Eating Matters
181 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 16 ratingsFood has emerged as a critical policy area – and it raises big questions about health, labor, sustainability and our collective future. Join host Jenna Liut for conversations with food policy experts and leaders about the issues that shape our everyday experiences of buying, cooking and eating food.
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Episodes
Episode 31: The Cost of Eating Healthy
October 08, 2015 20:16 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBIs it possible to eat a nutritious, healthy diet on a budget? Is healthy food too expensive, or too cheap? These are the big questions on this week’s episode of Eating Matters with host Kim Kessler and co-host Jenna Liut. With these concerns creating fault lines among food advocates, some of which have said that Americans need to spend more of their income on food, it raises concerns about those who can’t currently afford enough good food to eat. On the line, Kim and Jenna welcome two exp...
Episode 30: Steak a Claim: Environmental and Animal Welfare Labeling
October 01, 2015 20:38 - 38 minutes - 35.4 MBContinuing discussion on the controversial topic of food labels, this week Eating Matters host Kim Kessler and co-host Jenna Liut are on the line with Laurie Beyranevand and Andrew Martin. Laurie is the Associate Director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems and is also an Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law School while Andrew is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News in New York who recently wrote about the animal welfare system at Whole Foods Market and the challenge...
Episode 29: Phrased and Confused: Demystifying Food Labeling
September 24, 2015 19:41 - 41 minutes - 38 MBAre food labels telling the whole truth? With the number of buzz words cluttering labels on products lately, it’s easy to feel disenchanted browsing the aisles of even the best grocers. This week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler and co-producer Jenna Liut are on the line with Stephen Gardner and Diana Winters in an effort to demystify food labels, some of which that have even spurred lawsuits. Stephen heads the food law practice at the Stanley Law Group of Dallas, Texas while Diana is a P...
Episode 28: Get Schooled: Your Guide to Child Nutrition Reauthorization
September 17, 2015 20:33 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBEating Matters is back for a new radio season! Host Kim Kessler is joined by Doug Davis (School Nutrition Association), Margo Wootan (Center for Science in the Public Interest), Kathy Lawrence (School Food Focus), and Eric Goldstein (NYC Department of Education) to discuss the scope and scale of the school lunch program and exactly what is at stake as current policy issues arise. With an ongoing discussion revolving around the SNA requesting flexibility with implementing school lunch standar...
Episode 27: California Drought & LAFPC with Paula Daniels
April 23, 2015 20:04 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is on the line with Paula Daniels, the founder of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (LAFPC), a policy based collective impact initiative of food system leaders working toward an environmentally sustainable, equitable and regionally based food system. Discussing the current drought in California, Paula shares the outlook from the agricultural perspective and details the overall crop production throughout the state and how it affects water consum...
Episode 26: Feeding Navajo Nation
April 09, 2015 19:38 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is joined by assistant producer Talia Ralph for a show focusing on feeding the Navajo Nation. The Navajo, like many other American Indians and Alaska Natives, struggle with some of the worst health outcomes in the United States. Sonlatsa Jim-Martin of the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) Project and Ona Balkus of the REACH Food Coalition via Harvard University join the program talking about their combined efforts to mobilize comm...
Episode 25: Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food
April 02, 2015 18:39 - 32 minutes - 30.3 MBGenerating over $12 billion in annual sales, kosher food is big business. This week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler and guest co-host Talia Ralph welcome Timothy Lytton, law professor and author of “Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food” to the show. Discussing how kosher food came to be a successful private-sector regulation in an era of growing public concern over the government’s ability to ensure food safety, Tim divulges the factual evolution of the kosher certifi...
Episode 24: The Biggest Discrimination Case in Ag History
March 26, 2015 19:32 - 32 minutes - 30 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler and guest co-host Talia Ralph are on the line with Anurag Varma, attorney at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP who has been an instrumental part of what is considered the biggest discrimination case in agricultural history, Pigford v. Glickman. In the 1999 case Pigford v. Glickman, African-American farmers claimed the USDA had systematically discriminated against them on the basis of race, wrongfully denying them of farm loans and assistance. A ...
Episode 23: The Non
March 19, 2015 19:37 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBThis week on a jam-packed Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler and guest co-host Chef Evan Hanczor are talking mission oriented food trucks with a plethora of guests including: Jordyn Lexton, Fredrick Coleman, and Matt Geller. Jordyn is the founder of the Snowday Food Truck and Drive Change, which operates in NYC to build and operate locally sourced food trucks that hire, teach and empower formerly incarcerated youth while Fredrick is the Drive Change/Snowday liaison. Matt is on the line from Ca...
