Episode 35: Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Food Industry with Hassel Aviles

As someone who’s worked in the food industry and has a partner and many friends that still work in the industry, the topic of mental wellbeing in these intense environments is of great importance to me and a topic I’m always keen to explore on the show.

 My guest this week is someone who has done a terrific job creating a space in these environments for conversations around mental health and addictions. I’m speaking Hassel Aviles, a Toronto native with over 20 years of culinary experience in the food and beverage industry, specifically focused on restaurants, events, and entrepreneurship.

 Hassel founded the Toronto Underground Market (or TUM) in 2011, which is a community festival turned incubator designed for food entrepreneurs, chefs, and home cooks. TUM was attended by thousands each month, and produced enormous tourism for Toronto, birthing over three dozen food brands in the GTA (including restaurants, celebrity chefs, food trucks, and catering companies). She leveraged TUM to launch and co-found the successful and delicious La Carnita, which is now a global restaurant franchises.

In addition, Hassel is the co-founder of Not 9 to 5 with Chef Ariel Coplan. Not 9 to 5 is a Canadian non-profit focused on normalizing the mental health and addiction conversations while providing connections to resources for those working in the food and beverage industry. In our interview, we explore her experiences creating and growing Not 9 to 5, and discuss the reasons that this particular food industry culture is such an important place to tackle conversations around mental health and addictions. Here is my interview with Hassel.

Listen in the player above or download on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Googly Play, or iheartradio!

Not 9 to 5

• Website

• Not 9 to 5 Mental Health and Addiction Survey

• Instagram: @not9to5_

• Facebook

Episode 34: Exploring Food and Stress at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site with David Ebert & Dr. Amy Scott

This week’s episode is extra special, as we have TWO phenomenal guests on: Dr. David Ebert and Dr. Amy Scott are here to talk about life and food at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia! This episode runs a bit longer than most, because I wanted to weave together multiple ways of looking at and celebrating the past, and the role that the past plays for contemporary Canadians. Louisbourg is truly one of the most magical places I’ve been to, and Amy and David play a huge role in why I love the Fortress so much.

In the first part of the episode, I speak with David Ebert, who is part of the management team for Parks Canada’s Cape Breton team and the Fortress of Louisbourg. We explore the history of the Fortress, and he discusses what makes it such a fascinating part of Canadian and French history. David paints a vivid picture of what food and life were life for residents of the fortress during the 1700s, and the ways food is used now to make modern visits to the Fortress sensorial and interactive (aka super fun!)

During the second part, I speak with Dr. Amy Scott, an anthropology professor from the University of New Brunswick, and the project director of the bioarchaelogy field school at the Fortress. Dr. Scott has teamed up with Parks Canada for a long-term rescue archaeology project designed to document and protect the burial grounds out at Rochefort Point, where the shoreline has retreated about 90m in the past 300 years. I speak with Amy about the bioarchaeology side of things – we look at how we can learn about individual lives, stresses, health, mobility and diet just from their skeletal remains and burial context!

Parks Canada creates such an immersive experience and Amy’s UNB team does a fabulous job connecting with the public and engaging in dialogues about climate change in Canada and how it impacts not only our present but our past. It was such an honour to speak with these two about their work because they’re both so passionate and engaging!

Check out the episode in the player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or iHeartRadio!

Resources      

Fortress of Louisbourg Association

Parks Canada Website

UNB Bioarch Website

Field School on Facebook and Instagram

Aerial shot of the Fortress, used with permission from Parks Canada.

David Ebert of Parks Canada (Image used with permission from Parks Canada)

Dr. Scott works with a field assistant at the excavation site.

CultureFete at the Fortress of Louisbourg

PS! Since we’re on the topic of food… Louisburger has without a doubt the best burgers you’ll find!

I spend the better part of my year daydreaming about Bobby’s veggie burgers.

Episode 33: Sugar and Tension - Type 2 Diabetes and Gendered Health in New Delhi with Dr. Jo Weaver

What happens when someone gets diagnosed with type 2 diabetes? What happens after to that person’s connections with their culture, identity, and family?

This week we’re exploring the connections between type 2 diabetes and gender for women living in New Delhi with Dr. Jo Weaver. Dr. Weaver is an assistant professor in the department of International Studies at the University of Oregon. She is a biocultural medical anthropologist, who’s research addresses chronic diseases, mental health, and food insecurity in India and Brazil. She also co-hosts the podcast Speaking of Race (another fantastic show sponsored by the AAAs).

In our interview, Dr. Weaver highlights some of her key findings from her research with women managing type 2 diabetes in India. She explores the strong connections between cultural identity, gender roles, mental wellbeing and dietary shifts that these women experience after their diagnoses, and the connections between the lived experiences of these women and some of the biochemical markers for stress that she found during her studies. Dr. Weaver very poignantly sums up the complexity of diabetes as a social disease in this interview, and I’m excited for you to learn as much from her as I did.

