116: How Ozempic and Stomach Paralysis Impact Relationships with Food with Emily Wright

Across social media and TV advertisements, drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have risen in recent years and are quickly associated with weight loss and celebrity lifestyles. Yet semaglutide drugs (which includes Ozempic and Wegovy) are intended originally as a drug for use by adults with type 2 diabetes, to manage blood sugar levels along with diet and exercise. With the shifts towards weight loss, Ozempic has become a powerful representation of our relationships with food, and the stories of how its used and experienced by type 2 diabetics are not always at the forefront.

My guest today, Emily Wright, is here to share her personal experiences with Ozempic and the challenges she faced with severe complications from it, including gastroparesis. Emily Wright is a powerful educator, advocate, and public speaker. She is a member of two speaker’s bureaus and a regular guest lecturer at University of Toronto, Ryerson University, George Brown College, and elementary and secondary schools across the GTA. With a special ability to speak to people of all age levels, Emily uses her personal voice and story to confront stigma and create awareness across a spectrum of important social issues, including mental health and addition, homelessness, and bullying. Emily Wright has a Master’s degree in Teaching from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. She currently works as a curriculum consultant, speaker, and teacher for a Toronto, Ontario School Board.

Emily today uses her personal story to speak to the nuances of using Ozempic, managing type 2 diabetes, and how relationships with food and body can be profoundly impacted by Ozempic.

Learn More About Emily:

115: Unboxing the History of TV Dinners with Jeff Swystun

When you think about the concept of a TV dinner, there is a wash of nostalgia that can takeover how you remember the tastes and functions of the dinner itself. But the story of how these TV dinners came to our North American freezers is a fascinating and fun exploration into a lot of the social and technological progress of the 20th century.  

My guest today is here to unbox the TV dinner, Jeff Swystun. Jeff is a globally respected branding expert and author. He is the former Chief Marketing Officer for Interbrand and Chief Communications Officer at DDB Worldwide. He has ghostwritten ten business books, and has authored two of his own. He has spoked at over 75 conferences and appeared on media outlets such as CNBC, ABC, NBC, CNN, CTV, BNN, and the CBC. 

Jeff is here today to discuss the exciting topics of his latest book, TV Dinners Unboxed: The Hot History of Frozen Meals. He explores what makes the TV dinner such a perfect tool to unpack the social, cultural, and historical contexts of our North American dining habits, tackles the mystery of its origins, and examines how feminism, the Baby Boom, and television worked together to change eating habits and family gatherings. 

Learn More About Jeff! 

114: Honouring Maternal Ancestries through Cooking and Restaurant Development with Ruben Rodriguez of Nai Restaurant Groups

This is the first episode back after the holiday break, so I hope that this finds you rested, stuffed, and balancing all the new year expectations as well as you can be!  

For today’s show, I am chatting with chef Ruben Rodriguez, who is a Galcian-born chef and restauranteur of Nai Restaurant Group. Ruben immigrated to New Jersey with his family when he was 11 years old and found inspiration by the Galician food traditions he grew up with. This led to him eventually opening his own first Spanish tapas restaurant, Nai in 2010 in New York City’s East Village. Nai means “mom” in Galicia, which honours his mother and maternal ancestry through his cooking practices and has gone on to shape his more recent expansions through Nai Restaurant Group. 

He's on the show today to discuss his journey navigating the New York restaurant scene as he started out, and how it led to three new concept restaurants, Amigo by Nai, Café Emilia, and Kobo during the thick of COVID-19 lockdowns that involved honoring the mother-work of chefs from different ethnicities and backgrounds, and creating fun and creative strategies to make restaurants work with ever-changing health restrictions in that time.

Sarah's Upcoming DesignTO Event with Mason Studios and Pastiao:

Learn More About Ruben:

113: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security with Dr. Matias Margulis

Before we jump into today’s show, I wanted to give listeners a heads up that today is the last AnthroDish episode for 2023, but we will be returning with more episodes this season on Tuesday, January 9th so be sure to tune back in this new year! 

Today we’re exploring a topic that I personally find sometimes quite challenging to access and fully understand the nuances of: international food policy. Discussions about international food regimes are critical for understanding how broad choices trickle down to local economies, though often we default to looking at global issues in isolation, rather than thinking about how trade, intellectual property rights, human rights, and many other aspects inform food policy. What happens when we address them in tandem to address global problems around food – and which world trade rules are shaped by certain organizations for food security efforts?

My guest this week is Dr. Matias Margulis, who is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching interests are in global governance, development, human rights, international law and food policy. In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive professional experience in the field of international policymaking and is a former Canadian representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for international NGOs and the Brookings Institution.

Matias discusses his most recent book with me today, Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security, where he unpacks how UN organizations chose to intervene in trade law making due to concerns about how specific trade rules could have negative consequences for world food securities. He unpacks the complexity of international organizations, their roles, and the limitations or exercises of power in their representations of international communities.

Learn more about Dr. Matias: 

112: Dinner on Mars - How Technologies that Could Feed the Red Planet Can Transform Agriculture on Earth with Evan Fraser and Lenore Newman

What happens when two food scientists get bored in a pandemic? It turns out, they start to brainstorm how they would feed a colony of humans on Mars. What might seem like a trivial question is actually a more nuanced exploration of how we can sustain ourselves on Mars, and what we can learn from this thought experiment back on Earth, too.

My guests this week are Drs. Evan Fraser and Lenore Newman, two food scientists that started a series of conversations to pass the time during lockdowns, which then turned into something much more important. Dr. Evan Fraser is the director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, and Dr. Lenore Newman is the Canada Reseach Chair in Food Security and the Environment at University of the Fraser Valley. They developed the series of conversations into their book, Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet, and Transform Agriculture on Earth. Using leading-edge agricultural technology, the answers to their questions are weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting – like lab-grown chicken breast or cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast! Evan and Lenore structure their book through online conversation, and show how setting the table off-planet can allow for thinking about how to supercharge efforts to produce sustainably here at home as well. 

Learn More About Evan and Lenore:

 

111: Reframing Cookbooks, and Salad as Comfort Food with Nat and Bec Davey of Reframeables

When you think about comfort food, what types of meals or dishes come to mind – is it mashed potatoes and gravy, the best of your grandmother’s kitchens, or a chickpea curry? Often we have this idea around “comforting” foods that is rooted so deeply in our family ties and meaty or hearty cultural dishes. Yet sometimes, comfort food can be a bit more imaginative, if you reframe it. 

Today I’m talking with Nat and Bec Davey, two writer sisters who like to use art and conversations to reframe more than themselves – you might say they practice socially conscious self-help. Sometimes they do this through conversations with each other, and othertimes they bring in artists, thinkers, and creators to help us along. They always leave their audiences with some new reframeable to chew on as we all work through life’s big and small stuff together.

Our conversation looks more directly at their cookbook, which is called A Different Kind of Comfort Food, and unpacking what traditions and expectations we have not only around what food can be classified as comfort, but also how language and structure can shapeshift recipes and the kitchen experience in more accessible and creative ways.

Learn more about Nat and Bec!