Making a Meal of It David Szanto

This episode is all fish, fishing, and fisheries, including the fluid and dynamic ways that things change when water and humans meet. Conversations with fisheries researcher Kristen Lowitt and pisciculture entrepreneur Nicolas Paquin net out with a hefty catch of ideas about relationships, livelihoods, ecosystems, and innovation. For the fish edition of ‘Stick This in Your Mouth’, Maxime and David peel the metallic lid off a couple of cans of fish, and we close with art-scientist Christy Spackman’s responses to the Food Questionnaire.
Guests:
Kristen Lowitt is a settler scholar working in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek. She grew up near the Great Lakes and recently returned to the region after many years in Atlantic Canada.
Nicolas Paquin is the co-founder and operator of Opercule, an urban fish farm in central Montreal, and part of the Centrale Agricole, a cooperative of agrifood producers and actors working to develop businesses within a circular economy.
Christy Spackman is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, where she runs the Sensory Labor(atory), a research-creation collective exploring how to disrupt the status quo of how institutions and infrastructures make sense of sensing. Her recent book, The Taste of Water, which explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the 20th century.
Also mentioned:
Opercule’s Instagramthe documentary “Lake Superior, Our Helper” and its distributor, Collective Eye Filmsmore about Batchewana First Nation‘Emergent Aliens’: On Salmon, Nature, and Their Enactment by Marianne Lien and John Law
Host/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
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This episode is all about the meaty meatness of meat, including power and privilege, language and taste. Conversations with food scholar Julie Guthman and charcutier-and-butcher Phil Viens cut to the bone when it comes to politics, technocracy, artisanship, and trust. David and Maxime moderate their meat intake during ‘Stick This in Your Mouth’, and physicist (and chili-sauce lover) Liz Ainsbury responds to the Food Questionnaire.
Guests:
Dr. Julie Guthman is a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on food system transformation in the United States, including Silicon Valley’s recent forays into food and agriculture. Her new book, The Problem with Solutions, addresses this new research.
Phil Viens is a former restaurant chef turned butcher and charcutier. His Montreal shop, Aliments Viens is a nexus of trust, artistry, and care for both people and what they eat.
Liz Ainsbury is a radiation protection physicist who is based in the UK and works with research scientists and other colleagues from around the world.
Also mentioned:
Alex Blanchette's Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farmthe speculative films Soylent Green and SnowpiercerJulie Guthman on the Thriving Farmer Podcast and “The Food Police”the history of vegetarianismthe Maillard Reaction
Host/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
@makingamealpodcast
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This special episode of Making a Meal of It features 11 short conversations with participants in the FLOW Partnership, a seven-year international food systems research project. The full team met in Montreal in mid-May 2024 to share their progress, plan future research activities, and discuss ways to enable their work to transform food production, policies, and attitudes. Next week’s episode returns to the usual format, but for now, have a listen to the many ways that food, food culture, and food systems are both different and similar around the world.
FEATURING:
Alison Blay-Palmer on the FLOW PartnershipNicole Claasen, GIZ, GermanyKevin Morgan, Cardiff University, WalesAnne-Marie Aubert, Conseil du système alimentaire montréalais, QuébecLaura Gómez Tovar, Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, MexicoSamuel Gudu, Rongo University, KenyaChatura Pulasinghage, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario/Sri LankaLillith Brook, Government of Northwest TerritoriesElodie Valette, URBAL/CIRAD, FranceRachel Carey, University of Melbourne, AustraliaVictor Martinez, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, British Columbia
The FLOW Partnership is funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Host/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
@makingamealpodcast
makingamealofit.com

This episode is all about the sweet, sour, and sometimes bitter taste of sugar—and honey, maple, and molasses! Two conversations unpack the sticky subject, one with food marketing expert Dr. Jordan LeBel, and the other with pastry artist and entrepreneur, Sonya Sammut. David and Maxime taste three sweet substances during ‘Stick This in Your Mouth’, and union organizer (and podcaster sister) Elisabeth Szanto responds to the Food Questionnaire.
