282 episodes

Using food to explore all manner of topics, from agriculture to zoology. In Eat This Podcast, Jeremy Cherfas tries to go beyond the obvious to see how the food we eat influences and is influenced by history, archaeology, trade, chemistry, economics, geography, evolution, religion -- you get the picture. We don't do recipes, except when we do, or restaurant reviews, ditto. We do offer an eclectic smorgasbord of tasty topics. Twice nominated for a James Beard Award.

Eat This Podcast Jeremy Cherfas

    • Arts
    • 4.9 • 52 Ratings

Using food to explore all manner of topics, from agriculture to zoology. In Eat This Podcast, Jeremy Cherfas tries to go beyond the obvious to see how the food we eat influences and is influenced by history, archaeology, trade, chemistry, economics, geography, evolution, religion -- you get the picture. We don't do recipes, except when we do, or restaurant reviews, ditto. We do offer an eclectic smorgasbord of tasty topics. Twice nominated for a James Beard Award.

    The Case for Folic Acid Fortification

    The Case for Folic Acid Fortification

    Spina bifida is a neural tube defect that is one of the most common severe birth defects in the world. The main cause is a lack of folate vitamin in the diet, and in 1991, the UK’s Medical Research Council halted a trial of folic acid supplementation early because it was obvious that the supplement was preventing a large number of cases. At the time, the trial’s authors concluded: “public health measures should be taken to ensure that the diet of all women who may bear children contains an adequate amount of folic acid.”



    The United States was relatively quick to act, mandating flour be fortified with folic acid in 1998, followed by around 80 countries worldwide. Countries with mandatory fortification have seen a drop in neural tube defects of between one third and one half. But not the European Union nor, until recently, the United Kingdom.



    The European Union concedes: “There has been no real progress in preventing NTDs in Europe since folic acid supplementation was shown to be an effective preventive measure.”



    Finally, the UK has put forward proposals to fortify white flour, but many doctors say they could do much more. Europe is still to act.



    Notes





    * The US Centers for Disease Control has an excellent series of pages on neural tube defects with links to a lot more research.

    * The European Union also has a page on Folic Acid and Neural Tube Defects.

    * Helena Bottemiller Evich recently did a great and personal write-up of prenatal vitamins in her newsletter, Food Fix.

    * Mun-Keat Looi’s article Folic acid: The case to rethink the UK’s food fortification plans is behind a paywall.

    * Here is the transcript.

    * Spinach salad by Lucy Clink, photographed by me. Folic acid molecular model by Ben Mills.





       Huffduff it

    • 21 min
    Anthony Mongiello, Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza

    Anthony Mongiello, Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza

    Anthony MongielloA recent documentary tells the story of how a kid from Brooklyn invented the stuffed crust pizza, sued Pizza Hut for ripping him off, and lost. It is a fascinating story, and left me in no doubt about who actually invented the stuffed crust pizza: Anthony Mongiello, that kid from Brooklyn. But it was the incidental asides Anthony dropped in the documentary, along with a look at Formaggio Cheese, the company he built, that really made me want to talk to him about his family of cheese engineers and his own history as a cheese inventor.



    Notes





    * Take a look at Formaggio Cheese if you want to get a better idea of the “75 different Fresh Mozzarella products” they offer.

    * Stolen Dough, the documentary, is available on a few streaming channels.

    * There’s a report of the case that I certainly am not competent to judge on its merits. Still, even if Pizza Hut did not infringe on Anthony Mongiello’s legal rights, the company’s moral judgement leaves a lot to be desired.

    * Would you like to see Italian mozarella di bufala DOP being made? Of course you would.

    * Here is the transcript.





       Huffduff it

    • 26 min
    Prehistoric cooking pots

    Prehistoric cooking pots

    Harry RobsonSix thousand years ago in northern Europe, the first Neolithic farmers were bumping up against Mesolithic people, who made a living hunting and fishing and gathering wild plants. Both groups of people made ceramic cooking vessels for their food, and those pots have now revealed that in many respects the diets of the two cultures were more alike than different. The hunter-gatherers were processing dairy foods, while the farmers were cooking fish and other aquatic resources. That’s the conclusion of a massive study of more than 1000 pot fragments by 30 scientists. Harry Robson, one of the team leaders, explained the results and the light they shed onto the transition to farming.



    Notes





    * Harry K. Robson is in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. The paper we talked about is The impact of farming on prehistoric culinary practices throughout Northern Europe in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    * Here is the transcript.

    * Banner illustration shows early Neolithic farmers in Switzerland, by J. Näf, from this publication. Cover photograph of a pot from the Funnel Beaker culture in Denmark, made by the earliest farmers across the western Baltic, CC-BY-SA by Arnold Mikkelsen, The National Museum of Denmark.





       Huffduff it

    • 19 min
    The Invention of Baby Food

    The Invention of Baby Food

    In the 1950s and 1960s, the paediatric establishment in America convinced mothers to start solid foods in the first month of baby’s life, and sometimes even before they had left the hospital. This was considered a good idea even though the average baby wouldn’t have a tooth in its head for another five or six months. Amy Bentley, a professor at New York University, has charted the rise and continuing rise of baby food, from its earliest emergence in upstate New York and Michigan to its proliferation today. Commercial baby foods made sense, she thinks, as a safer and more convenient alternative to home-made options, and still today may form the bedrock of the best-nourished period of a child’s life. But they also reflected an American exceptionalism rooted in the triumph of World War Two.







