AnthroDish

Sarah Duignan
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  • Food
  • Updated weekly

AnthroDish is a podcast that explores the powerful relationships between between food, culture, and identity through the lens of anthropology. Hosted by anthropologist Dr. Sarah Duignan, each episode explores the stories behind what we eat and drink, reflecting larger social, political, and historical systems. Featuring conversations with chefs, scholars, writers, and food experts, each episode blends current issues with anthropological ideas to highlight how food shapes (and is shaped by) the world around us. AnthroDish invites you to look at food not only as nourishment, but as a window into our ever-shifting world.

  1. 4 days ago

    182: Depression Cooking Under Capitalism with Sonali Menezes

    Scroll through social media these days, and you can easily get hit with a wave of overwhelming expectations around what you should be eating, how much you should be eating, how meals should be plated and styled perfectly for internet audiences, all while trying to make a living and stay afloat. But what happens if we pause from these narratives, and reframe our cooking experiences? Today's guest, Sonali Menezes, explores just that with me today. Sonali is an artist, zinester, and writer. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband, cat, and houseplants. She loves food, and eats it every day in celebration. Her first book, Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard, is out officially as of today through ECW Press.   In today's conversation, Sonali explores what it means to depression cook and how she structures her recipes to maintain accessibility for those navigating mental health, disabilities, and challenging phases of life, how messages around appetite and hunger in her younger years living in Scarborough and North York informed her anti-diet and approachable writing and recipe-crafting, how the art world she came up in understands eating (or not eating) and its relationship to her illustrations, and establishing gentler relationships with eating and cooking.     Resources: Instagram: @sonaleeeeeee Depression Cooking book

  2. 22 Sept

    181: What Can Vegetables Teach Us About the Future? with Ali Francis

    Industrialization has undoubtedly and profoundly shifted our relationship with food globally, and it can be hard to remember the work being done outside of commercialized growing to remain connected to the land through vegetables. What stories are held in the diversity of vegetable species across the globe? Today's guest, Ali Francis, is here to explore their fascinating and curious lives! Ali is an Australian-born journalist and former Bon Appétit reporter living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Cut, BBC, The Guardian, TASTE, and other publications. She's the co-founder of Best Food Blog, a journalist-owned publication about eating. Ali also writes Anyway!, a newsletter about building meaningful lives in these bizarre modern times. Her first book, The Curious Lives of Vegetables: An Artful Exploration of the Wonderful World of Edible Plants, Their History, and Their Crucial Role in Our Future is out now, and is a wild quest to uncover the stories we don't usually hear about plants. In today's conversation, Ali touches on how her and the book's artist Adriana Picker tackled such an immense and robust task of sharing plant narratives through writing and gorgeous illustrations, what factors have contributed to the declining biodiversity of vegetables in the world, how colonial naming conventions shaped our relationship to vegetable varieties, and the important role that seed savers play in building more vibrant, flavourful futures. Resources: Ali's Website The Curious Lives of Vegetables Anyway! Newsletter Best Food Blog Instagram: @alifrancis.me

  3. 15 Sept

    180: Season 11 Launch [Solo Episode]

    As we start up season 11 of the podcast, I wanted to share some life and technological updates, as well as what you can expect of this season. We're in a landscape where the steakhouse is back, big meat, wellness, and Ozempic are in, there's recalls abounding across America that are spiralling into Canada for lettuce and berries and jalapenos and eggs. I'm frustrated about the state of global food systems, and the imperialist and fascist leadership that is swiftly impacting everyday lives. My focus this season is to look at what's going wrong, how it's impacting everyday people, and also how different cultures and experiences across the world are grappling with these imperialist changes. Maybe it feels as heavy to you as it does to me. Maybe it feels like it's too much. But it iss underpinning my decisions about which guests to have on this season. Fight fire with really great people doing really important, practical work.  We've got a new look, a powerful line up of guests, and a really fruitful series of conversations for you!  Follow Sarah/AnthroDish:  Website: https://www.anthrodish.com/  Substack: https://sarahduignan.substack.com/  Instagram: @anthrodishpodcast TikTok: @anthrodish Sarah's New TV Show, Mysteries of Ancient Medicine

  4. 28 Apr

    179: Looking at How We Eat to Understand Power & Social Movements with Amber Husain

    When it comes to talking about food, we often to choose to look at what people are eating rather than how. And it's this distinction that today's guest, Amber Husain, explores more fully in her new book, Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live. Amber is a writer based in South London, UK. In addition to Tell Me How You Eat, she has also written Meat Love and Replace Me. Her essays on politics, literature, and art have been published in Granta, The New York Times, Baffler, and more. She has a PhD from UCL in the history of art and mind-body medicine in the late 20th-century Britain. She teaches history of art, creative writing, and criticism.  In today's conversation, Amber explores some of the ways that appetites can be re-examined, and challenge persistent tropes of eating that narrow down to individual choices. Using socialist and feminist lenses, she speaks to food movements and moments in history that have revealed reasons to eat and live, and the empowerment that comes from using food as a question rather than an answer. Resources: Book: Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live Amber's Website: https://amberhusain.com/   Instagram: @amberhusa1n

