Title: The Grocery Store Is a Media Environment: What Sociology Reveals About Food, Power, and Choice

Summary:

Alissa Overend of MacEwan University argues that the food choices Canadians make every day are shaped by forces most of us never consciously examine — from curated grocery store layouts and deceptive package labelling to the deep social meanings we attach to what we eat. Drawing on her research into undiagnosed illness, food politics, and media, Overend shows how industry, advertising, and cultural norms work together to define what counts as healthy, who gets to eat well, and whose knowledge about food gets taken seriously. This episode makes the case that understanding food requires more than biochemistry — it requires a sociological lens.

Show notes:

Alissa Overend is a health sociologist at MacEwan University in Edmonton whose research sits at the intersection of food, media, power, and identity. She came to food studies not by design but by following her evidence: when she was interviewing people with undiagnosed chronic illnesses for her PhD, nearly every subject spontaneously described using food to manage their condition — a pattern that redirected her entire research focus. In this episode, Overend makes a compelling case that the agri-food sector needs to reckon with sociology's core insight: food is never just biochemical. It is social, political, cultural, and deeply personal, and the stories told about it — by industry, by media, by the grocery store itself — quietly determine what Canadians believe is true about what they eat.

One of Overend's sharpest contributions to this conversation is her argument that the grocery store is itself a media environment. Far from a neutral space, the modern box store is a carefully engineered experience: oversized carts designed to be filled, produce placed at the entrance to trigger a sense of healthy intent before shoppers move into the processed-food aisles, eye-level shelving calibrated to catch children's attention, and end-cap pairings that nudge complementary purchases. Overend extends this analysis to packaging, arguing that front-of-box health claims — 'made with whole grain oats,' 'nature's valley,' 'honey and oats' — function as advertising that exploits consumer trust. Her rule of thumb is pointed: when a product is working that hard to convince you it's healthy, that effort itself should raise a flag.

A second distinct tension Overend surfaces is the gap between how food is officially understood — through a narrow scientific and nutritional lens — and how people actually experience and use it. Her chronic illness research revealed that ordinary people were developing sophisticated, embodied knowledge about food and health that had no place in a medical system oriented toward diagnosis and biochemical markers. This epistemological gap matters for the agri-food sector because it means that consumer behaviour around food is far more complex than price sensitivity or label-reading. Food carries identity — cultural pride, gender assumptions, class position, and memory — and those meanings shape purchasing decisions in ways that market research built on nutritional categories will consistently miss. Overend also flags the blurring of Canadian and American food culture, noting that Canada's heavy consumption of American television and the post-NAFTA entry of American products has made the boundary between the two food landscapes much thinner than most Canadians assume.

For leaders and practitioners in Canada's agri-food sector, this episode offers something genuinely difficult to find: a critical outside perspective that names the structural forces shaping the food system from the consumer's side. Overend's work is a reminder that food security, consolidation, and the trust between producers and eaters are not only economic or logistical problems — they are social ones. Understanding why people eat what they eat, and what the system is quietly doing to their choices, is not a soft concern at the margins of the industry. It is central to building a food future that actually serves Canadians.

Topics: food sociology, grocery store design, food media and advertising, food politics, food and identity, chronic illness and food, Canadian food culture, food security

Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to The Future Herd.

Here's something I think about a lot.

We all eat every single day, ideally multiple times a day, and yet most

of us have almost no idea what's actually shaping the choices we make.

We think we're just grabbing groceries, we think we're just feeding our families.

But what if the whole system, the store and layout, the packaging, the

advertising, the ownership structures behind the brands, what if all of it

is doing something to us that we've never really stopped to examine?

That question is exactly why I wanted to talk to today's guest.

Alyssa Over end is a sociologist at McEwen University in Edmonton, and she works at

this genuinely fascinating intersection of food, health, media, and power.

She didn't set out to study food, she started in sports, then followed a

thread through health research, and it was her interview subjects themselves

who kept pulling her back to food over and over, a unprompted and spontaneous.

That kind of moment when the evidence tells you where to look is

the mark of a top tier researcher one worth paying attention to.

And what Alyssa brings to the conversation about food is something the AgriFood

sector doesn't always get to hear.

From a critical eye trained on the social life of food, not just what we eat, but

what our food says about who we are, who has power, who gets left out, and

how the stories were told by industry, by media, by the grocery store itself,

quietly shape what we believe is true.

And in a moment when food security is rising, when consolidation is reshaping

who controls our food supply, which of my dogs is gonna yell during an intro?

And when Canadians are paying more attention than ever to what's on

their plates and where it comes from, that perspective feels urgent.

And Harriet, my Bernedoodle agrees.

So what does a sociologist see when she walks into a grocery store

that the rest of us are missing?

Let's find out.

Alissa, welcome to The Future Heard.

Happy to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Now, I like to start every episode with what I call my

Rorschach test question, which bluntly is, what does the future mean to you?

Oh, that is a bit of a black hole some days and a maybe

more optimistic one some days.

You know, I think, uh, the future is what we make it.

I think the future is, is what we hope it will be or imagine it to be.

And the future is also totally unknown.

I think some of the things that we see now will continue and other things that

we can never imagine will, will find their way and, and we'll deal with them.

Um, so it's a, a bit of a known and a bit of the unknown.

Right on, right on.

Fantastic answer.

And, uh, i- in terms of your research interests, I mean, you cross a number

of different subjects, a number of areas that I, I'm quite eager to not

only get into, but, but connect, uh, in, in terms of the larger big picture.

But I do like to kinda use my follow-up question as a

kind of lore or origin frame.

in your case, it kind of feels that while you do have, like, I, I do

wanna talk methodology, for example, like qualitative methodologies is an

area I've always been fascinated by.

But how did food end up being one of the through lines of the

different types of research that you have done and continue to do?.

Yeah, great question.

And, and it's clear you've done your research too.

Um, I started out actually, and I, I tell this to students a lot in,

in sort of first and second year courses, and, and maybe this links

to my answer about the future.

I think a pattern emergen- emerges over time on our kind of career trajectories,

if that's what we wanna call them.

But very few people have a career that's sort of a, a straight line from point A to

point B. I started out in sports studies.

Uh, they always say, study something you know.

