Edible Empire

Peter Eastwood is a New Zealand philanthropist, passionate conservationist and founder of Tanglewood Foundation. Peter first ventured into the business world with a small homebrew shop but this soon went from strength to strength. This business success allowed Peter to expand his philanthropic work and support many worthwhile causes - from conservation of wildlife to backing a range of educational documentaries and films.

In this episode we discuss:
• Peter’s background, his love of Africa and his journey to environmentalism
• His motivation for adopting a plant-based diet and sustainable business practices
• Peter’s passion for wildlife conservation, his special appreciation for rhinos and the surprising link between rhino and pangolin poaching
• The importance of accountability, transparency measures and creating local relationships in charity and philanthropic work
• The multiple plant-based and environmental documentaries supported by Tanglewood Foundation
• The Tanglewood Foundation’s involvement in an exciting new climate change project
• The local conservation work supported by Tanglewood Foundation in New Zealand, including Zealandia, and the environmentally friendly principles of Tanglewood Retreat
• The most powerful actions we can take as individuals to make a positive impact on the planet

Peter has immense knowledge of organisations doing valuable work in Africa. If you would like to support these conservation efforts, Peter recommends the following organisations:
• Blue Sky Society Trust
• Council of Contributors
• Elephants Alive
• Pole Pole Foundation
• Project Rhino
• Wilderness Foundation Africa

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

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Hannah O’Malley is a clinical pharmacist and lifestyle medicine practitioner based in Nelson NZ. Until recently Hannah served as Projects Lead for the health promotion charity Doctors For Nutrition, but has now taken on the challenging role of Events and Education Lead.

Hannah also founded The Better Base in 2018, to help people consume more delicious plant-based foods and educate them on the associated benefits for humans and the planet. Hannah takes us through the recently reviewed New Zealand eating and activity guidelines which lead to a broader discussion regarding the role of governments, public health measures, civil society organisations and individual actions for good health and nutrition.

In this episode we discuss:
• Hannah’s background and passion for plant-based nutrition
• An update of the work being done by Doctors For Nutrition
• The updated eating and activity guidelines for New Zealand – the positive takeaways and what still needs to be addressed
• Updated dietary guidelines from other countries in the world and how the majority are slowly but surely acknowledging plant-based and sustainable diets
• The need for a fair and equitable food system – how economic imbalances can influence food choice
• The Australian Dietary Guidelines review currently taking place
• The C40 Good Food City campaign
• The need to emphasise prevention rather than treatment of disease in guidelines

As mentioned in this episode, the Australian Dietary Guidelines are currently undergoing review. If you use these guidelines in your work or personal life the NHMRC are now calling for your input via their stakeholder scoping survey. To have your say and complete this survey.

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
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Dr Catherine Knight is an environmental historian and consultant, award-winning non-fiction author, yoga teacher, and co-founder of Better Futures Forum.
Catherine’s most recent book, Nature and Wellbeing in Aotearoa, examines the link between nature and wellbeing and argues for the restoration of ‘neighbourhood nature’. Catherine brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this chat, as we take a deep dive into humanity’s relationship with nature.

In this episode we discuss:
• Catherine’s background and passion for New Zealand’s environmental history – surprisingly, it all started with bears in Japan!
• Her life on a hobby farm and learning to see farm animals as individuals
• An update on Better Futures Forum and their work
• The wide range of health benefits from regular nature exposure
• The need for accessible urban green spaces
• The link between yoga and environmental stewardship
• What we can do as citizens to advocate for neighbourhood nature
• Buy her book here

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

In this episode, we are joined by quite the dynamic due; Dr Heleen Roex, and her daughter, Dr Juliette Roex.
Heleen is a paediatrician, Food For Life instructor and serves as Chair of Board for Doctors For Nutrition (DFN) – which, by the way, she co-founded!
Juliette is currently completing her GP training and serves as South Australian ‘Ambassadoc’ and Lead Student Advisor for DFN.
Both doctors are a phenomenal wealth of knowledge on the health benefits of a whole food, plant-based lifestyle.

In this conversation we discuss:
• Both Heleen’s and Juliette’s background and the motivation behind adopting plant-based diets
• How DFN came to life and the charity’s main aims
• The lack of nutrition training in med school, underscoring the importance of DFN’s work
• The current ‘sick-care’ model and the unfortunate exclusion of disease prevention training for doctors
• DFN’s Health Professionals Guide and other helpful resources available for health professionals and the public
• The benefits of healthy eating and the spectrum of plant-based diets.
• Bridging the gaps between nutrition, environmental health and human health

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
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Dr Ian Tibbetts is Associate Professor at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland and serves as Director of the Moreton Bay Foundation. He has authored more than 100 journal articles, many of which feature Moreton Bay, and in 2018 Ian was appointed Chair of the Scientific Expert Panel advising the Minister for Fisheries on the Sustainable Fisheries Strategy.

Moreton Bay supports large numbers of the nationally threatened green turtle, hawksbill turtle and loggerhead turtle. It is also one of three important sites in Queensland where large numbers of dugongs habitat. This is the second episode in our two-part series on Wetlands, following on from World Wetlands Day. Conservation of wetlands is crucial in our fight against climate change and for protecting wildlife - take a listen to find out more.

