Deconstructing Dinner Deconstructing Dinner

Across the US and Canada, there is an exciting emergence of a unique type of food festival – a festival for garlic! When looking at a map of where garlic festivals are emerging, it’s clear that garlic knows no geographic boundaries – it’s a food that grows well in most climates across the continent. This popularity of garlic festivals appears to be communicating an important story – a story of our longing to connect and celebrate with one another around food, a story of people wanting to make more flavorful dinners, and a story of a food that has become an incredibly important crop for small-scale farmers.  
Features:
Ken Meter, Professor, Crossroads Resource Center (Minneapolis, MN)
Liz Primeau, Author, In Pursuit of Garlic (Mississauga, ON)
Bill Christopher, President, Christopher Ranch (Gilroy, CA)
Bob Baloch, Farmer, The Fresh Veggies (Brampton, ON)
Peter McClusky, Founder, Toronto Garlic Festival (Toronto, ON)
JP Gural, Farmer, Samsara Fields (Waterford, ON)
Ross Breen, Farmer, Stone Soup Farm (Harlowe, ON)
Paul Hoepfner-Homme, Farmer, Victory Garden Vegetables (Cobourg, ON)

Honey – one of the most natural foods. In the supermarket, honey is found labelled as coming from clover, buckwheat, alfalfa or maybe orange blossom. The label might just read ‘honey’ without any indication of its source of nectar. But is the nectar source even important to those of us wishing to become more conscientious eaters? As Deconstructing Dinner has discovered, there is a curiosity surrounding honey – a curiosity, which has rarely, if ever, been spoken…. until now!
It turns out, in Canada, 80% of all the honey produced in the country is from the nectar of canola – yet, nowhere on the grocery store shelves do we ever see honey labelled as “canola honey”. And so the question becomes – just where is all that canola honey ending up? 
Features 
Vaughn Bryant, Professor, Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)
Brian Campbell, Certified Master Beekeeper, Blessed Bee Farm (Richmond, BC)
Jill Clark, Spokesperson, True Source Honey (Lancaster, PA)
 

Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman sits down with Mark Kastel - the co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute - a populist farm policy research group based in Wisconsin.
Mark and Jon discuss the changing face of organic food. Using eggs as an example - Mark explains how eaters can exercise a more discriminating awareness when purchasing 'organic' eggs. 
Features: 
Mark Kastel, Co-Founder, Cornucopia Institute (La Farge, WI)
 

It's not uncommon for most of us eaters to view the system supplying us with food as being separate from us, but on this podcast, one of Canada's most recognized food policy analysts offers his perspectives which suggest otherwise. Instead, the food system has in many ways been designed to satisfy the demands that we make every day to eat the same food, year-round, regardless of season, geography or climate.
It seems that we eaters, have become so accustomed to that fresh tomato slice on our sandwich, that glass of orange juice in the morning, or that salad of fresh greens, that these very demands have shaped the food system, and, subsequently, shaped the world we live in. But are these demands for a perpetual harvest necessary? Could we do just fine or even better by choosing a more seasonal approach to eating?...., and, if so, could this way of eating reconstruct the food system for the better?
Features:
Rod MacRae, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University (Toronto, ON)

On this all-new podcast, Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman examines some of the key differences between conventional and organically produced wheat. 
Features:
Stephen Jones, Director, Washington State University Research Station (Mount Vernon, WA)
Kevin Christenson, Owner, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill (Burlington, WA)
Sam Lucy, Farmer, Bluebird Grain Farms (Winthrop, WA)
Roy Lawrence, Farmer, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC)
Scott Mangold, Baker, Breadfarm (Edison, WA)

This episode #193 marks the final broadcast of Deconstructing Dinner before we embark on a much-needed break.
Producer & Host Jon Steinman speaks about the need to step away from producing new shows and what future might lie ahead. Jon also shares some reflections on the past 5 years of producing this weekly one-hour radio show and podcast, and offers suggestions to those involved in the responsible food movement - a movement which this show has helped track its evolution and certainly one that this show has in many ways been a part of.
Also on the show - a brief update (regrettably brief!) on our September undercover investigation on a B.C. egg business who had been fraudulently marketing their product as being from their own farm when in fact the property on which the business operated was not a farm at all! It appears the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has vowed silence instead of transparency.