And I was interested in sort of equity around sport and sociology of sport,

which I didn't even know was a topic in high school and founded in university.

So I followed that through my MA. And then I made perhaps a

conscious decision at one point.

Sport was something I loved.

And the more you study something, you also see, you know, there's equity

issues in sport and gender inequity and racial in- inequality and all the stuff

around trans rights and all of this.

And, and sort of I think I wanted sport to just be this, this happy

place, um, that I escaped to.

It was also somewhat strategic.

You know, I think as a, as a grad student, the question, especially

in the humanities, is like, "What are you gonna do with this?

" Um, and there was a lot more opportunity availability in health.

There seemed to be more health funding.

So I made the shift from sports studies to food study, or sorry, from

sports studies to health studies.

And it was actually a question in my PhD research, I studied

undefined health, uh, illness.

So people that had an illness but couldn't get a medical diagnosis.

And I was interested in sort of broader critiques of Western medicine and some

of these things, which I think, you know, Western medicine does some things

very well, but chronic pain, chronic illness, they're pretty bad at it.

And I was asking people how they made sense of their illness.

I didn't specifically go in asking about food.

And almost verbatim every interview, people were telling me detailed,

detailed, thoughtful accounts about how they used food to manage this

undiagnosed, undefined illness.

And that's ultimately what kind of kicked me into food studies.

It was around the same time, uh, that the dairy industry, I don't know, many

of you may remember this, they did a God enough milk campaign and they were using

milk or billboards that said, uh, "Fight colorectal cancer and drink milk." And as

a critical, you know, media, uh, studies or, uh, a critical intake of information,

I'm like, "Wait a second, this is actually like pretty false information."

And that's what sort of got me down the road of, of sort of food politics.

So that's a long-winded answer to say I, I bumped around a bit, I followed

interesting threads and then really just as the connections, I still

define myself, uh, as a, as a health sociologist, but I do have a subset-

specialisation in food because to me you can't separate health and food.

They're, they're really one and the same.

Well, and it, and it's a great narrative because it,

it speaks to how the researcher really listens to the evidence.

And it kinda led you on this path of not only, you know, looking at, to

your point, the chronic health people, but also the media space, because

both, I think, are part of a symbiotic relationship of how people think about

food and think about their health.

A- and I agree, I, I previously would never have thought about the sociology

of sport, although it is an area that is gaining quite a bit of ground, but

you're also the first guest that I could say, "Well, what is the sociology of

food?" I think that is an area that, again, w- while it does have quite a bit

of scholarship to it, I suspect a lot of people in the agrifood sector may not

have heard of it or may not be familiar with the area of study and the, the kind

of insights and the kind of value that it provides to how we think about our food

value chain, not to mention, you know, taking care of everyone in a society..

Yeah.

Y- you know what?

I get that question a lot, Jesse.

So what, what is sociology for people that don't know or what is

sociology of, of sport or of food?

I think when we think about food, we've been taught to think about it

in really sort of biochemical ways.

And you see this a lot in the side of packaging information.

So whether we're looking at food to what's in it, the ingredients,

the percentage of daily intake and calories and these sorts of things.

And we've sort of tipped very far to a kind of scientific understanding of

food, um, and that's certainly there.

We need food to survive and, and obviously we understand the effects of fibre and

vitamin C and, and all of the crays around protein and, and other nutrients.

But food is of course also not just biochemical or

scientific, it's very social.

And I think most people can relate to that when you think of your favourite, you

know, your comfort food or your favourite food, it's often a family food or a food

that brings you back to childhood or a cultural food that, that you have pride in

making or that you've learned from often your grandmothers or mothers, though not

exclusively, uh, or a food that's used only in particular times of the year.

And so I think it, it brings us into the social very, very quickly.

We also know that food can link to identity, whether you're

looking, again, cultural identity.

There's been a lot written on the links sort of between, uh,

masculinity and meat and the assumption that if you eat vegetables or a

vegetarian, that it's more feminised.

So I think there's ways in which the social is always coded onto food.

Um, right now with the rising rates of food insecurity, food also links us

to class and equality and poverty and sort of who gets to eat well, quote

unquote, in, in this day and age.

Uh, food links us to the environment, so how much food we waste, how we understand

where food comes from, how it grows, our connections to the land, um, to composting

systems, et cetera, and so forth.

So as a, you know, I'm in a sociology department, but I would say I'm

an interdisciplinary scholar.

And to me, when you pick up any food item, whether it's coffee or

bananas or your favourite bread, you can kind of pull a bunch of

different threads from that one item.

Um, and it, if we pause to think about it, you know, how did that

cup of coffee arrive and what are the politics of, of sort of food?

So it can link us to those sort of more globalised questions.

It can also link us to very personal questions.

Um, you know, and there's also links around food and disease,

as I've mentioned, um, or, uh, food disorders or, uh, anorexia,

bulimia, those types of things.

So, you know, we, we could talk, uh, in circles, uh, for a long time about the

connections between food and the social.

That's my medium length answer on that one.

Which I say challenge accepted.

Uh, uh, i- in no small part, because the way you describe it, p- perhaps

self-evident to you because you, you get to play in this playground

all the time in terms of drawing the connections between food and

culture and economics and politics.

And, w- w- what strikes me as fascinating to this, and, and I'll, I'll phrase this

in a form of a follow-up, is I think on the one hand, the social dynamics of food

are self-evident because of how we eat and who we eat with and what we choose to eat.

the way you described it, I think for the individual would, would

require a level of self-awareness I think most people don't have.

Or, or I'll even be more critical that I think the industry doesn't

want to imagine that people have.

Like, like, they like to imagine that consumers are kind of dumb, that they

don't know where their food comes from, that they make decisions purely on prices,

but you, you're describing research that goes much deeper than that and, and, and

speaks to a kind of intersectionality of how these decisions are made.

if, if I could take that rambling and, and throw it in, into kind of a question,

role does media play in all of this?

'Cause you alluded earlier, you're sort of a lens as a critical media

scholar, or at least someone who likes to entertain that dynamic.

Y- you've described food because you have the benefit of being an interdisciplinary

researcher, think most people experience food through media, through advertising.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that or the kind of research or the

way it impacts your research in terms of the media culture around food that

fundamentally impacts our social, let alone our political economy around food.

