, and Eggs.

In today's conversation, we explore the differences between fermentation and preserving, the ways that people with limited kitchen space or budget can integrate food preservation into their routines, why practices such as canning fell out of favour after WWII, and why we need to stop thinking about food preservation as a doomsday bunker strategy, but rather a practice of community.

Resources:

• Website: https://root-kitchens.com/

• Julia's Book: Essential Food Preserving

• Instagram: @rootkitchens or @bookishjulia

• Substack Newsletter: Root Kitchens

Links to the Mauril app & website : Download on iOS | Download on Android | mauril.ca

This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign managed by the agency Podpass for Mauril, developed by CBC/Radio-Canada.

When looking at a cookbook, how often do you stop to consider its structure, language, and cultural influences when thinking about how the narrative of recipes is presented? It's easy to overlook how powerful the overarching Western perspectives are in shaping cookbook storytelling, thinking though sections focused on breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and then dessert. But for many cultures, that's not as relevant or applicable to their culinary heritages.

My guest this week, Afia Amoako, unpacks some of these overlooked considerations in conversation today. Afia runs Eat with Afia (@eatwithafia), a social media platform where she highlights Ghanaian food through culture, history, and tradition. With her platform, Afia tries to underscore the diversity of culinary traditions as a product of centuries of meticulous food science, agriculture, and understanding of the land. Outside of her blog, Afia Amoako earned her doctorate in Epidemiology and is passionate about the social context of health. She recently released her first cookbook, Eat with Afia: A Celebration of Plant-Based Ghanaian Cooking, which is as gorgeous as it is comprehensive and rigorous.

In today's conversation, Afia explores how she maintained her cultural roots with Ghanaian cuisines during her transition to plant-based eating, the importance of highlighting diverse and indigenous Ghanaian plant-based foods, the role of fermentation in Ghanaian cooking extending beyond a preservation method, and how she navigated the Western notions of categorization in cookbook development that do not fit the diverse Ghanaian modes of eating.

Resources:

• Instagram: @eatwithafia
• Cookbook: Eat with Afia
• Newsletter: https://eatwithafia.substack.com/
• Website: https://eatwithafia.com/

Mauril links to the app & website : Download on iOS | Download on Android | mauril.ca

This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign managed by the agency Podpass for Mauril, developed by CBC/Radio-Canada.

Wellness as both a culture and industry tend to visually skew more feminine—or at least the critiques and cultural assessments of it do. In some ways, this also leads to a superficial exploration of why people feel compelled to choose wellness alternatives, be it supplements or injections or beauty products. But there's more nuance needed, especially given how wellness influencers and media advocating for masculinity through magical, mystical, foreign products. What exactly goes into these cure-alls, and what consequences does it have globally?

My guest today, Adam Popescu, explores these themes through his reporting and writing. Adam is a journalist and author who writes about power and our changing world, often exploring the impacts of business on biodiversity, and commerce on culture and climate. He's here today to unpack some of the fascinating work he did for Bloomberg Business on shilajit, a supplement that has recently been favourited by the likes of MAHA proponents and Joe Rogan, but its sourcing has become contentious for many reasons.

In today's conversation, Adam talks about the traditional uses of shilajit, and how its been commodified to fit the wellness industry, explores the dynamic between power and masculinity and how it plays out in wellness superfoods, the issues surrounding sourcing shilajit from the Himalayas and what the end products in the West get cut with, and the complexities of whether or not shilajit can be sustainably sourced.

Resources:

• Adam's article in Bloomberg Business on shilajit
• Adam's website: https://www.adampopescu.com/
• Adam is leading a wildlife writing retreat next May in the Indian Himalayas with the writers Deepa Anappara, Jonathan Miles, and Kullu Suryawanshi. Basic setup is half the day we look for wildlife and the other half is writing focused with lessons covering fiction, non-fiction and memoir and nature writing. Email him for more here: [email protected]

Scroll through social media these days, and you can easily get hit with a wave of overwhelming expectations around what you should be eating, how much you should be eating, how meals should be plated and styled perfectly for internet audiences, all while trying to make a living and stay afloat. But what happens if we pause from these narratives, and reframe our cooking experiences? Today's guest, Sonali Menezes, explores just that with me today.

Sonali is an artist, zinester, and writer. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband, cat, and houseplants. She loves food, and eats it every day in celebration. Her first book, Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard, is out officially as of today through ECW Press.

In today's conversation, Sonali explores what it means to depression cook and how she structures her recipes to maintain accessibility for those navigating mental health, disabilities, and challenging phases of life, how messages around appetite and hunger in her younger years living in Scarborough and North York informed her anti-diet and approachable writing and recipe-crafting, how the art world she came up in understands eating (or not eating) and its relationship to her illustrations, and establishing gentler relationships with eating and cooking.

Resources:

• Instagram: @sonaleeeeeee
• Depression Cooking book

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