The Jonathan Samen Hot Buttons, Cool Conversations Discussion Series gets off to an exciting start. Michael Twitty is the James Beard award-winning author and culinary historian of The Cooking Gene and the recently released Koshersoul: The Faith & Food Identity of an African American Jew. He has baked challah with Jewish cooking maestro Joan Nathan and guided Padma Lakshmi of "Top Chef" fame on southern cooking. As a Black, Jewish, gay man, Twitty embodies many identities. Food is where he brings his whole self.
Michael Twitty is in conversation with Robin Washington, an acclaimed veteran journalist and The Forward's Editor-at-Large.
Seaweed often gets a bad rap – maybe it just has the wrong name! Many regard it as a nuisance – slimy, smelly stuff that mars our beaches, entangles us while swimming and not good for much, except of course making sushi. But an increasing number of marine scientists, ecologists, entrepreneurs and foodies are beginning to appreciate seaweed’s remarkable properties.
The benefits of seaweed are enormous and we are only starting to explore its myriad applications, from farming to pharmaceuticals, from food to packaging. Some species can take CO2 out of the atmosphere at 5 x the rate of land-based plants, and in addition to being a sustainable food source for humans and animals, it is one of the fastest growing plants. Nori provides more protein than soy, more vitamin C than orange juice and it is full of Omega 3s, iodine, zinc and magnesium – and it doesn’t require agro-chemicals, fertilizer or antibiotics! Seaweed has been called the miracle crop because it can be cultivated easily, protects the planets by trapping carbon, it provides many foodstuffs, supplies jobs and generally does good.
Of course, in some parts of the world, like Ireland, farmers have been cultivating seaweed as an animal food and fertilizer for centuries. Our Forum will talk to experts around the world about why they are so excited about algae and how they became involved in this huge field of sustainable seaweed aquaculture.
Please join our discussion with Dr. Stefan Kraan, a Dutch marine biologist and founder of the The Seaweed Company in Galway, Ireland who specializes in high-quality, seaweed products that he produces in Ireland, India, Morocco and the Netherlands.
Sean Barrett is the founder of Dock to Dish, an expansive network of small-scale community-based fishery programs, as well as The Montauk Seaweed Supply Company in Long Island. Sean is currently pioneering a “sea to soil” movement to revive an ancient symbiotic relationship between regional gardens, farmlands and local oceans through the cultivation of macroalgae, such as sugar kelp, which he converts into fertilizer and livestock feed.
Vincent Doumeizel is Senior Advisor for the UN Global Compact, Head of the Safe Seaweed Coalition and director of the food program at Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
Image credit : Pexels
# Resources
[Article from The Guardian about Seaweed Farming in NY](https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/26/new-york-seaweed-farming-kelp-producers)
Why do we make the choices we make when it comes to food? GBH Curiosity Desk’s Edgar B. Herwick III interviews two experts on the science of food to uncover some of the fascinating and surprising facts that influence our food consumption.
The typical American diet can be considered a health threat. The combination of processed food, excess red meat, high salt and excess sugar are associated with the high incidence of obesity, diabetes-2, heart disease, certain cancers, and other diseases. But there is a solution.
Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research. Included in his many famous research projects are the Nurses’ Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts have involved nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments, providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices. Dr. Willett discusses how diet directly affects health, and how people can avoid the numerous diseases associated with harmful diet. He also talks about his best-selling book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. And he explains how misinformation about diet and health must be addressed by professionals.
Increasingly frequent droughts are destroying food production levels in the more drought-prone half of sub-Saharan Africa. Although most people have attributed this gathering crisis to climate change, about 80 percent of the cause of the droughts is that fallowing – a process of allowing the forest to grow for fifteen years or more to replace the soil’s organic matter — isn't happening. This problem has in turn caused a huge drop in soil organic matter and a resulting lack of rainwater absorption rates. The good news, however, is that there exists an extremely simple technology, called “green manure/cover crops,” that can reverse these soil organic matter losses within just a few years, at virtually no cost to the farmers.
Putting all that organic matter back into the soil sequesters tremendous amounts of carbon. In fact, if all the world’s farmers and ranchers were to sequester as much carbon/acre/year in their soils as tens of thousands of smallholder African farmers are already doing, they would sequester, long-term, over 50 percent of all the carbon the world needs to sequester in order to reach the goals of the Paris Climate Accords.
**[Blessed Unrest](http://https://bio4climate.org/blessed-unrest-program/)** is a conference that features speakers around the world offering a variety of practical solutions from nature. The aim is to encourage attendees and viewers to arrive at the conclusion that collectively we humans can change course to a healthy and bountiful planet for all.
Image courtesy of Flickr
Each year, American consumers, businesses, and farms spend $218 billion a year growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten. That’s 52 million tons of food sent to landfill, plus another 10 million tons discarded or left unharvested. Food waste is responsible for roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 37 million cars. At the same time, one in seven Americans is food insecure.
The concept of “waste” is changing, and companies are embracing the circular economy where unused or discarded products can be reused to make new products. In the food industry, entrepreneurs are stepping up to seize opportunities. They are developing solutions bringing efficiencies to the supply chain (upstream) and reducing food waste (downstream). They are also using less water and energy, as well as looking for new solutions to soil improvement.
In this discussion and presentation from seven local start-up companies, guest speakers will try to explain the systemic causes of food inefficiencies and define what it means to move toward "zero food waste." They will also showcase innovations and talk about new opportunities in manufacturing, farms, and upcycling.
**Startup Exhibitors:**
[AdaViv](https://www.adaviv.com/)
[Cambridge Crops](https://www.cambridgecrops.com/)
[GreenChoice](https://www.greenchoicenow.com/)
[Magnomer](https://www.magnomer.com/)
[New Bedford Port Authority](https://portofnewbedford.org/)
[Shameless Pets](https://shamelesspets.com/)
Photo from Han Cheung's video ["Tracing Dining Hall Food Waste"](http://Tracing Dining Hall Food Waste). CC 2012
Look ahead to the future of food through the eyes of local chefs and experts at this BostonTalks about forecasting food. BostonTalks is WGBH’s smarter happy hour. It’s smarter because we feature three short talks, and it’s happy hour because the entire event takes place in a setting with drinks, conversation and occasionally some trivia.
Sandro Galea, M.D., DrPH is an international leader in the field of public health. Here he discusses the numerous socio-economic factors that impact health, and also provides some comparisons between the cost of health and the state of health between the U.S. and other wealthy nations. Photo: By Thatcher Cook for PopTech [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Mark Bittman, Food Author, How to Cook Everything; and former New York Times columnist Toni Griffin, Professor in Practice of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Netherlands Photo: [Piush Dahal/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/piush/with/4619312141/ "")
Life on the farm now has a whole new meaning. Join us to talk about all the farming being done right here in our city, from the growing going on in shipping containers, vacant lots, and the roof of a local CrossFit, to the creation of “green-collar jobs” and the benefits of scratch cooking. (Photo: [Homegrowndotorg](https://www.flickr.com/photos/homegrowndotorg/ "")/Flickr)