I, I gotta shut up.

I'm rambling.

Please bail me up..

No, I love it.

I love it.

There's a definitely a couple threads I could, uh, pick up on.

You know, I immediately come to the sort of government regulations around

advertising and, and, you know, in this day and age, there are none,

but at a certain point in history, we did see, uh, regulations around

what could be advertised to kids, particularly in the little commercial

blocks between their favourite shows.

And I believe it was the Nixon era in the US.

And as Canadians, uh, we like to see ourselves as very different from the US,

which in some important ways, I also like to think we are, and let's hold onto that.

Um, but also, we are the largest importer of American television, and, and so

there's a lot more overlap in our culture.

We can also see how much, even, you know, from our childhood, how many

American stores have entered Canada, um, through that in the last Canadian

US Mexico agreement, so the update on the 1980s NAFTA agreement, we

also see American products entering.

And so there's a lot more blurring, uh, and fluidity between American

food and Canadian food that I think most people realise.

And going back to that advertising, uh, the Nixon era did lift regulations.

And so if you ever watch kids' shows or for whatever reasons, you

will see a lot more advertising.

And that tends to be around things like sugary cereals, which if

you look at the front of, um, box advertising, is also a form of media.

And so we tend to think of media as this, you know, commercials.

Most people don't consume it in that way.

It may be pop-up ads, but the grocery store itself and packaging itself has

become a form of an advertisement.

And so a lot of the cereal companies, uh, granola bars are another one, you know,

flashy front of cover images, health claims, so made with whole grain oats, but

then they're still chock full of sugar.

So unless you're really going in with a fine tooth comb and, and a lot of

people aren't, grocery stores are kind of harried and people rush in and rush

out, they're not meant to kind of linger.

Uh, a lot of those sweetened cereals are also placed at l-

sort of eye level manipulation for kids who come with their parents.

And, you know, psychologists have shown time and time again that, you know,

the more kids ask for a cereal, the parents will be like, "Okay, you can

have your cocoa puffs or whatever it is, um, that, that you've been seeing

and that you, you have access to.

" So I think there's been a lot targeted towards, um, kids.

Uh, I watch some, you know, uh, streamed shows and you're starting to see ads

in there and it tends to be fast food.

Uh, you never see an ad for an apple, uh, because we know those

are healthy and an apple never also has to say that it is healthy.

It's just sort of assumed we all know it is.

So I think when you see products like granola bars, um, that try a

little too hard to say that they're healthy, there should be something

that's sort of triggering to say, "Well, why, why are they trying

to convince me so much of this?

Um, so I think that can be really skewing for people, especially when you get names

that are themselves a form of advertising.

So nature's valley or honey and oats, but it's actually sugar and oats, but

honey's in there, it's just further down.

So I think, uh, the sort of naming language and the, uh, the package

advertising is, is a really big form of media right now for food.

Well, and I'd love to hear you elaborate on the

kinda grocery store as cultural environment, as media environment.

And, and I say this because I experienced a, a little bit of cultural awareness

a- around that when I moved from the city to where I now live in, in rural

Eastern Ontario, because in the city, my grocery experience was, as you described,

it was in and out as quick as possible.

I had the whole place mapped.

I knew exactly which products I wanted.

It was a very strategic operation now, not only do I go slow

because I'm researching, right?

I'm looking at all the food, I'm kinda attention to how inventory

moves, because I'm interested in this stuff, it's also a social space.

It's a third space.

Like I watch neighbours connect.

I watch, you know, people have these social interactions.

Like it's a different vibe and, and I'm sure there's a spectrum

of grocery experiences across the country, but my point is, it is

a kind of cultural environment.

It is a kind of media environment and, and you kind of evoked

that in your description.

So I'd love for you to unpack that further because I didn't really

think about it until you said it.

I'm sure there's a lot of other people who take the grocery store

really kind of for granted..

Yeah, it becomes this mundane part of living.

You know, you just pop to the grocery store, but it is a very curated

environment, not unlike an Ikea that has you kind of mazing around

the store to see different things.

And grocery stores are set up in a very particular way, and that's why

we see them as somewhat consistent.

So you tend to come into the fruit and vegetable aisle, um, bright colours, uh,

you get the sense of a kind of market.

And I think your experience of rural, uh, grocery store reminds

me more of a farmer's market.

People do linger.

They have a nice cup of coffee.

They talk to the people about what's in season or what do you do

with, you know, kale or eggplant or whatever it is that you're buying.

Um, and you run into neighbours and those types of things.

It's a bit more leisurely, but the box stores that we're seeing

today do not have that feel.

Um, you do see advertising in the store.

I mentioned the, the front of packaging, um, form of, of advertising, but

there's also words around, um, you know, local, prices can't be beat.

Uh, there's those types of subtle things that are also playing into, and

maybe you don't kind of consciously pick them up, but you are aware

of those things unconsciously as you're moving through the space.

So, uh, the psychology of grocery stores tends to be around things like

the size of the carts are massive.

I was at a kind of larger store.

I'm only 5'2".

And this cart was so big and they, they want that because they

want you to be able to fill it.

So there's this idea that, um, you know, the bigger the

cart, the more you'll fill it.

They want you to start at the fruit and vegetables because I think if you buy some

healthy things, then you may, you know, go through the middle aisles, which tends to

be more and more of those packaged things.

And if you think back or look back, a lot of our grocery stores, and I

don't have the exact statistic now, but it's, I would say, you know,

three quarters or 75% of the stuff that's in grocery stores is all that

prepackaged, globalised food, cereals, uh, crackers, uh, granola bars, pop, chips.

And I remember chip ailes as a kid.

I love potato chips, um, but there are whole, whole aisles of potato chips now.

It's sort of, uh, definitely sprouted.

And yeah, you might get your bakery aisle and your meat aisle and, and

the veggie, but a lot of it is sort of set up, um, based on this idea

of, like, buying some of those, what some people call pseudo foods.

They're, they're edible, but there's a lot of stuff in there that,

that may not be great for us in, in large doses in the long haul.

Uh, the music that's playing, the sort of deals, uh, this idea that,

you know, the, the sort of r- loyalty rewards, so you continually go back to

the same store in part, I think as you mentioned, like, it's really disorienting

going in a new store and you're like, "I have no idea where anything is.