Episode 22: Revolutionizing The Meals on Wheels Model
March 12, 2015 18:51 - 31 minutes - 29 MBThis week on Eating Matters Kim Kessler is joined by Robert Egger, the Founder and President of L.A. Kitchen, which recovers fresh fruits and vegetables to fuel a culinary arts job training program for men and women coming out of foster care and older men and women returning from incarceration. L.A. Kitchen is currently holding a pilot program at St. Vincent Meals on Wheels, and will move into its own kitchen facility in 2015. Robert pioneered this model during his 24 year tenure as the Pres...
Episode 21: Designing Healthier Cities
March 05, 2015 19:53 - 34 minutes - 31.4 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is looking at the intersection of healthy food and design and how smart design can influence physical activity. Welcoming Joanna Frank, she is the Executive Director of the Center for Active Design, a nonprofit resource for design professionals, policy makers, real estate developers and community advocates, committed to promoting and expanding the Active Design Guidelines published by New York City in 2010. Joanna explains how the center maintain...
Episode 20: The Tipping Point on Restaurant Wages
February 26, 2015 20:28 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBAre you #LivingOffTips? This week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is talking to Meg Fosque, the National Policy Director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United. ROC United exists to improve wages and working conditions for the nation’s restaurant workforce. Meg explains that with over 10 million employees nationwide, the restaurant industry is the one of the largest and fastest-growing private sector employers in the nation. Unfortunately, despite the growth and profitability o...
Episode 19: Prescribing Food, Part 2: Food & Healthcare
February 19, 2015 22:03 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBThis week on the third installment of the Prescribing Food series, host Kim Kessler welcomes Dr. Deborah Frank to Eating Matters, discussing the connection between food and healthcare. Kim asks Dr. Frank about her incredible background and how it led her to found and direct the Grow Clinic for Children at the Boston Medical Center, where malnourished kids and their families are helped by a team of doctors, social workers, and nutritionists. She goes on to share details about Children’s Healt...
Episode 18: Wholesome Wave with Gus Schumacher
February 12, 2015 20:31 - 37 minutes - 34.8 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is talking with Gus Schumacher, Vice President and Founding Board Chair of Wholesome Wave. Wholesome Wave is a national nonprofit that is helping to reshape the American food system by putting entrepreneurial, innovative thinking to work. The organization partners with farmers and farmers markets, community leaders, healthcare providers, like-minded nonprofits and government entities to implement programs that increase affordable access to health...
Episode 17: Prescribing Food, Part 2: Delivering Food to the Most Vulnerable
February 05, 2015 22:01 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBGod’s Love We Deliver started in 1985, when Ganga Stone biked over a couple bags of groceries to a friend living with HIV/AIDS. When she realized that he needed more than raw ingredients, she founded God’s Love — an organization that tailors nutritious, health-promoting meals for people living with serious illnesses. On today’s Eating Matters episode—the second installment of the “Prescribing Food” series—the organization’s Director of Policy and Planning Alissa Wassung joins assistant p...
Episode 16: Food: When It’s Not What You Think
January 29, 2015 20:40 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBDo you really know what’s in the olive oil you use everyday? How about the true contents of your morning coffee blend? This week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is joined by Michael Roberts, Executive Director of the newly established Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. Chatting with Kim about the growing menace of food fraud, the two discuss the definition of food fraud, examples of particular products that tend to be adulterated, and the dangers and conce...
Episode 15: Prescribing Food, Part 1: Making Hospitals Healthier
January 22, 2015 20:51 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBHospital food often gets a bad rap: it’s often unappetizing, unbalanced, and definitely unhealthy. This week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is addressing the issue head on. After spending over 25 years as a lawyer on the Hill, a healthcare administrator, and philanthropist, Marydale DeBor decided it was time to put delicious, nutritious food at the center of healthcare. Her organization, Fresh Advantage, employs a team of nutritionists, consultants, and other experts to help a range of ...
Episode 14: Jan Poppendieck: Hunger Programs Then & Now
December 18, 2014 20:38 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is ending the year on a high note, sitting down with author, food security expert, and the policy director with the NYC Food Policy Center, Dr. Jan Poppendieck. Initially talking about her recently reissued book, “Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression,” Jan points out that it was around the time of the great depression where the country became aware of two of today’s important public issues: farm income and hunger...
Episode 13: A Big Move in School Food
December 11, 2014 20:57 - 36 minutes - 33.9 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is discussing school food with guests Laura Benavidez of the Los Angeles Unified School District and Mark Izeman, of the NRDC New York Urban Program. Specifically inspired by the recent story of six of the largest US school districts having switched to antibiotic-free chicken (including Laura’s district), Laura explains that this is intended to protect children’s health. Amid concerns about the rise of bacteria that gain resistance to conventiona...
Episode 12: Going Local
December 04, 2014 20:54 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is recapping Thanksgiving with guest co-host Michael Melcher and guest Rebecca Morgan, the Executive Director of the Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE). The group CADE is a non-profit, agricultural development organization serving farmers, cooperatives and agricultural businesses regionally. Established in 1991, CADE has worked to connect producers of specialty farm products to markets. CADE also conducts research on ...