Listen in the player above, or download on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio

 Resources:

Dr. Weaver’s Book, Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India

Speaking of Race Podcast

Website

Episode 32: Escape to reality - Food, Growing, and Starting a Business with Ben Cullen

I’ve known this week’s guest, Ben Cullen, for a number of years, and am always excited to talk food with him at any gathering we’re at. So naturally he’s been someone I’ve wanted to bring on the show for quite a while! Ben is the owner of the recently launched Cullen’s Foods, and a fourth-generation urban gardener. As the son of expert gardener Mark Cullen, Ben has worked with his father his whole life, but officially joined Mark full-time in January 2017. Together they write a weekly column for the Toronto Star on horticulture, and have a new book out, Escape to Reality: How the World is Changing Gardening, and How Gardening is Changing the World.

On the show, Ben discusses what makes gardening such an important tool to actively reimagine more sustainable, healthy, and happier futures. Ben has a unique perspective on the food world, as he spent some time working in the food industry following his agricultural education. We explore the nuances of these dual identities and the implications they have for his business, along with how he uses this knowledge to increase accountability and sustainability of food business in local spheres.

I love talking with Ben because we come to the idea of food sustainability from two different lenses. I think this is important, given the echo chambers of social media: it’s easy to get caught up in ideas and spheres that make us comfortable… and the ideas in commerce and business certainly don’t come naturally to a biocultural anthropologist like me! When we’re thinking about anti-consumerist futures, it’s important to look at how different backgrounds and experiences can help shape these futures together.

Enjoy the episode in the web player above, or download on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or iHeartRadio.

Resources:

• Ben and Mark Cullen’s Escape to Reality: How the World is Changing Gardening and How Gardening is Changing the World

• Ben and Mark’s Toronto Star Column

Get Social with Ben!

• Cullen’s Foods Website

• Cullen’s Foods on Instagram

Episode 31: Sparking Joy in Nutrition and Wellness for Kids with Haile Thomas

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was extra-excited to share this week’s interview with you! I’m speaking this week with the remarkable Haile Thomas, an 18-year-old international speaker, health activist, vegan food and lifestyle influencer, and the youngest Certified Integrative Health Coach in the United States. Haile is the founder and CEO of the non-profit HAPPY (Healthy, Active, Positive, Purposeful Youth). She founded HAPPY at age 12 to address the need for free and affordable plant-based nutrition and culinary education in under-served and at-risk communities, as well as in schools and through annual summer camps.

Haile has personally engaged over 15, 000 kids and thousands of adults around the world since she began her activism in 2010. She was inspired to pursue this passion after her family successfully reversed her father’s type-2 diabetes without the use of medication, only with healthy eating and lifestyle choices, and upon learning that kids were increasingly being diagnosed with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. All of Haile’s programs, projects, and initiatives are geared towards engaging, educating, and empowering young people to make healthy lifestyle choices and live their best lives.

Haile and her work have been featured on the Today Show, Food Network, CNN, Buzzfeed, MTV, NowThis, Dr. Oz, Teen Vogue, Fortune, O Magazine, and the Experience Magazine… to name a few!

In our discussion, Haile shares her experiences founding and running HAPPY, and how to spark a joy and curiosity in kids around food and nutrition (yes, even picky eaters!). She speaks to how her own business and personal connection to food has grown with her through time, and how that’s impacted her business goals and desires. We also discuss what makes folks in her generation so successful in being advocates for social justice and equity on the world stage. Haile is a woman I am constantly inspired by, and it was a true delight to be able to speak with her for this episode!

Listen to the full episode in the player above, or on iTunes, Stitcher, or Spotify!

Resources:

Haile’s Website

Haile’s Instagram

Episode 30: Immigrant Visibility in Food Systems with Vanessa Garcia Polanco

When we think of what a food system is, we tend to think of it as a static structure, rather than a complex system of people working at different levels, or the diversity of communities working towards sustaining foodways. This week, we’re discussing how to create more diverse and equitable food systems in America with Vanessa Garcia Polanco. Vanessa is a current graduate student in Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. She is an alumna of the Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute and the University of Rhode Island.

 As a member of Food Solutions New England and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Vanessa has served at the local, state, and regional levels to promote democratic empowerment, racial equity, and visibility of immigrants in food systems. She worked as a chair for communications and outreach at the Rhode Island Food Policy Council and as a program assistant at the URI Cooperative Extension.

In our discussion, we explore the idea of what a food system is and the limitations of the term, the ways in which language and actions in food studies can disempower or disenfranchise people of colour and immigrants’ agency, and how Vanessa challenges these ideas with her own research and writing. I first came across her work on Twitter through a hashtag she started called #FoodJusticeFridays and was struck by her activism and perspectives on the food system, so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with her – as I’m sure she’s going to be out changing food policy and economics one day not so far from now!

Listen to the full episode in the player above, or download on Stitcher, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio!

Resources:

A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism by Eric Holt Giménez

Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Challenge 

Farming While Black by Leah Penniman

To Serve a Larger Purpose 

Get Social with Vanessa!

Twitter: @vpgvisions

Vanessa’s Website

Hashtags to Follow: #foodjusticefridays #dominicanfoodstudies #foodisneverjustfood