So knowing where you're going, but also this idea that you

might get, like, you know, little rewards or something kicked back.

Um, what else?

Eye level manipulation, so the, the sort of, um, eye level

stuff, the end displays pairing.

So you'll often see chips and pop, uh, very close together, uh,

again, that people will buy one and then, and then need the other.

So there's sort of a lot going on, um, within grocery stores

than, than most people realise.

And one of the things I've noticed as, uh, again, someone

who's now really paying close attention to not just how m- the grocery store

I go to is configured, but how it changes, on some levels it, it does

feel like a canary in the coal mine when it comes to food insecurity.

And, you know, we've had a number of guests on the show recently as

we've dug deeper into both sides, the food insecurity and what it

would take to achieve food security.

And, you know, we've been trying to sort of build a larger kind of knowledge base

to understand the policy implications, but I'm, I'm curious, you know, from ... We've

been talking about the grocery store, you know, initially as one of the ways

in which it shapes people's perceptions of food and then the kind of media and

cultural environment, but, you know, back to the interdisciplinary, what are

the other signals or what are the other areas, either in your research or the

areas of research you pay attention to kind of suggest grocery stores are a, a,

a, a node, a, a metric in terms of helping to understand, you know, food insecurity

and the larger, uh, ability as a society of whether we are feeding ourselves,

feeding each other effectively..

Well, I think in a, in a capitalist system, you

have to look at ownership.

Um, and we've seen this in pharmaceuticals.

So, uh, the, the large, you know, five manufacturers control a vast majority.

We see that in media.

So the big five of media control, what stories, um, are shared and what

aren't, which is why, you know, small scale or grassroots local media,

uh, programmes are, are fantastic.

And we also see this in food, and most people don't realise that, um, you

know, uh, in Canada, even the large five grocery stores control 80% of the market.

And so some of those smaller mom and pop shops, which I think, you know, as you

say, have a different feel or a different vibe, uh, they tend to be more family

owned, uh, they tend to be smaller.

They really can't compete.

And so you see these large companies really buying out smaller ones,

and we've seen that with the loss of some of those smaller stores.

Um, also in terms of what happens outside the grocery store, you're starting to see,

it wasn't that long ago in the history of Canada where more families farmed.

Um, and now because of the politics of the way food is

grown, it's very, very expensive.

So things like monocropping, uh, to be able to compete, you need large

machinery, you also, you know, need to be conte- cons- connected, excuse

me, to Monsanto products in some way, um, and that becomes very difficult.

So a lot of smaller farms are going out of business to the point where we

have very few Canadian farmers left.

And, you know, that might be okay in the immediate interim, but when we do see the

large food systems start to break down, which we have through the pandemic, that

was a little bit of a, of a warning sign.

Uh, it's not a perfect system.

We also see, uh, delays due to war, uh, fuel anytime there are, uh, fuel

increases, price, uh, prices are intricately licked to that because

our food comes from so far away.

And so it actually doesn't make any sense to be bringing food from, from so far.

We need to be really supporting food sovereignty movements, which are local,

uh, locally controlled, locally owned, community minded and all of those things

that, that grocery stores really aren't.

And, you know, one of the things that really, uh, gets my goat, I guess,

about grocery stores, which I didn't mention in the last question, but

came to me in this question, they do a lot of things with community.

And you, you hear them saying, "We donated all this money to the food bank or to

boys and girls clubs and these kinds of things." And they do that for PR largely.

You even see that in some of their advertisements.

You'll see, you know, Darrell or one of the owners in a family environment saying,

you know, "My family's like your family."

But literally these, a lot of these owners are in, they're billionaires.

Um, they're making money off the fact that many people are still having, uh,

difficult time actually accessing food.

So that sort of bothers me because I think people like the idea

that food is a community or it is locally produced and locally grown.

And I think some grocery stores may be making efforts to have some locally

sourced products, but again, it comes back to the consumer to, to sort of look

at the ads or the, um, the tags and say, you know, "Is this US produced or Canadian

produced?" Um, and those types of things.

So I think, um, you know, grocery stores make it very, very difficult for local

food security and make it difficult for some of those local farms, um,

to really succeed, although we are seeing a bit of an upswing in things

like community supported agriculture and farmer's markets and those types

of things, in part because of taste.

You know, I think that's one of the first things that consumers will say

in that the quality of particularly produce, you know, tomatoes, peppers,

uh, lettuce, to me, those things, they don't taste right a lot of the time

when you buy them at, at a large store.

They may have a long shelf life, but they, they taste kind of empty.

And I mean, they're pulled or picked early and, and shipped for

a long time, so they, they have lost a lot of that taste or value.

And I think when you taste a, a farmer's market tomato, you're like, "Oh, it's

so good." And I think, um, people start to use that as a, as a marker as well.

And relatedly, it does make me wonder if the kind of AstroTurf

campaigns that dominate a lot of the Canadian grocery system, if they're

just not as effective, because I do see people kind of dismissing them and

even being derisive a- as a parallel to your point of that when you try

food that is l- grown locally, that is, you know, uh, uh, coming from a

different process, it tastes different.

But l- let me take one step back before we take one step forward.

suspect that

So we hear food sovereignty, uh, in part around indigenous food

sovereignty or black food sovereignty.

So groups that have been especially, um, vulnerable to some of the food

shortages we've seen, uh, the situation in Canada's north or remote communities

is, is absolutely abysmal when it comes to food security, uh, decades of

government, um, not in action, but sort of ill-guided action on, on foods, trying

to promote store-bought or southern foods.

So, uh, that's, you know, uh, I think the rates in, uh, many places in Canada's

north are the highest rates of documented food insecurity in a developed country.

And we have to remind ourselves that Canada is a wealthy nation.

We are also a large, uh, exporter of quality food.

So what, what is happening?

And I think one of the key things that I like to instil, in this day

and age, it's not a lack of food.

The global food system produces more food than we ever have, but half of that food

or close to half of that food is wasted.

It's thrown out.

It doesn't get to where it needs to get to.

So it's not that we have a lack of food, we have a lack of food access,

and that gets us into some of these politics of sort of globalised food

systems, the reliance on store bought or prepackaged food, the removal from

farming or more local food systems.

