Nerd Out: Food For Thought

Nerd out over the best podcasts, documentaries, TedTalks and collectives that will fill you up with wellness.

[PODCAST] GastroPod looks at food through the lens of science and history. Co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode every two weeks that looks at the hidden history and science behind various food and/or farming-related topics — from aquaculture to ancient feasts, from cutlery to chile peppers, and from microbes to Malbec, interviewing experts — visiting labs, fields, and archaeological digs, all along the way and discovering new ways to understand the world through food.

[DOCUMENTARY] “Cooked” is a four episode docu-series on Netflix that investigates how the four natural elements — fire, water, air, and earth — transform raw ingredients into food. It gives the viewer an enlightening and compelling look at the evolution of what food means to us through the history of food preparation and its universal ability to connect us. Each of the four episodes in the series focuses on one of the natural elements: In “Fire,” New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan learns from Australian Aboriginal hunters and a barbecue pit master. In “Water,” he looks to the kitchens of India to learn the value of pot cooking, exploring the consequences of highly processed foods in the diet. The third episode, “Air,” takes the viewer to Moroccan fields and food labs to learn about bread making. In the last episode, “Earth,” Pollan investigates how microbes help create delicacies like chocolate and cheese.

[COMMUNITY] mindbodygreen is an online lifestyle repository dedicated to inspiring you to live your best life. They want to give you everything that’s great for you: mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally and environmentally — because they believe these pillars of wellness are vital, interconnected and unified. Hence mindbodygreen (one word, not three).

[TED TALK]: A Commodities Exchange for Ethiopia: Economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin outlines her ambitious vision to found the first commodities market in Ethiopia. Her plan would create wealth, minimize risk for farmers and turn the world’s largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket.

[COLLECTIVE] Grow Where You Are is an Atlanta-based social enterprise in the field of local food systems that inspires people to grow quality, local food in beautiful systems that support the ecology, encourage the economy and improve human health. The good people at the collective design, install, and maintain multiple public and private spaces where food is produced using Agro-Ecological principles. They have been training Atlanta residents in this dynamic form of urban agriculture for more than 10 years. AT