Episode 31: Sparking Joy in Nutrition and Wellness for Kids with Haile Thomas

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was extra-excited to share this week’s interview with you! I’m speaking this week with the remarkable Haile Thomas, an 18-year-old international speaker, health activist, vegan food and lifestyle influencer, and the youngest Certified Integrative Health Coach in the United States. Haile is the founder and CEO of the non-profit HAPPY (Healthy, Active, Positive, Purposeful Youth). She founded HAPPY at age 12 to address the need for free and affordable plant-based nutrition and culinary education in under-served and at-risk communities, as well as in schools and through annual summer camps.

Haile has personally engaged over 15, 000 kids and thousands of adults around the world since she began her activism in 2010. She was inspired to pursue this passion after her family successfully reversed her father’s type-2 diabetes without the use of medication, only with healthy eating and lifestyle choices, and upon learning that kids were increasingly being diagnosed with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. All of Haile’s programs, projects, and initiatives are geared towards engaging, educating, and empowering young people to make healthy lifestyle choices and live their best lives.

Haile and her work have been featured on the Today Show, Food Network, CNN, Buzzfeed, MTV, NowThis, Dr. Oz, Teen Vogue, Fortune, O Magazine, and the Experience Magazine… to name a few!

In our discussion, Haile shares her experiences founding and running HAPPY, and how to spark a joy and curiosity in kids around food and nutrition (yes, even picky eaters!). She speaks to how her own business and personal connection to food has grown with her through time, and how that’s impacted her business goals and desires. We also discuss what makes folks in her generation so successful in being advocates for social justice and equity on the world stage. Haile is a woman I am constantly inspired by, and it was a true delight to be able to speak with her for this episode!

Listen to the full episode in the player above, or on iTunes, Stitcher, or Spotify!

Resources:

Haile’s Website

Haile’s Instagram

Episode 30: Immigrant Visibility in Food Systems with Vanessa Garcia Polanco

When we think of what a food system is, we tend to think of it as a static structure, rather than a complex system of people working at different levels, or the diversity of communities working towards sustaining foodways. This week, we’re discussing how to create more diverse and equitable food systems in America with Vanessa Garcia Polanco. Vanessa is a current graduate student in Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. She is an alumna of the Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute and the University of Rhode Island.

 As a member of Food Solutions New England and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Vanessa has served at the local, state, and regional levels to promote democratic empowerment, racial equity, and visibility of immigrants in food systems. She worked as a chair for communications and outreach at the Rhode Island Food Policy Council and as a program assistant at the URI Cooperative Extension.

In our discussion, we explore the idea of what a food system is and the limitations of the term, the ways in which language and actions in food studies can disempower or disenfranchise people of colour and immigrants’ agency, and how Vanessa challenges these ideas with her own research and writing. I first came across her work on Twitter through a hashtag she started called #FoodJusticeFridays and was struck by her activism and perspectives on the food system, so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with her – as I’m sure she’s going to be out changing food policy and economics one day not so far from now!

Listen to the full episode in the player above, or download on Stitcher, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio!

Resources:

A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism by Eric Holt Giménez

Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Challenge 

Farming While Black by Leah Penniman

To Serve a Larger Purpose 

Get Social with Vanessa!

Twitter: @vpgvisions

Vanessa’s Website

Hashtags to Follow: #foodjusticefridays #dominicanfoodstudies #foodisneverjustfood

Episode 29: YouTubing and Food Storytelling with Katie Quinn

One medium I take a lot of inspiration from in terms of food storytelling is YouTube (as I’m sure many of you do as well!). Personally, it was the first platform that made me connect to cooking in a fun and accessible way, and reduced my fear of learning about the kitchen. Today we’re talking all about video creation and food storytelling with one of my favourite YouTubers, Katie Quinn of the QKatie channel.

Katie is a video journalist, host, and cookbook author. Katie’s YouTube channel has over 3 million views, and her slogan is #keepitquirky because she thinks life is more enjoyable when you don’t take yourself too seriously. An Ohioan turned Brooklynite, Katie was based out of NYC for the past nine years. She has talked about food on NBC’S Today Show, as a contestant on the Food Network’s “Chopped” and as a judge on Beat Bobby Flay. Katie attended Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris and is the author of the “Avocados” cookbook. Katie is currently based out of London, England, where any day of the week you can find her recording videos and finding new adventures or experimenting with new recipes. She is also the host of the delightful and refreshing Keep It Quirky podcast.

This interview with Katie was such a lovely way to start of the new year. We explore the many ways we can tell food stories through different mediums both digitally and with television, and how her connection to food transcends into how she connects with people and shares her story. We explore her experiences in culinary school and the influences these had on how she shared her own stories through video journalism, and the ways she feels her creativity has shifted and grown from cooking into a diverse array of platforms. It’s always exciting for me to dig deeper into the places and values food holds for us, and Katie really opened up to exploring these with me in the interview. This lead us through how different mediums shape the stories we tell and the audiences we speak to! Her approach to food and cooking is infused with her Keep It Quirky slogan, and it was a dream to be able to speak with her about the ways her connection with food has developed and grown as her QKatie brand has also evolved over the years.