So, uh, food sovereignty, sovereign is this sort of independent or, um,

more locally controlled food systems has been a sort of hot topic in food

studies for at least a couple of decades.

It focuses on many sort of pillars or, um, key values, so it prioritises, um,

the right to food as a fundamental human right, not as this kind of resource

to be extracted or sold for profit.

Again, going back to some of those big five, um, corporations, they

are profiting on, uh, on food.

And food for the most part is grown within, um, uh, a

fairly accessible system.

Nature produces food almost as a gift.

And if you come back to indigenous understandings of food, it, it is a gift.

It's a gift from the land and it's a gift from the earth and

it's part of that reciprocal relationship that we should have.

And I think grocery stores take us very far from that.

It's very transactional.

It's very devoid of any kind of exchange aside from an economic exchange.

Uh, the other pillar of food sovereignty is that it values food providers.

So those people that, uh, farm and harvest and hunt and those types of things have

deep knowledge on how to do these things.

And I think some of the craze around local gardening is bringing

back some of that food knowledge.

It localises food systems.

So again, that idea that it is a completely inefficient system

to bring bringing ... I know in, in Alberta and Canada, we get a

lot of our fruits and vegetables from Chile, uh, from South Africa.

These places are very, very far.

And yeah, we can't grow all things.

Uh, you know, coffee and tropical fruits and those types of things may, uh,

may always be something grown or flown in, but we can grow a lot of things.

And so it's about rebalancing the things that we can do locally, um,

so that when we do see larger scale issues like war or pandemics or border

closures and those types of things, is that we have our own food systems.

We're not waiting at the border for these things or they're not, um, vulnerable

to, uh, price increases in those things.

The decisions are also made locally, um, so consumers have an active part in

their food systems, unlike we see with the grocery store, uh, building food

skills and knowledge, so getting people more connected to the values of food,

to the values of growing, and sharing that knowledge intergenerationally.

And then finally, that connection with nature.

Um, I touched on this a little bit, like the inefficienc- inefficiencies,

but there's a huge invisible cost.

And yeah, the grocery store, uh, tomato might be 50 cents cheaper than the one

at the farmer's market, but I think as grocery store prices increase, we're

starting to see those things more on par, but the problem is, is that a lot of

invisible costs, uh, largely environmental ones that go into bringing that food from,

you know, thousands of kilometres away.

The pesticides that are used in that, uh, often the plastic packaging,

the food waste grocery stores will purposely overbuy, and they like

particular shapes and sizes, which apparently is consumer demand.

Um, so they'll throw out sort of misshapen or ugly vegetables and that, that

has huge environmental costs as well.

So, uh, the, the sort of traditional farms that we, the old McDonald farms

where there are some animals, some vegetables, those kinds of things

are very, very good for the land.

Uh, the large monocropping practises are terrible.

Whether you're looking at canola, soy, wheat, uh, almonds in California,

any of these avocados in Chile, um, they're terrible for ecosystems

because they're not an ecosystem.

They're a monocrop.

Um, and they're bad for bees and they're bad for pollinators,

they're bad for the soil, et cetera.

And I think there's a lot of those things that, that people don't realise

is, is part of that price point.

And this is, you know, as host where I'll validate what

you're saying and anticipate there may be some people in the audience

who are triggered, uh, by some of the connections and arguments you're

currently presenting, but there is a volumous amount of research that

substantiates all the things you're saying that, that speaks to my next question.

And this question's a bit of a paradox because on

Sure.

hand, the, the industry that exists right now to use the word

collaboration, both as kind of proof that they're, what they're doing is

what should be done, but also as like a vision for the future of their industry.

Whereas you were just describing a level of collaboration, a, a level

of cross-sectoral collaboration, a level of, uh, uh, eater and producer

and everyone at the table level of collaboration that perhaps conceives of

collaboration in a much different way than the industry potentially frames it.

I'd love for you to address that.

A- and you could address it perhaps along the lines of, and maybe this

gets us to the, uh, uh, qualitative research methodologies part of the show,

which I will be getting to later, um, how does that collaboration happen?

How, how do we facilitate the level of participation in our food system

that, uh, a f- a food sovereignty kind of, uh, requires, enables

Uh, uh, uh, again, I'm gushing, but, but I think there's a lot of insights

here for the people who really do, uh, uh, believe in collaboration.

So please help me out.

Yeah.

I'll, I'll go aside route and then I'll come back to your question.

Um, when you think about the history of food guides in Canada, to me, that's

an obvious example of how industry, uh, colludes with, uh, the government.

So if you look back to the food guides of the, the '90s and the early 2000s, well,

what features prominently, again, are those sugared cereals, uh, dairy, um, ice

cream was sort of, uh, actually featured visually in the 1992 edition, which is

like how absurd the ice cream, while it's delicious, it's not necessarily, uh, uh,

you know, a kind of healthy food product.

So there's been a history of, and literally when the food guide, um, people

met, there'd be members of industry.

There'd be someone from the dairy lobby, someone from the meat lobby sitting

literally at the table and devising, um, sort of the, the coloured bands.

And you can see over time that the shifting evidence of this, um, it is

not static because it's political.

And at one point, you know, the grains, we were to, to eat all of this, um,

I can't remember exactly, like eight to 12 servings of grain in a day,

which is an enormous amount of grain.

And, and you can see that as sort of the, the in- the industry, um, influencing.

In the most recent 2019 food guide, it was the first time they actually

collaborated with dietitians, with nutritionists, with, uh, food

scientists, and industry was not there.

And what do we see?

There were some controversies around the guide, but it was a much more,

uh, whole foods, so there weren't any gro- uh, grocery store products.

It was whole grains, whole foods, uh, meat was there, but it wasn't so centralised.

Dairy was there, but it wasn't so centralised that those things

can be part of a diet, but they shouldn't be your predominant diet.

So I think it's usually easier to look historically at the way these things have

happened, um, in formal collaboration.

And then in c- in terms of currently where we're seeing shifts around collaborations

towards more equitable food systems.

So some of those food systems change, um, alternative food networks.

There's some great organisations, uh, I'll give a shout out to Food Secure

Canada who do a lot of work, uh, collaborating with indigenous communities,

the government, with dietitians, with, um, food organisations to really

address the multitude of these issues.