In this episode we cover:
• The beauty and uniqueness of Moreton Bay and why it’s so important to protect this area
• The Moreton Bay Foundation and their valuable work
• The importance of traditional owners leading the charge in caring for country
• Why wetlands are undervalued and current damage to wetland areas globally
• The importance of wetlands for biodiversity, carbon capture, water quality, ecosystem functioning, shoreline protection and human wellbeing
• Ian’s fascinating research regarding tiger sharks.
• What we can do as citizen scientists and eco-activists to help protect these valuable areas

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
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Melanie Dixon is a principal ecologist and serves as a trustee and deputy chair for the National Wetland Trust of New Zealand.
Wetlands are often undervalued, but are amongst the most productive ecosystems in the world, home to an immense variety of species and acting as important filtration and buffer systems. These ecosystems are also hugely important carbon sinks, storing ~1/3 of the world’s terrestrial carbon. Unfortunately, over the last 300 years, 85% of the world’s wetland areas have been destroyed.

On February 2nd we celebrate World Wetlands Day and this episode serves as the first interview in our two-part series on the wonders of wetlands!

In this episode we cover:
• Melanie’s background and her journey to ecology and wetland preservation
• What classifies as a wetland and why they are so important for human and planetary health
• The valuable work of the National Wetland Trust in New Zealand
• The current state of New Zealand’s wetlands and impacts of farming and development
• Why peatlands are one of the most important types of wetlands
• What we can do to conserve and restore New Zealand’s wetland areas

World Wetlands Day is held annually to celebrate the 1971 adoption of the International Convention on Wetlands in the Iranian city of Ramsar, with this year’s theme being Wetlands and Water. The National Wetland Trust will be releasing a new report on 2nd February, to coincide with World Wetlands Day.

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
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Michal Siewierski is a world-renowned, award-winning documentary filmmaker known for his previous documentaries Food Choices and Diet Fiction. Michal has continued his impactful film-making journey with his latest documentary offering Takeout.
In this documentary, Michal embarks on a daring journey to expose the real drivers behind the Amazon forest fires and devastating deforestation rates. Michal is a force for positive change and continually highlights the benefits of a plant-based eating pattern for human AND planetary health.

In this episode we cover:
• Michal’s background, his personal health struggles and journey to a plant-based diet
• His driving motivations for transitioning to documentary film making
• Michal’s previous documentaries Food Choices and Diet Fiction
• The inspiration for his latest documentary Takeout
• Why we ALL need to care about the plight of the Amazon
• Why the Amazon is burning, the impact of cattle and soy production and the local and global influences at play
• The human health consequences of deforestation in the Amazon
• The far-reaching ecological effects of this deforestation, including water quality and security issues, climate change, loss of biodiversity and desertification
• Key drivers for positive change moving forward – how can we take action?
• Michal’s current projects, including his recently launched Film Warrior Secrets

We hope you enjoy this important conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

Folks, this is our final episode for 2020 – it’s been one hell of a year. Thank you for taking this journey with us. We close out the year by reflecting on some of the incredible wisdom our stellar guests have shared with us since we kicked off in April. We are joined once again by our very first guest, the incredible Dr Luke Wilson, to help us recap, weigh in on some hot topics and share some valuable insights.

If you’re newer to the show, we hope this episode can serve as a brief synopsis of our mission and the importance of our three key pillars of health; movement, whole food nutrition and environmental wellness. We also urge you to peruse our back catalogue and catch up on any episodes you may have missed – this is one jampacked episode, and unfortunately, we just couldn’t fit everything in!

This has been a year of uncertainties, upheavals and radical changes for many. Covid-19 has sharply brought into focus the consequences of how we’ve been interacting with our environment up until this point. How we choose to recover from the pandemic is up to us, as a society and as individuals. We hope this episode can help clarify what is truly of importance, and how we can all take action for a better future moving forward. Let’s not hope to go back to ‘normal’, let’s strive for something even better. Stay safe, stay well and speak to you again in 2021!

We hope you enjoy this conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family. And remember to also visit our website for more content, and subscribe to the newsletter.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
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In this express episode, Ben and Emma weigh in on the recent EPIC-Oxford paper, which assessed fracture risk differences between plant-based eaters and omnivores. It’s caused quite the stir in the nutrition world - but as always with nutrition, there are many shades of grey and blanket statements should not be made (If you want a deep dive into some of the methodological flaws of the study, see Dr Avi Bitterman discuss that here).

We also discuss the brand new physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines released by the World Health Organisation, and Ben shares some interesting findings from a recent study looking at the anti-inflammatory compounds in oats on exercise-induced muscle damage. If that last one piques your interest, be sure to sign up to our newsletter for an oat-filled recipe coming your way soon!

As always, please tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

Dr Taisia Cech is a GP based in Nelson and founder of Plantify. Taisia’s own health struggles set her down the path to becoming a doctor and discovering a whole food plant-based lifestyle. Taisia keeps busy running Plantify and working as a GP, but states her main job is raising two plant-powered little ones; she has discovered increased clarity and a sense of urgency to look after our planet since having kids!
Taisia brings a wealth of personal experience and clinical knowledge to this discussion as we chat about plant-based pregnancies, women’s health and much more!

In this episode we cover:
• Taisia’s background and her previous health challenges
• Improvements in physical and emotional wellbeing after switching to a plant-based diet
• The inspiration behind Plantify
• Taisia’s involvement in the Nelson C40 Good Food City initiative
• Plant-based pregnancies and raising plant-powered little ones
• Women’s health – lifestyle basics from pregnancy through to menopause 
• The safety of soy products
• Lifestyle for heart health
• The need to propagate real change and move away from the current ‘sick care’ system

We hope you enjoy this conversation and would love to hear your feedback! Be sure to tag @TheLentilIntervention and help us reach more people by liking, reviewing, subscribing and sharing this episode with your friends and family.

To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.