Foodie Pharmacology Podcast

Preserving Abundance with Dr. Julia Skinner

During the period of social distancing and isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic, many of you may be spending a lot of time at home pondering what to do with your food stores. Perhaps you’re worried about how to make your pantry supplies stretch into more meals, or perhaps you’re looking for ideas on how to reduce food waste. In this episode of Foodie Pharmacology, I chat with Dr. Julia Skinner, an expert on this very subject! Julia is the founder of Root, an Atlanta-based food history and fermentation organization. Her next book, Culture Begins Here: Fermentation and the History of How We Eat will be published by Storey in 2021.

#Fermentation #FoodWaste #Atlanta

Yo Soy! The Health Benefits of Soy with Dr. Omer Kucuk

We eat this delightful legume in so many forms, from tofu, to soymilk, edamame and more! But, did you know that in addition to serving as a great source of plant proteins for the diet, that soy has also shown a number of fascinating health benefits in cancer prevention? In this episode, I speak with Dr. Omer Kucuk, a cancer researcher and physician who also happens to be an expert on the therapeutic value of soy-based foods and supplements. 

#Soy #Cancer #HealthyEating

Herbaria! Edible and Poisonous Plants with Dr. Jordan Metzger

The terms “herbarium” (singular) or “herbaria” (plural) may elicit visions of a lush tropical greenhouse… but in fact, herbaria are collections of dead plant specimens that have been collected over years, dried and pressed to large sheets of acid free paper for long-term storage in cabinets. These specimens are prepared and cared for using similar methods used for centuries by botanists and are important tools used for identifying various plants. In this episode, I met with Dr. Jordan Metzger on location at the Massey Herbarium of Virginia Tech University. We discuss the importance of herbarium collections in distinguishing edible from poisonous plants. Plus, we chat about an interesting and super dangerous member of the carrot family – the Giant Hogweed! 

#Herbaria #Poisons #Hogweed

Food Waste and Sustainability Initiatives with Dr. Peggy Barlett

Have you ever found yourself in the unfortunate position of having to toss some food from the fridge that had lingered too long and gone bad? How about food scraps or unconsumed leftovers from your plate after a meal? Food waste is a major issue in America, as well as across the globe. And guess what – it doesn’t just happen in your home kitchen! It happens in the fields, where not all foods are harvested, or on shipping lines, where only the prettiest produce is selected for resale. It happens in the production lines on school campuses from elementary schools to universities. What is most shocking is that even while 1 in 6 American children live in a state of food insecurity—not knowing where their next meal will come from—it is estimated that between 30 to 40 percent of the United States’ food supply is wasted. In this episode, I speak with Dr. Peggy Barlett, an expert who is making changes through major sustainability initiatives, about the issues of ethical eating and sustainability.

#EthicalEating #Sustainability #FoodWaste

Serviceberries + Foraging Wild Foods with Robby Astrove and Chris Willkins

They say the best things in life are free, and what better way to enjoy food than to find free healthy food growing in the wild in your own neighborhood! In this episode, I speak with Atlanta’s own Johnnie AppleSeed – forager and forester, Robby Astrove – who is absolutely passionate about making fruit accessible to people in urban centers by planting more fruit trees. I’ll also be speaking with Chef Chris Wilkins of the Root Baking Company, a wholesale bread bakery that was founded in 2015 in Charleston, SC and moved to Atlanta, GA in 2018. Robby and Chris have been collaborating on some exciting wild food projects and we’re going to dive into some recent work they’ve done with wild serviceberry. 

#Baking #Serviceberry #Forage

Eating for Peak Fitness: Sports Nutrition with Dan Benardot

Everyone knows that what we eat impacts bodily performance – and for athletes, understanding the best formula for food and liquid intake can mean the difference between a winning performance or a loss. In this episode of Foodie Pharmacology, I speak with Dr. Dan Benardot, a sports nutrition expert who has counseled professional and Olympic athletes, as well as action movie actors. He leads us through the science of how the types of food and the timing of consumption impacts athletic performance.

#Sports #Nutrition #Athlete

Antibiotics in our Food? How it Happened with Maryn McKenna

The discovery of antibiotics hailed the dawn of a new era in medicine. Once fatal infections were suddenly treatable with the arrival of these magic bullet cures. This golden era is waning, however. Today, we face a rising crisis of antimicrobial resistance with more than 700,000 deaths per year across the globe due to now untreatable infections. The broad use of antibiotics in humans and agriculture has created the conditions for evolution of resistance among microbes. But, how did we get here? Why and when did antibiotics come to be so commonplace in agriculture? How did they come to be used as “growth promoters” in livestock rearing practices? In this episode, I speak with award winning author and journalist, Maryn McKenna, who has written extensively on the antibiotic resistance crisis. We take a deep dive into the history of how antibiotics became commonplace in agriculture and how this has impacted human health. 

#Antibiotics #Chicken #Agriculture

Ethan Frisch, Burlap & Barrel and the New Spice Trade

Many of us appreciate the role that terroir has on the unique flavor and aroma of our foods, whether your enjoying coffee, tea or even chocolate. Just like these commodity crops, other botanical ingredients can feature unique chemistries and flavors when grown and harvested in different environments. Moreover, the means of processing these ingredients and the travel time from farm to your kitchen cabinet really matter when it comes to the flavor of the final product. I speak with Ethan Frisch of Burlap and Barrel, who works to bring unique spices from around the world to the dinner table.

#Spices #Nutmeg #BlackPepper

To Eat Or Not To Eat? That's The Question.

How do we determine what is food and what is not food? Is our ability to recognize a food ingredient simply a learned behavior, or is it the result of evolutionary capacities to recognize signals from our environment? In this episode, I explore the concepts of sensory experiences with foods as they relate to chemical signals in the environment. I review some of the major classes of plant natural products that impact both the ways that we experience foods and the pharmacological effects that they illicit in the body. 

#Food #Pharmacognosy #Edible

Jamaican Root Tonics with Dr. Ina Vandebroek

The Caribbean is home to an amazing assortment of botanicals from merging cultures. In Jamaica, wild plants are used to make special fermented “root tonics” not only as an enjoyable beverage, but also to boost health. Some of these are even attributed with aphrodisiac properties for men and women. I speak with Dr. Ina Vandebroek—ethnobotanist and expert in wild Caribbean plants used as food and medicine. We discuss root tonics and other local delights like “bissy” and “cerassee”, which also play an important role in food and medicine in Jamaica. 

#Jamaica #Ethnobotany #Tonics