The Right to Food Canada is another organisation and they just hosted a

conference, I wanna say in Ottawa, but somewhere in Ontario, um, last weekend,

and there were over 450 alternative food networks at the table, or many

tables talking about these issues.

Um, in some of the work that I've done on alternative food networks, I

emerged with the question of like, we know things like farmer's markets and

food forests and seed exchange exist, but they seem to be more prevalent.

And I was sort of interested in, like, what's there and how many are there.

And there's a tonne of them.

If people just even scratch the surface of their communities, I think a lot

of people will find community gardens, we'll find seed exchanges, we'll find

people that are passionate about these.

And, you know, I know even cities have done some urban food forests.

So, um, planting edible trees, it makes a lot of sense if people

are hungry rather than planting a decorative tree, plant an apple tree,

um, and then you can help feed people really healthy and nutritious things.

So I think those collaborations are happening in all kinds of ways.

And I think indigenous communities have long done stuff around food.

I think we do see anti-poverty movements also long doing things around food.

Uh, but those two organisations, uh, Food Secure Canada and the Right to

Food, uh, are both really central in, in kind of bringing together

a lot of those collaborations and communities, uh, currently.

Let me use that then to ask a, a kind of two-part

or a, a dual-pronged question.

I mean, given what you've said, or d- do you think that the current discourse

around, like, municipal grocery stores or public-owned grocery stores, like,

do you think that's aiming too low in the sense that it's still imagining

food delivery via the grocery store?

And maybe we should be thinking about even, you know, uh, more

original concepts, which begs the second part, you know, what are

the, the kinds of initiatives?

What are the, the, the, the kinds of, you know, interventions even

that you think communities could be focusing on and organising on as, uh,

awareness around the concept of food sovereignty starts to build and grow?.

Yeah, those are great questions.

Um, I love your first question of whether, um, community grocery stores or

cooperative grocery stores or publicly funded grocery stores is too low.

And I, I wish we lived in a world where that isn't, that is too low

of a bar, but I think we've become so dependent on grocery stores.

And I, and I hear this, I see it in students' eyes.

You know, I say something about grocery stores and I don't, I don't think we're

at a point where we'll get rid of grocery stores, particularly, as I said, for

things that we can't grow here in Canada.

We do have a limited growing season, and I think we're dependent on

all kinds of things like coffee, um, although we could roast it

locally, we can't grow it locally.

So I think, um, you know, I always say, let's, let's not start that far.

That, that stresses people out.

Let's just, let's just tip the scales a little bit.

Um, we can all grow food, and this comes to your second question.

The best thing we can all do to take a little bit, um, of some of those

big, sticky, scary issues around the environment, around food security,

around food sovereignty, around politics, et cetera, we can all grow food.

Um, some people more than others, and I know that time poverty is a thing, and I

know that having, uh, access to land is a thing and access to tools, absolutely.

But I think, you know, whether you're looking at herbs in a

window box, uh, herbs are really expensive, and the grocery store

sells them in these massive amounts.

You often need a tablespoon of dill, but you're buying, you know like what seems

like a good, like a large amount, and then you either dry it or it goes to waste.

Uh, last summer, I did a bit of a garden and I just did lettuce.

Lettuce grew all summer.

I didn't buy one clamshell, plastic clamshell of lettuce.

So it's not a huge thing, but I'm only one person.

And if we all did a little bit, I also think that growing food

really connects you to neighbours.

Uh, the amount of times that, you know, you're like, "I have an extra

zucchini." And that will foster, uh, a dialogue or a connection to community.

So I think all of that in small doses brings us back to the, the roots

of food and the roots of community.

Um, I looked a little bit at public grocery stores and actually the United

States have been doing it and they do it on military bases and it saves,

um, those people like 25 to 30%.

And I'm like, that's, again, it's not gon- it's not the magic bullet solution.

There are no magic bullet solutions, but it helps.

And 25% on groceries, I think right now people would say, "Heck, yes. Like that

is a good chunk of money." Um, and the fact that they've already been doing it,

but for a very sort of select few does show that there is some promise there.

During the pandemic, uh, food security actually went down.

So we had a little, it was climbing right before, and then in 2021, it

went down because people were getting a version of a universal basic income.

And there's been research upon research that shows there's been pilot studies

that when you give people money to feed themselves, they actually do better.

And they can feed themselves in the way that, that suits them, that fits

their, their cultural diets, their personal preferences, et cetera.

So I think that's another way that politically we could be

looking to address food security.

Um, and in terms of those other things, um, some of my work or research

has sort of uncovered not only the abundance of things like food, um,

or community supported agriculture, farmer's markets are popular.

And if you go there on a Saturday or a Wednesday, there's people

there, and that's a good sign.

I think people are really, um, valuing that.

I think a lot of libraries have done some good work in things like seed banks.

There's also some community organisations that do things like tool sheds, uh,

where you can, you know, get those tools for free, free workshops.

Obviously, you can learn a lot about gardening on YouTube and the internet, so

we don't need a lot to be able to grow.

The seed itself is the magic.

We just sort of foster it.

Um, food pantries, food co-ops, food hubs, urban farms, um, food forests,

these are all some of the things that have already been going on.

And I think people just need to sort of look up and say, "What

else or what part of my food could I be getting, um, elsewhere?"

And I think it's a lot of little things add up.

I don't think social change is necessarily easy or overnight, but I, I do think

of it like a kind of, you, you kind of attack it from a, a mul- multiple angle.

And there's actually some good discourse.

I think people are fed up with grocery stores right now.

Um, not only did we see the bread price fixing scandal where grocery

stores purposely fix bread prices only by 10 cents, but again, it

made, made for millions of dollars.

And to me, that shows if we're not all buying our herbs or our lettuce

or our tomatoes or carrots or other things we can grow, it's a little bit

of money out, out of their pocket.

Um, they also got busted last week with a meat scandal as well, so,

uh, miswaiting the meat and pricing it at a different price point.

So these are criminal activities and they, uh, they continue to do this even

though their profits are very, very high.

So I think people are, are miffed, um, about that.

And I think you do get, uh, may- maybe it's idyllic, but a, a, a

very different experience in some of these other food, food systems.