    The adorable infant in Gerber’s advertisements was originally a pencil sketch that the artist said she would finish in colour if selected. Gerber preferred the sketch, and “repeated requests” prompted the company to offer a reproduction, suitable for framing, in exchange for 10¢. Strangest of all, some people seemed to think the baby was Humphrey Bogart, who was 29 qwhen the sketch was made. A little old for baby food.



    Notes





    * Get a copy of Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet from an independent bookshop. And here is Amy Bentley’s website.

    * I’ve been trying to keep you up-to-date with the lead contamination story in Eat This Newsletter, but just last week Marion Nestle took a look at lead and pesticides in baby food.

    * Here is the transcript.

    * I took the photos of baby food.





       Huffduff it

    • 29 min
    Black Stoneflower: A unique Indian spice

    Black Stoneflower: A unique Indian spice

    In 1997, Priya Mani fished something strange out of the cauliflower soup she was served at a wedding banquet in India. She didn’t know what it was, she knew only that she was not willing to eat it. Twenty-five years later, her article in Art of Eating shared her discoveries about a spice essentially unknown even in India, one that makes a very elusive contribution to flavour, best described as “you know it when it’s missing”.



    Priya Mani eventually identified the strange thing in her soup as a lichen called Parmotrema perfolatum, commonly known in English as black stoneflower. Lichens are an odd group of plants made up of algae or bacteria living within the cells of a fungus. You’ve seen them on rocks and trees, I’m sure. Black stoneflower turns out to be ubiquitous in Indian cooking, though its presence is not often remarked. Its popularity may now be threatening its survival.



    Notes





    * Priya Mani has two Instagram channels, @priya.mani.design and @cookalore, which is a showcase for her Visual Encyclopaedia of Indian Cooking.

    * Her article Tasting a Tasteless Taste: Stoneflower Lichens as a Spice in Indian Food is in Art of Eating No. 111 and, contrary to what I said in the podast, seems to be available to read.

    * With apologies for the delay, here is the transcript.

    * Banner photo by Priya Mani. Cover photo of putative Black Stone Flower by s_bala.

    * You do know about John Wyndham’s book Trouble with Lichen, I hope.





       Huffduff it

    • 25 min
    A New Story for Maize Domestication

    A New Story for Maize Domestication

    The ancestry of modern maize has long been a puzzle. Unlike other domesticated grasses, there didn’t seem to be any wild species that looked like the modern cereal and from which farmers could have selected better versions. For a long time, botanists weren’t even sure which continent maize was from. That seemed to be settled with the discovery in lowland Mexico of teosinte, a wild and weedy relative of maize, and a lot of work to understand the genetic changes from teosinte to maize. The big problem was that the genetic work also seemed to contradict the story, by finding remnants of different types of teosinte. A new research paper sorts out the story, which is now more complicated, better understood, and offers some hope for future maize breeding.



    Notes





    * A summary of their research by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and his colleagues is available at Science.

    * Here is the transcript.

    * Cover photo, sculpted head of a Mayan maize god, “represented as a vigorous youth with flowing hair likened to corn leaves”, he was considered to be the quintessence of beauty and refinement. Taken by me at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. Banner photo by William H. Martin, who became very rich making these sorts of postcards.





       Huffduff it

    • 25 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
52 Ratings

52 Ratings

Duncan McHale ,

Thoughtful, informative, and entertaining

I enjoy listening to Jeremy's thinking and that of his guests on food, its origins, preparation, economics, politics, history, and everything else connected with it. The presentations are thoughtful, serious but leavened with humor and humility. The podcast doesn’t claim to provide definite answers but rather leaves one thinking, which is of great service in a world of food fads and panics.

bunner808 ,

deliciously interesting

A great variety of fascinating topics covered in an enlightened and enjoyable way. Short and to the point podcasts then send you down tracks to follow on your own for those topics and guests that the listener finds most interesting…

worksforme2! ,

Listen only if you’re curious about food and agriculture

And who isn’t curious about food and ag.? :) This podcast manages the fine line between delightful comfort food and adventurous-to-me forgotten food. Jeremy’s voice is lovely, his curiosity about food is boundless, and respect for his guests is sincere. Whether it’s the history of bread or heirloom apples in Ireland (600?!?), I enjoy each episode. Thank you for sharing your conversations with us, Jeremy.

Top Podcasts In Arts

The Bright Side
iHeartPodcasts and Hello Sunshine
Fresh Air
NPR
The Moth
The Moth
99% Invisible
Roman Mars
The Recipe with Kenji and Deb
Deb Perelman & J. Kenji López-Alt
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics
iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries

You Might Also Like

The New Yorker Radio Hour
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
The Ezra Klein Show
New York Times Opinion
On the Media
WNYC Studios
A Taste of the Past
Heritage Radio Network
The Food Programme
BBC Radio 4
The Food Chain
BBC World Service