Policy in Plainer English

In a special year-end episode, we reverse directions. This season is about bringing skills from food professionals to bear on how we shape our individual diet, but what about moving the other way - from individuals to commercial scale production?

The main lesson from this episode is to listen to the Mission ImPASTAble podcast series (thank you to the Sporkful for permission to use the clips we play).  You can find the series online.

We also reference several previous Policy in Plainer English episodes, including Medically Tailored Meals and the Health Care Systems introduction to season four. 

For some of the reports also referenced in this episode:

• CDC statistics on eating patterns can be found in their Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys. 
• The GAO report on federal efforts to address diet-related chronic health conditions. 
• Editorial on the structure for supporting nutrition incentive programs. 
• USDA overview of federal nutrition programs.

Full season archive here. This podcast is part of the Food Access in Health Care program at Bi-State Primary Care Association. 

This season of Policy in Plainer English is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $189,892.00 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

We interview two chefs, Dale Conoscenti and Leah Pryor, about how to take all the food appreciation skills we've covered in the last episodes, and apply them to shaping what goes on our dinner plates.

This episode mentions the 'sounds of water pouring' experiment, which NPR reported on in 2014, and then sound engineers got geeky about deconstructing.  A more famous experiment is the effect of sound on how we perceive chips as stale or fresh. . . less interesting audio for a podcast since that experiment focused on not hearing the crunch. The impact of sound on food design is not a fleeting concern. For example, this article from Atlas Obscura describes efforts to make airplane food taste "right" with the loud background noise of the jet engines.

In this episode I also note that we're skipping over a lot of information on scaling up flavor for commercial applications. For example, ice cream inclusions don't need to only work at 10-degrees Farenheit, they also have to withstand processing at -20-degrees because to get them to combine with the ice cream both the ice cream base and the inclusions need to be the same temperature and the ice cream is processed at -20.  If you want an amusing account of going from home kitchen experiment to commercial food production, Dan Pashman from The Sporkful has you covered with his Mission ImPASTAble series.

If you want to learn more about the Comprehensive Pain Program that Leah discusses, check out this link to the program - including its own short podcast episode "Can Food Fight Pain?".

Full season archive here. This podcast is part of the Food Access in Health Care program at Bi-State Primary Care Association. 

This season of Policy in Plainer English is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $189,892.00 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

Today it's all you need to know about flavor appreciation . . . or at least it's all you need to know to follow along the rest of this season. Nonetheless. We're bringing it all together in an interview with David Keck, Master Sommelier and wine maker at Stella14, who promises us that there's nothing to be intimidated by in the world of elite wine tasting. (Show Notes Update: Stella14 is now open to the public).

This episode highlights key take aways from the previous two interviews. If you haven't listened to those, pause and listen to those first. It will be helpful for understanding this one.    

• How We Experience Flavor  
• What Makes a Food Popular  

This episode references The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert, by Richard Betts and you can hear Betts talk about it on this video from a bookstore event. He appears at 14:00.

This episode also mentions the Vermont wine pairing project, which was part of market development work by the Vermont Fresh Network in 2017 - 2019. Resources from the program are linked here. They include a guide to Vermont wine tasting, written with help from Rowan Jacobsen of Episode 1 fame. Learn about current Vermont activities from the Vermont Grape and Wine Council.

Full season archive here. This podcast is part of the Food Access in Health Care program at Bi-State Primary Care Association. 

This season of Policy in Plainer English is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $189,892.00 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

Sensory professional Roy Desrochers explains how food producers can use flavor profiling methods to understand why consumers respond the way they do to products and how to make their food more appealing. Roy has had a long career in food, flavor, and smell  – he is currently running a grass fed milk project with University of Vermont Extension. We also get a few truffle reminders from last episode’s guest, Rowan Jacobsen. If you haven’t heard that episode yet, it’s best to start there. 

This episode mentions the spaghetti sauce TED Talk by Malcolm Gladwell (about Howard Moskowitz), which is found here. 

One thing listeners may note about this conversation is that we’re highlighting principles used to increase consumption of items where there’s a health-based reason to eat more of them. For other food products, the goal is to eat less. This earlier update post provides examples of conversations about that issue.

If you want a few more podcast episodes about sensory analysis and the food business:

• Plant- and Fungus-Based Meats - Gastropod, includes details on attempting to make non-animal "meats" that taste like their animal-based equivalents.  
• Mission Impastable - The Sporkful, a quest for the perfect pasta shape, in which the host offers his own "flavor leader" criteria. This series appears again later in our podcast season as part of the episode "A Pause to Think Bigger"

Full season archive here. This podcast is part of the Food Access in Health Care program at Bi-State Primary Care Association.  

This season of Policy in Plainer English is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $189,892.00 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

Author Rowan Jacobsen is the guest on this introduction to how we experience flavor, and the implications when something changes that experience - for example, if we lose our sense of smell. 