And, and not just about food.

I think people are also lonely or isolated or disconnected.

A lot of us live far away from families, so our community becomes some of that.

And I think food does, you know, you meet your neighbours when you, when you're out

gardening and you talk about things and you try to offload your extra zucchini.

Um, and that, that fosters a relationship too.

Anyways, I'll, I'll stop there.

I was gonna say, or even better, invite them over for a meal,

a- and, and bond over food, which is another ancient cultural practise.

Now, I, I, you know, as we start to get to the close of any episode,

I usually like to sort of make open-ended questions to, you know,

Sure.

to go in directions that maybe I didn't anticipate.

And, and in your case, I'm doing it a little earlier, uh, uh, except my question

is a little more focused, which I, when I was researching, uh, yourself and

your research interests, I was very much fascinated by not just the range of areas,

but the way in which you connect them all.

So to articulate that in the form of a question, are there other areas of

your research or research interests that either connect to food or that you

think is relevant to the very enjoyable conversation we're having today, uh,

uh, o- only because I could listen to you, uh, for quite a bit longer.

So I'd love to hear you connect, uh, the stuff we've been talking about to some

of the other, uh, uh, research areas that, you know, capture your curiosity.

Well, thanks for the question.

Uh, I appreciate that.

My, my brain's often sort of thinking about all, all kinds of things, uh,

food related and, and equity related.

I think food ultimately is about equity and, and that's why I think there's some,

some interesting conversations around it.

Um, you know, I use students a lot as a kind of gauge for the public

discourse, uh, rightly or wrongly, but I hear students say a lot, "Well, you

know, they'll, they'll go to Walmart or they'll go to Loblaws or Superstore

because they're, they're cheaper."

And I'm like, "I, I don't know if that's true anymore." And it, it could be for,

for some things like beef, I think the grass-fed beefs and those things that

you get at the, at the farmer's markets or, or CSAs are a little more expensive.

They're, they're better quality, but they are more expensive.

But for some of those other things, I'm not sure.

So part of me thinks about doing some kind of price point analysis of farmer's

markets, uh, compared to grocery store items on things like basics, um, you know,

potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, whatever, lettuce, uh, tho- those kinds of things.

And I, I think people be surprised, um, that I think they're actually

more on par, um, than they, than they were 10 years ago.

So that's sort of something I'm, I'm not an economist, uh, by any

stretch, but I, I think I wanna, I wanna actually look into that.

Um, I've been doing work in an education environment on something called universal

design, uh, which comes out of the disability, uh, disability studies

and disability equity movements.

Universal design is setting up a physical space that's, uh, of accessible to a

wide range of users, including those with mobility aids, so walkers and,

and wheelchairs and so forth, but that they're also accessible to an

athlete that might've had a, a knee injury or an elderly person or, uh,

a parent who's carrying a bunch of kids and groceries and all the things

that parents, that parents carry.

It's been used in education to make the learning environment more accessible.

So rather than just, you know, talking or putting up, uh, slides is that you have

different ways of presenting information.

And so I've actually used documentaries, podcasts, those types of things.

And there's so many about food.

There's so many great podcasts and documentaries about food because

I think it's something everyone's sort of coming around too.

So, uh, I may also be using some of your episodes in, in my courses, uh, but just

to get people to engage in different ways.

So I've been, I've been doing that in the classroom for a long time,

different forms of assessment.

So getting students to do tests and assignments, but also more creative ones.

Map, map a grocery store system, map how your coffee came from

the field to your front door.

Like, I think that's an interesting assignment and you can get people to

display information in different ways.

Um, but of course, these two somewhat disparate fields are connected because

one of the groups vulnerable to food insecurity are disabled populations.

Um, you know, the cuts that we've seen towards disability funding,

the inaccessibility of, of many food environments, and, and one of the things

that has come up in my research on alternative food networks as I've been

sort of, uh ... I, I am a qualitative researcher, but this last project, uh,

the last year has been a kind of content analysis, so it's quantitative light.

But looking at what, what are the features of alternative food networks?

Um, and actually one just came out, uh, in the Canadian Food Studies

Journal on Alberta, and I'm using that as a template to look across Canada.

I'm curious to see what do food ... Like, are there more in Nova

Scotia than there are in Ontario?

Like, what are the sort of, uh, differences?

So I'm, I'm using a quantitative study to eventually narrow down some

qualitative questions, but in that I'm also tracking how many of these

alternative food networks have any kind of accessibility, and a lot of them don't.

Um, so that's something as a, as a disabled person interested

in, in food security, can you go to a community garden?

And many of them, you can't.

Um, so I've been looking at some of that and, and sort of

blending those two interests on disability and, and food insecurity.

Right on.

And, uh, I'm very pleased to have learned of the concept of universal design, and

will certainly spend, uh, my own interest, uh, getting into it, because I think part

of the application, speaking as a farmer, is thinking about designing for animals

and, and designing for different forms of living systems in which the principles

of universal design absolutely apply.

Although, to your point, ensuring that these community food spaces are

accessible does also seem like, uh, a kind of foundational level that, that,

that they need to be operating on.

I, I've been promoing the qualitative methods part of our episode the entire

time, uh, partly for a couple of reasons.

I am myself a qualitative researcher, a big fan of qualitative research, I think

a lot of the people in our audience, uh, these are folks who work in the

agricultural sector, usually on the association side, usually on the people

side, the research side, they are also often engaged in qualitative research.

And yet the paradox is agriculture very much seems to fetishize quantitative

research as if it is some divine voice when in fact qualitative research offers

quite a bit of value, especially in this world we live in where it's important

to centre the human in so many aspects.

I'm rambling again.

would love to hear your thoughts on what's going on in the world of qualitative

research, uh, some of the key tips around the methodologies and how you're

feeling about the field and the practise.

I mean, we're heading out towards the end of the episode here, so, like, you

can go wherever you want, but I love qualitative methodology, so I figure

this would be a good time to nerd out with someone, while at the same time

keeping our audience in the loop.

My quantitative research c- colleagues will appreciate me saying

that I, I think there's ultimately room for ... We need both, right?

We need both.

We can't have one or the other.

That's the, the balancing of the scales.

