Milpa is an ancestral way of farming in Mexico and other regions of Mesoamerica that involves growing an assortment of different crops in a single area without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. This provides people in the region with a wide variety of foods and a balance of nutrients. In recent years, with the introduction of farming based on synthetic herbicides, milpa has changed, and land is used to grow just a single crop. This change in agriculture has led to the rise of ultra-processed foods in these rural areas, which is impacting the nutritional health of the people. This change in agriculture, together with the rise of ultra-processed foods in these rural areas, is affecting the nutritional health of the people.

In this episode, bioanthropologist Anahí Ruderman shares her experiences working with a milpa growing community in Veracruz, Mexico, that is resisting the food of globalization as it tries to cook up a healthier future.

Anahí Ruderman is an Argentinean biological anthropologist with a Ph.D. in biological sciences from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. She is currently an associate researcher at the Instituto Patagónico de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas of Argentina. Anahí is interested in  processes related to the nutritional status and diet of contemporary populations in Latin America in the context of globalization and food transitions. She uses analytical tools from different disciplines that range from human evolutionary biology, population genetics, and human ecology to history and sociopolitics.

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SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by Written In Air. The executive producers are Dennis Funk and Chip Colwell. This season’s host is Eshe Lewis, who is also the director of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program. Production and mix support are provided by Rebecca Nolan. Christine Weeber is the copy editor. 

SAPIENS is an editorially independent magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Chicago Press. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. 

This episode is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program, which provides in-depth training for anthropologists in the craft of science communication and public scholarship, funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.