Listen the the player above, or on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play or iHeartRadio!

Get Social with Katie!

Katie’s Website

QKatie on YouTube

Keep it Quirky Podcast

Katie on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook

Episode 28: The Dirt on Neanderthal Diets with Dr. Anna Goldfield of The Dirt Podcast

AnthroDish is back and ready to kick off the new year and new season! We have a lot of really amazing interviews in store for you.

I want to start off the new season with a topic that I find endlessly fascinating: Neanderthals! I’m speaking this week with Dr. Anna Goldfield about what Neanderthal diets looked like and how that impacted their lives. Anna is a zooarchaeologist from Boston, whose PhD research focused on Neanderthal nutrition and subsistence behaviour. In addition to all of her super cool research, Anna is one of the co-hosts of one of my favourite new podcasts, The Dirt, where she and co-host Amber get excited about all the weird, amazing, mysterious, and fascinating stories from our human past.

In this interview, we explore what Neanderthal diets generally would have looked like by breaking down some of the major findings of her doctoral work. She analyzed the faunal remains from Neanderthal (Middle Paleolithic) and anatomically modern human (Upper Paleolithic) archaeological sites to understand how these two populations used the food resources around them. What emerges is an interesting and nuanced understanding of what their diets might have looked like, and what food-related practices might have contributed to their extinction.

Listen to the episode in the player above, or find it on Stitcher, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio! And if you love AnthroDish, please drop us a line or leave us a rating and review on iTunes!

Resources Mentioned:

Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Anna’s SAPIENS Column

John D Speff’s Paper, “Putrid Meat and Fish in the Eurasian Middle and Upper Paleolithic: Are We Missing a Key Part of Neanderthal and Modern Human Diet?”

Get Social with Anna:

• Instagram

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Website: http://thedirtpod.com

Episode 27: So What? Thoughts on the 2018 Season (SOLO Episode)

Photo by Nat Caron Photography

I’m not going to lie - I took a break from interviewing this November to avoid burning out. I didn’t want to resent having to interview people (when I truly LOVE connecting with them), and I didn’t want to just ask the same questions on repeat without a positive energy coming through. So that meant relying on the episodes I had banked, and also means you get a solo episode from me today!

A good friend of mine operates by a “So What? Who Cares?” approach to her research and work, and I’ve quickly adopted that to sharpen the impact and relevance of my own work. This solo episode centres some of the main lessons and thoughts I’ve had about AnthroDish using the So What/Who Cares approach. It occurred to me this past month that I don’t really share my own thoughts or reflections on the show the way that other podcast hosts do. Part of that is intentional, as I like to let these interviews speak to the ideas and issues I’m passionate about - but I thought it would be fun to put together some key takeaways I’ve personally had to wrap up the 2018 season, and share some of the changes I’m considering for the 2019 season.

With that being said, AnthroDish will be going on a two week HIATUS after this episode - I speak a lot about slowing down and connecting with the land and food we eat, but I’ve found myself rushing around a lot more lately, and want to remember to practice this myself. We’ll be back on air January 8th, 2019 for the new season, and starting off with a super exciting interview with one of the co-hosts from The Dirt Podcast! So let me know your thoughts about the 2018 season on social media - what did you love/like/dislike, what themes do you really wish we explored, or what guests do you think would be great additions to the show? I so value the connections I’ve made since starting this show, and I want to honour what YOU as listeners want to hear from this show as much as I can for 2019.

Until then - I hope you enjoy this solo episode and time with your families for the holiday season. I know it can get stressful and busy (coming from a mum who’s daughter was born on Christmas Day), but always remember that you can slow down, say no to parties or events that don’t really feed your soul in any meaningful way, and focus your time on the people you really want to celebrate life with, whoever that community may be!

Episode 26: Reconnecting to Family Foods with Allergies with Kalyn Fantasia

I first met this week’s guest, Kalyn Fantasia, at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend (shoutout to Sarah Van Den Berg!). The theme of the party was “Identities,” so we spent much of the evening moving from a group of relative strangers to friends that shared thoughts about their identities from the depths of their hearts.

When Kalyn shared her stories and experiences (all while kneading dough to make fresh gnocchi), I was immediately impressed by her strong connection to her history and cultures, and the ways she negotiated these while having many intolerances and allergies - and thankfully, she was happy to share these stories with you this week! Born and raised in Toronto, she is a multi-hyphenated artist/manager (depending on what day you ask her!) and she is an artist manager for local Canadian bands, as well as a photographer, amateur painter, and homemade foodie.

As a long time allergy kid with a growing list of food intolerances, Kalyn had always had a strong connection to the food she ate and a stronger understanding of the effects of food on her body. She spends at least 3 hours a day in the kitchen and finds pleasure in putting in the work to create comforting meals she can eat without worry. She’s been recently exploring the ways in which family history, food, and identity are related, and how these interconnect with modern food and modern food intolerances. This conversation reflects her passions and interest in exploring all of these interconnections, and it felt like such a privilege to interview Kalyn about this.

Listen in the player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or iHeartRadio!