Rowan's most recent book is Truffle Hound. If you want a primer in describing flavors, try his Apples of Uncommon Character as a study guide - it would be a nice companion to the apple chapter of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, which provided the passage on sweetness read during this episode.

If you want to learn more about Thanksgiving Dinner Candy Corn, the original Twitter thread was posted here.  I fact checked the review against a bag of said candy corn for accuracy. It's accurate.   

Before English Majors (or French Majors for that matter) complain about Proust, I realize that the novels have since had an updated translation and the new title is In Search of Lost Time and the quote we read was re-translated differently as well . . . really I just care about the madeleine. Which some scholars claim was actually toast.     

We mentioned sommeliers and their vocabulary of scent. If you want to read more about that, and what happened when COVID-19 arrived in wine and perfume country in France, the New York Times covered the topic in this September, 2021, article.   

Full season archive here. This podcast is part of the Food Access in Health Care program at Bi-State Primary Care Association. 

This season of Policy in Plainer English is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $189,892.00 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

With some commentator's license, this episode uses a presentation by Dr. Shantanu Nundy to set the stage for a new season of discussing food and health care. It reviews key concepts from previous podcast seasons and considers changes to the systems for primary care that we might see in the near future.   

Thank you to the Northeast Telehealth Resource Center and Dr. Nundy for permission to use this audio, which is taken from the closing presentation at the 7th Annual NETRC conference. Commentary added by the Policy in Plainer English podcast is our own and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the original presenter. 

Links referenced in this episode:

• Dr. Nundy's new book: Care After COVID
• NETRC's Telehealth Resource Library - also check out their new Telehealth Classroom project! 
• Audio-Only Telehealth Services
• Lifestyle Medicine
• CDC - Obesity & COVID-19 Hospitalization Risks
• Journal of the American Heart Association - COVID-19 Hospitalizations Attributable to Cardiometabolic Conditions 

The Policy in Plainer English podcast is returning this fall! And it's going deeper on the food access and health care topic. Want to catch up ahead of the next season? Here are some concepts from Season Three that will be important:

• Lifestyle Medicine Part 1
• Lifestyle Medicine Part 2
• Children and Healthy Eating
• Medically Tailored Meals

And you can find many more resources (in written format) at the site VTFoodInHealth.net.

We're wrapping up our series on food and health care with a conversation with Georgia Maheras of Bi-State Primary Care Association. 

If you'd like to browse all the episodes in this series, we've linked them below in order. This season the episodes built on each other more than in our previous series, so we  recommend taking it from the top and working your way through: 

• Food & Health - An Introduction
• Hunger Screening - Part 1
• Hunger Screening - Part 2
• Predicting Food Insecurity
• Care Coordination
• Care Navigator 
• Help Me Grow
• Bonus: Panel on Connecting to Food Resources
• Food and Transportation
• Medically Tailored Meals
• Lifestyle Medicine - Part 1
• Lifestyle Medicine - Part 2
• Children & Healthy Eating
• Food Prescription Pilot Program 

As mentioned on this episode, Bi-State Primary Care Association recently received a grant to continue work on food in health. Keep an eye on the site VTFoodInHealth.Net for more details.

This season was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $99,960 with 0 percentage financed with non governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government. (The podcast was a very small percent of the award).

In our final example of a food in health care project, we welcome guests Chelsey Canavan and Natalie Romano from Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Jennifer Fontaine from the Upper Valley Haven to discuss a new Food Prescription pilot.

You may have also heard of Produce Prescriptions, which are a way for health care practices to help patients increase their fruit and vegetable consumption. Produce Prescriptions have a variety of sources for support, including from the USDA, and you can read examples of different forms these programs take here. This Food Prescription project includes plenty of produce, but provides a more full diet with whole grains, dairy, and lean protein as well.

One thing mentioned in this episode is waivers and forms that allow organizations to share patient information. The Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation published a guide in 2020 on navigating HIPAA in food and health care partnerships.

Also, here is the article on which I based my comment that we don't produce enough fruits and vegetables to meet basic dietary recommendations.

This episode covered a lot of territory and pulled together many themes from the season. Join us next episode for the season finale. 

This episode we talk with two people leading programs that engage with children around topics in healthy eating: Koi Boynton, from Healthy Roots Collaborative, and Emmy Wollenburg, from RiseVT speaking about Dinner Together.

If you're interested in programs designed to help children access healthy food, our earlier episode on Help Me Grow also touched on this topic.

In this episode, Koi mentions that Farm-to-School is a long-established approach in Vermont - which is true, we are one of the leading states in the country in farm-to-school programming. To learn more about Farm-to-School resources, check out the Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day) website.

We did not talk a whole lot about the idea of making healthy choices convenient choices, but that, too, is an established approach. For an example of programs designed with the idea of making healthy food choices the default, check these resources from the Vermont Foodbank.