Guests:
Dr. Jordan LeBel professor and researcher in food and experience marketing. Jordan started working in professional kitchens at the age of 12 and has since worked as a chef, a restaurant reviewer, and an industry consultant. His research looks at how we derive pleasure and comfort from what we eat—and how that affects our consumption behaviour—and he is an expert in chocolate and maple, among other things.
Sonya Sammut a pastry artist, entrepreneur, and proprietor of Sachère Desserts. Her shop in the Centre-Sud neigborhood of Montreal is a destination for cake and ice cream lovers of all kinds, drawn by her distinctive flavour combinations and elegant visual aesthetics.
Elisabeth Szanto is a union organizer working in healthcare and higher education, trying to make sure that the people who do the work have a voice in the decisions that affect them. She has volunteered and worked in labour for nearly 40 years, improving the lives and livelihoods of thousands and thousands of people.
Also mentioned:
the story of SachertorteMiels d’Anicet (Québec honey producer)Le Faubourg à m’lasse (former molasses-scented neighborhood of Montreal)Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz
Host/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
Bees sound recording by Scottish Guy from Pixabay
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This episode is about the dynamic, transformative, ancient, and contemporary process that is fermentation. We also get into feminist theory, the queering of food, and taste in zero gravity during conversations with fermentation experts Joshua Evans and Maya Hey. David and Maxime taste kimchi, miso, and perga (bee bread) in the fermented edition of ‘Stick This in Your Mouth’, and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce responds scrumptiously to the Food Questionnaire.
Guests:
Dr. Joshua Evans is a senior researcher at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen, where he founded and leads the Sustainable Food Innovation Group. Their work brings together culinary research and development with academic research and practice in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Dr. Maya Hey is a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes at the University of Helsinki. She is the instigator of food feminism fermentation, an organization that brings together the three themes in publications and conversations that cross culinary, health, and educational participants.
Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and artist based in Toronto and working internationally. He has written and directed fourteen feature films, including Gerontophilia, which won the Grand Prix at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal in 2013, and Pierrot Lunaire, which won a Teddy Award at the Berlinale in 2014.
Other references:
a list of global fermented foodsNewScientist article about “space miso”Sandor Katz’s, The Art of FermentationHost/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
Stock media: ProSoundEffects / Pond5
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This episode focuses on the design, politics, and economics of restaurants, including some of the reasons that the experience of dining out is a lot more complex than it may seem. One conversation with restaurant design and consumer behaviour expert Dr. Stephani Robson, and another with chef-turned-social gastronomer Christophe Dubois, shed light on the dynamics of cooking and serving food. (The conversation with Christophe is in French—see transcript for English translation.) David and Maxime go humble in the bread-and-butter edition of ‘Stick This in Your Mouth’ segment, and vocalist and drag performer Gabriel Dharmoo responds to the Food Questionnaire.
Guests:
Dr. Stephani Robson is an expert in restaurant design and consumer behaviour with a master degree in Design and Environmental Analysis and a PhD in Environmental Psychology, both from from Cornell University. She works in both educational and commercial settings, helping to create and optimize hospitality environments. For more, see her LinkedIn profile or listen to this episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast.
Christophe Dubois is a former restaurant co-owner and cook who now studies and practices social gastronomy. He is also a co-founder of the Parti culinaire du Québec, a provincial political party focusing on “gastronocracy.” For Christophe, preparing food is a way to acquire confidence and a sense of belonging, to bring transformation to political and environmental contexts, and to increase solidarity among diverse communities of people.
Gabriel Dharmoo an experimental vocal artist, composer, and performer, including as Bijuriya, his curious and vulnerable drag identity inspired by South Asian culture.
Also mentioned: Eric Kim’s article in Saveur about bread-and-butter pickles
Host/Producer: David Szanto
Music: Story Mode
Stock media: ProSoundEffects / Pond5
@makingamealpodcast
makingamealofit.com