Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Alexis Agliano Sanborn

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

Join Editorial Collective member (and our extremely valued Managing Editor) Jessica Carbone in conversation with Alexis Agliano Sanborn about her upcoming article on how Japan’s school lunch programs connected people and supported communities in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlighting civil-society initiatives, Sanborn discusses how school lunch programs were – and continue to be – a source of resiliency in local food supply and distribution networks.

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Jayeeta Sharma and Bryan Dale

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

For this episode, Jayeeta (Jo) Sharma and Bryan Dale join Editorial Collective member Bob Valgenti to discuss their project (and subject of their upcoming COVID-19 Research Dispatch) “Feeding the City, Pandemic and Beyond”, which has developed a model of public scholarship that documents food system experiences, community challenges and local resilience. By engaging grassroots voices, from farmers and urban growers to school food advocates, market provisioners and other local stakeholders, they highlight actions toward sustainable food solutions for building a socially just and resilient global city.

Jo Sharma
Bryan Dale

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 20.4: Adrienne Bitar

For our third series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who contributed to our final issue of 2020, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of “Working with Ingredients”, “Taste and Technology in East Asia”, “Excursions”, and “Dolce”.

For this episode, Editorial Collective member Lisa Haushofer is joined by Adrienne Bitar to discuss her article, “Decoding Miracle Food Cures for COVID-19”, in which she investigates the many “miracle” food cures for COVID-19 that continue to circulate on social media, such as “Israeli lemon baking soda tea” and “Yoruba pepper stew”, both presented as simple recipes for the complex disease that crippled the planet in 2020. While “miracle” cures are nothing new, the changing roles and perceptions of authority, food and new media are arguably more urgently in need of attention at a time when the pandemic is far from over, and consumers ever more desperate for a quick-fix return to “normal”. As Adrienne importantly underscores, while there’s little danger for most in consuming small daily amounts of lemon juice or pepper stew, there is more at stake in following a recommendation to ingest bleach, or in simply believing that lemon juice can be as protective as any scientifically tested and approved recommendation (also typically subject to peer-review before social media dissemination).

Podcast: COVID-19 Dispatches #7

For the seventh episode of our podcast series, produced in collaboration with “Meant to be Eaten” on Heritage Radio Network and dedicated to dispatches from the food world in reaction to the first months of the pandemic (the focus of recently published 20.3 issue), issue editor Bob Valgenti is joined by Dr. Saumya Gupta to discuss her essay, Lockdown Destitution: Delhi, March 2020, in which she describes the enormous challenges faced by millions of working class people in response to India’s national lockdown in March this year, many of whom were forced to flee their cities – places of informal employment (much of it related to selling food, but not deemed “essential” under lockdown) – and the precariousness of education in a country marked by a stark divide in access to the technologies required to accomplish remote learning.

For 30% off single-print issues of “Food in the Time of COVID-19”, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.

Web Exclusives #7: “Not Quarantine Food”

*For our recently published special issue, “Food in the Time of COVID-19”, we received more submissions than we could accommodate in the print version of the issue, so the following article forms part of a series of submissions which will be published as Web Exclusives which speak to the theme of Gastronomica 20.3.

By Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

May 13, 2020: Los Angeles, California

On April 1, I texted Becca a photo of roasted pasilla chiles stuffed with quinoa, carrot, onion, and Queso Oaxaca.

Figure 1: Stuffed pasilla. Photograph by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera © 2020

“That doesn’t look like quarantine food!” she responded. Maybe she thought I was foolin’.

“Why not?” I texted back.

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