  5. 21 Apr

    178: What Makes for "Good Food" for Immigrant Women in British Columbia? with Isabela Bonnevera

    Sustainability is a word you hear a lot, but it tends to go uncritically examined in application. So what can it encompass when it comes to food experiences, particularly for immigrants and newcomers to Canada? My guest this week, Isabela Bonnevera, is here to unpack this further.  Isabela is currently a doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB and engages with participatory methods to explore how immigrants are shaping sustainable food transitions in cities. She also examines how sustainable food policies impact food justice outcomes for immigrant communities. She's the co-founder of Feminist Food Journal, and we work together on Feminist Food Friend events as well. This week, Isabela is here to explore the more participatory elements to her research. Using a method called photovoice, she has worked with a group of immigrant women in the Vancouver area to dig into the question of what makes food sustainable—or more accurately, what is "good food" and what does sustainable really look like when the word doesn't always translate into diverse cultural experiences with food? We speak to how this bottom-up approach ties into the broader policy frameworks, the findings of their photovoice explorations, and its implications for filling policy gaps.  Resources: LinkedIn Good Food Document and Videos  Feminist Food Journal Previous AnthroDish episode!

  6. 14 Apr

    177: How Can Appetites Be Shaped for the Future? with Alicia Kennedy

    When it comes to thinking about the future of food, is it possible to re-imagine our individual and collective appetites around what we want it to be? Taste is subjective, sure, but it's also deeply embedded in the land, histories, politics, and sociocultural dynamics we navigate throughout our lives. And as my guest this week, Alicia Kennedy, writes, our tastes are also shaped by how we value (or don't value) ingredients and their own histories.  Alicia is a writer from Long Island. She is the author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, and On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, which is out officially as of today through Hachette. Her newsletter, From the Desk, covers food, culture, politics, and media, and she is launching Tomato Tomato, a literary journal of food writing, in 2026.  Alicia is back on the show today to speak about On Eating, exploring the process of weaving the personal and cultural histories of ingredients through her chapters, the interrogation of early appetites and their influence on her food writing, the dynamics of feminine appetites in food media, and the importance of properly considering the labour of growing and producing food as a way to unpack Western appetites. Resources:  Book: On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites From the Desk newsletter Website Tomato Tomato magazine  Instagram: @aliciadkennedy

  7. 7 Apr

    176: The Forgotten History of Wheat in North Texas with Rebecca Sharpless

    When thinking about the food and agricultural landscape of Texas, the mind immediately goes to cattle, corn, and cotton—certainly not wheat. But as my guest this week, Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, shares, the region of North Texas had a robust wheat culture from the 1840s until the post-World War Two period. So what made North Texas a great place for wheat? And what are the implications of wheat as culture and cultivator?  Rebecca is here today to talk about her new book, People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas, out now through Univeristy of Texas Press. She is a professor of history at Texas Christian University, and writes on food, labour, and women. She is also the author of Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, and Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South.   In today's conversation, we're exploring the forgotten history of wheat harvesting in North Texas, including how it complicates the story of plantation economies and enslavement histories in the south, the profound impact of mechanization on milling and distributing wheat, and the post-war influences that led to wheat's decline, despite having lasting cultural importance for Western appetites and baking.  Resources:  People of the Wheat book Rebecca's university website

  8. 31 Mar

    175: Food, Value, and Heritage in Singapore's Hawker Centres with TW Lim

    My guest today, TW Lim, is here to explore how nation food constructions have played out in Singapore through the hawker centres the country is known for. TW writes on the relationships between politics, history, and culture and how they have shaped eating habits in Singapore. By day, he writes about technology, but he also writes about food and value, or the "regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something."  While known to many other countries as a "food paradise" over the last 50 years, TW unpacks how Singaporean food worth and value is decided upon in a country where is food identity. In his new book, Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore, he looks at the development of hawker centres, home kitchens, and restaurants of Singapore that gets at the culture and business of food in Singapore.  In today's conversation, we look at the early government policy of Singapore and its lasting impact on the development and maintenance of hawker centres, grappling with notions of authenticity as economic and cultural values around food and eating shift through time, labour and wages for multi-generational hawker workers, and how Singapore as a food paradise holds up a mirror to the food habits of USA and Asia. Resources:  Website: https://humblescrivener.com/  Newsletter: Let Them Eat Cake

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About

AnthroDish is a podcast that explores the powerful relationships between between food, culture, and identity through the lens of anthropology. Hosted by anthropologist Dr. Sarah Duignan, each episode explores the stories behind what we eat and drink, reflecting larger social, political, and historical systems. Featuring conversations with chefs, scholars, writers, and food experts, each episode blends current issues with anthropological ideas to highlight how food shapes (and is shaped by) the world around us. AnthroDish invites you to look at food not only as nourishment, but as a window into our ever-shifting world.

Information

  • Creator
    Sarah Duignan
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    189
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    AnthroDish

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