Ecosystem Restoration & Sustainable Agriculture with Pavlos Georgiadis

How do people connect with the land? What role do initiatives in sustainable agriculture and ecosystem restoration play in climate action? I explore these questions and more with Greek ethnobotanist Pavlos Georgiadis. In addition to his research in the field of ethnobotany, Pavlos is an international consultant in the areas of Resilient Development, Agriculture and Climate Policy and Biodiversity Conservation with experience across the public, private and civil society sectors in 20 countries in Europe, Asia and America. He shares some great insights into the roles that agrobiodiversity, crop varieties, and innovations in sustainable agriculture can foster resilience in foods systems.

#ethnobotany #biodiversity #agriculture

Under the Olive Tree with Anna Maggio

Who loves Italian food? I do! This week, I meet with Anna Maggio to discuss foods of the Puglia province in southern Italy! From local olive oil to wild green vegetables and homemade pasta – Anna explains the importance fresh, seasonal cuisine to the eating experience and our health! You can find recipes discussed on the show in her new book Under the Olive Tree: Memories and Flavors of Puglia.

#Italy #MediterraneanDiet #Cookbook

Sour Beers & Wild Yeast with Dr. John Sheppard

How does beer brewing work… and just how important are the different ingredients in determining the final flavor of the brew? We address these questions and others with Dr. John Sheppard, a professor of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University. We also discuss brewing tasty sour beers with a wild yeast found in the guts of some wasps and bumblebees! Unlike typical brewers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), the Lachanacea yeast has the unique ability to not produce ethanol, but also lactic acid, which gives it a distinctive sour flavor. 

#Beer #Yeast #Brewing

Ethnobotany of Wild Foods in British Columbia with Dr. Nancy Turner

Sustainable agriculture starts with the relationships people have with their environment. This week, I speak with Dr. Nancy Turner; she’s an ethnobotanist who has spent her career working in collaboration with indigenous peoples of British Columbia. We discuss how wild plant tubers are harvested and replanted in sustainable food systems and how traditional fire pits are used to cook these energy-rich vegetables. Want to learn more? Check out some of her recent books, including “Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America” and “Plants, People, and Places: the Roles of Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology in Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Canada and Beyond”.

#ethnobotany #sustainability #WildFood

The Spicebox Kitchen with Dr. Linda Shiue

Where do food and medicine meet? In the kitchen! This week, I chat with Dr. Linda Shiue, one of the few MD’s who is also a trained chef. She has dedicated her life’s work to bridging the gap between the medical, nutrition and culinary worlds. We discuss how a plant based diet impacts your health and Dr. Shiue offers some great tips on how to prepare some tantalizing plant-forward recipes! Learn more about her new book Spicebox Kitchen and follow her on Facebook, or Twitter and Instagram at   @spiceboxtravels !

#Spices #FoodIsMedicine #Recipes

Precision Nutrition with Dr. Sarah Berry

Precision nutrition enables investigation of many factors that influence our health—whether the composition of foods we eat, how and when we eat, and what influence our genetics and the composition of our microbiomes has on health. I speak with Dr. Sarah Berry, a nutrition scientist at Kings College London who was led more than 30 randomized clinical trials on human nutrition and cardio-metabolic health. She shares some key insights from the large PREDICT studies, which assess the genetic, metabolic, metagenomic, and meal-dependent effects on metabolic responses to food. Follow her on Twitter at @saraheeberry

Wild Foods & “Sex in Nature” with Dr. Łukasz Łuczaj

For our Valentine’s Day episode, I speak with Polish ethnobotanist and foraging expert, Dr. Łukasz Łuczaj about how humans connect to nature! Łukasz shares his work on wild foods—including plants, mushroom, and insects—and how this ties into cultural histories of the people who consume them. In addition to the edible aspects of the wild, we discuss Łukasz’s new book Sex in Nature: A Guide to Making Love in the Forests and Meadows to learn about the many other ways people connect with the outdoors! 

Want more content on wild foraging? Check out his YouTube channels in English and Polish and his book about life in the natural world On the Wild Side and his book Foraging in Eastern Europe.

#Foraging #WildFoods #Bushcraft

Nutrimetabolomics & Chemical Signals of the Human Diet with Dr. Nichole Reisdorph

Nutrimetabolomics is an emerging field of science that represents the intersection of metabolomics and nutrition research. Using the powerful tools of mass spectrometry and models with germ-free mice and human microbiome samples, scientists are discovering new biomarkers of health and are able to track how different foods are metabolized by the body and the gut microbiome. Our guest this week is Dr. Nichole Reisdorph; she’s working at the forefront of this exciting field to investigate how the consumption of everything from salmon to green tea, and even cannabis, impacts our metabolome. 

#Cannabis #Nutrition #Metabolomics

More Than a Sweet Treat! The Dynamic Chemistry of Maple Syrup with Dr. Navindra Seeram

In that magical period between winter and spring in the northeast US and Canada, tapped sugar maples yield buckets of clear sap. Once concentrated, the resulting sticky syrup is used as a natural sweetener for everything from breakfast treats to specialty cocktails. While sucrose does make up the majority of maple syrup, there are many other secondary metabolites present that give maple its unique flavor and contribute to its pharmacological potential. I speak with Dr. Navindra Seeram, an expert in the chemistry and pharmacology of maple trees. He explains maple chemistry and shares some fascinating projects underway in the development of nutraceutical and cosmeceutical products developed from maple.

#MapleSyrup #Maple #Pharmacognosy

Herbaria & the Natural History of Plants with Dr. Barbara Thiers

Dead plants do tell tales. Over the past five hundred years, plant hunters have scoured the Earth, collecting millions of specimens that are now held in vast collections in New York, London and Paris, complemented by smaller collections found in museums and universities across the globe. These plants were sought out not just for their beauty and diversity, but also for their potential applications in new foods, medicines, and more. I speak with Dr. Barbara Thiers, Director of the Steere Herbarium at New York Botanical Gardens and author of a new book entitled, “Herbarium: The Quest to Preserve and Classify the World’s Plants.” We discuss the fascinating history of herbaria and recount the adventurous stories of some of the famous explorers that built these collections. 

#Herbaria #NaturalHistory #Expedition