Episode 11: A Food Pantry in Brooklyn
November 20, 2014 20:30 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler welcomes Dr. Melony Samuels, the Executive Director of the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger. Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger (BSCAH) is unique amongst the food pantries in Brooklyn as the first “supermarket-style” pantry. The pantry allows customers to select for themselves both fresh fruits and vegetables and nutritious food items from the pantry shelves. Taking a holistic approach to combating hunger, BSCAH also serves our clients through vari...
Episode 10: Kids and Food
November 13, 2014 20:29 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is talking about kids and food and how all should be able to grow up eating nutritious food without the age old struggle of parents versus kids. Welcoming guests Pam Koch, Executive Director of the Tisch Food Center for Food, Education, and Policy at Columbia Teacher’s College, and Stefania Patinella, former Nutrition Director of Children’s Aid Society, they kick off the show debunking the myth that kids as a whole do not like eating healthy food...
Episode 9: The Role of Chefs in Food Policy Issues
November 06, 2014 20:51 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBOn today’s episode of Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler interviews Chef Evan Hanczor and Chef Michael Leviton to discuss the roll of chefs in food policy; a roll that is becoming more and more relevant in the recent years. Kim first allows the chefs to explain how they got into food and how they grew in the industry. They then move onto discussions regarding the need for food sustainability and the various methods of encouraging this. Evan moved to New York City in 2009, working at Locanda V...
Episode 8: The Implications of Information
October 30, 2014 19:27 - 34 minutes - 31.4 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is talking transparency in the food system. Inspired by the UCLA-Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Conference that took place last week, Kim welcomes Erika George, Professor of Law at the University of Utah and Andrea Freeman, Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii to the program. Every day brings increasing news articles, intensified citizen concern, and political focus to the problems of our food system, accompanied by a building con...
Episode 7: Are You Eating Safe Food?
October 23, 2014 18:45 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is leading a discussion on food safety with guests Denis Stearns, Alli Condra, Margot Pollans, and Brian Snyder. Opening the show speaking with Denis regarding his law practice experience seeing more and more food safety cases, the conversation turns to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) which was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus of federal regula...
Episode 6: Is Your Food Fair?
October 16, 2014 20:13 - 32 minutes - 30.2 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler is taking on the topic of agricultural workers and the conditions under which they work in the United States. Welcoming Sanjay Rawal and Smriti Keshari, filmmakers responsible for the documentary, Food Chains, they explain that there is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinely abused and robbed of wages. As the dir...
Episode 5: Is the Food Movement a Political Force… Yet?
October 09, 2014 21:30 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler kicks off this show about food policy and political change with guest Michael Dimock. Michael is the President of Roots of Change which works to develop and support a collaborative network of leaders and institutions in California with interest in establishing a sustainable food system in the state by the year 2030. Talking to Kim about his latest projects as well as recent legislation concerning food, Michael explains what he has observed having...
Episode 4: Insuring Better Health
October 02, 2014 20:48 - 31 minutes - 29.4 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler tackles more notable food policy issues. Opening the show with the policy roundtable, she welcomes Denis Stearns, Cathy Nonas, and Samuel Wiseman as they discuss produce that is sold at farmer’s markets. Are farmers really growing the produce that they are selling? The roundtable next discusses the new partnership between the Girl Scouts of America and Nesquick to promote cookie – flavored drinks. After the break, Kim speaks with Carlye Burd and ...
Episode 3: Joan Gussow: Food, Sustainability and the Climate
September 25, 2014 20:15 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler welcomes in studio Ralph Loglisci of the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) and via phone, Nadia Johnson of Just Food. Kicking off the show with a discussion about the recent People’s Climate March which recently occurred in New York City, Ralph and Nadia share their opinions on why the march and its cause is very connected to concerns about food and food policy. After the break, Kim gets Joan Gussow on the line to add her thoughts. Jo...
Episode 2: Neighborhoods for Health
September 18, 2014 19:57 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBThis week on Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler takes on the topic of healthy retail access, opening up the show with her roundtable discussion. Welcoming Cathy Nonas, Denis Stearns, and Paula Daniels, the group discusses timely topics in the food policy realm. Cathy is the Senior Advisor to the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention & Tobacco Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene while Denis is a founding partner of Marler Clark, LLP, PS, a Seattle-based law firm ...
Episode 1: You Never Eat Alone: How What You Eat Impacts the Rest of Us
September 11, 2014 20:51 - 34 minutes - 32.1 MBThis week, on the very first episode of Eating Matters, host Kim Kessler kicks off the episode with a roundtable discussion on food news and policy with Cathy Nonas and Denis Stearns. Cathy is the Senior Advisor to the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention & Tobacco Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene while Denis was a founding partner of Marler Clark, LLP, PS, a Seattle-based law firm with a national practice devoted to the representation of persons injured b...