But, you know, as a young graduate student, I went to some talk and it was

very quantitative and they, they did this whole presentation and they ended with

this finding that said, you know, we've seen a 3% increase in something or other.

And I was like, "That's it?

" Like, why and how?

And all of these questions that really can't be answered,

um, by quantitative research.

So I think statistics play a part, um, but they don't tell the whole story,

um, and they can be quite misleading at times as well without that context.

So I think, um, yeah, they, you know, it's important to see, you

know, we, we use statistics a lot to say food insecurity is on the rise.

So we could gauge that anecdotally by talking to friends and family, or we can

see that close to 10 million Canadians find themselves food insecure now, and

that's, uh, very, very high, uh, rates.

And that, that sort of is the beginning point.

So it's a, it's a punch, and then, uh, we can understand the how and the why of that

through, through qualitative research.

Um, you know, we, we talk a lot about mental health, uh, issues lately.

So one in five Canadians struggle with mental health issues.

Um, again, the stat is important, but we've also seen

a broadening of the definition.

So more people fall under those definitions.

We're also seeing, um, less social systems.

So all the social security stuff has been cut.

Well, that would affect mental health issues.

So I, I think they both are in conversation with one another, but I

think for me, it, it's summed up in the, I think qualitative research starts

where quantitative research often ends in that there's been an up or a down.

And then the qualitative research will look at, um, more contextual questions

on, on why that is and how that is.

Um, even with the current research I'm doing, you know, I tell students,

you have to let the research drive the type of methodology you use.

So I wanna look at, I wanna see what's going on in alternative

food networks across Canada.

That would be very, very difficult to do qualitatively

just because of the sheer number.

Uh, at least 450, uh, there's probably more depending on how you count them.

So things like how we define topics, um, and then how we, we kind of go about that.

So, um, that's for me the sort of large mapping and then the questions of like,

okay, there's these ones that are doing really fantastic, holistic food sovereign

approaches, let's interview those people rather than a sort of broad interview.

So it can kind of focus your efforts.

Uh, interviews are, are a fantastic way.

I think some site visits, like I'm, I'm really interested in, in going and seeing

some of these alternative food networks in practise because, you know, a website

will indicate kind of their overview, but there's probably things that are

happening that sort of human piece that you talked about that, that really can't

be captured in a lab or in a survey.

It's, it's something bigger than that.

Um, there's a really good, um, alternative food network, The Land of

Dreams in Calgary, uh, Treaty seven territory, and they do work, uh, the,

uh, elder and indigenous Stony Elder is the lead of the organisation,

but they do work with newcomers.

And I think what a great merging and what a great way to get newcomers

to bring, um, stories about food and then, um, connections around food

and then having, uh, elders and, and indigenous folks sort of talk

about the history of the land here.

I think that's a, that's a beautiful thing and I'd love to see that in action.

Um, and I, I don't know, you, you might be able to capture bits of it in, in

quantitative research, but I think the video and the voice and the human

aspects are always gonna be qualitative.

A- and really, what I'm hearing a- as you describe that is on

the one hand, quantitative methods have allowed us to increase our capacity

for complexity and, and understand complexity in our world, but th- that's

useless without sense-making, We, we need the why, we need to understand,

and that is the, the, really the role of the, the qualitative researcher.

Our, our last question that we end on is kind of like the first,

and that it's really open-ended, and it's, it's the shout out.

It's, you know, who are the leaders that you look up to that have inspired you?

Um, and it's, uh, you know, not really meant to be like an Academy Awards

where we're expecting you to list a whole bunch of names of your, you know,

mentors and collaborators, but just a few kinda off the cuff people who you

think the rest of us should be, uh, uh, reading about and learning more about.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.

I, I'm not always great at name recognition in the moment.

Um, so I'll say any indigenous teachings in general or about food

have been, uh, for me, completely transformational, um, and not in some

kind of checklist way, but in a really kind of heartfelt and, and deep sense.

I think if people have opportunity to learn from, uh, a knowledge keeper

or an elder, do it, it's, uh, there's something magical that happens in that.

I think my critical food studies scholars, uh, as an interdisciplinary scholar, I

went to a lot of different conferences and food studies scholars, they do

conferences great because we're not just sitting in a room, we go out, we do farm

tours, uh, we do workshops on things.

It, it's, it's theoretically grounded, but it's, it's also practice-based.

So I think, um, there's been a lot of pioneers in Canada, um, Elaine Power's

done work on universal basic income, Charles Levco has done a lot of work on

alternative food networks, um, so some of the, the sort of founding members of,

of food studies in Canada, um, and then

Oh, so good.

That's great.

I love that.

That made me feel validated when you said that.

Sorry, please go

No, they're both, they're both fantastic.

Um, and then a lot of the community people, like running a community

garden and, and corralling adults and, and sending out all of that.

I think the organisers, they do a lot of work, again, because they're not, no

one's making millions off this, unlike the, the grocery stores, but they're

doing it as a passion, passion project and because there's something they get

back from it, that community piece.

So I think anyone who's leading community organisations, uh,

shout out and kudos to them.

Right on.

And, and you've also, throughout our conversation today, I've mentioned a

number of organisations that both, you know, allow our listeners, uh, and us

as a growing institutional knowledge to, you know, learn more about their work and

start connecting it into what we're trying to do here at the Future Herd, which is

map out, uh, a lot of this activity, you know, to the, uh, uh, assignments you

were giving your students in terms of understanding where their food comes from.

Um,

Yeah.

thank you, Alyssa.

This has been fantastic.

Welcome to the Future Herd.

This is where I get to say, uh, we, we gotta have you back.

Part of what we're trying to do is build a kinda, a larger conversation

around food, uh, and in particular, you've really helped introduce food

sovereignty into our conversation, which will now be a recurring thread.

Um, any final words, uh, before we conclude?

Um, New Grocery Movement is an Edmonton-based organisation.

Uh, they're largely youth-driven.

There are a lot of 30-year-olds and, and thinking about the

future, they're, they're fierce.

Uh, they also have some, uh, connections in Toronto and Ontario,

so I would, uh, shout out to them.

Uh, thanks to you for organising the conversation and, and to the

listeners for being part of it and, and thanks for having me.

Uh, that closes another rousing rowdy episode of The Future Herd.

And I have to say that talking with Alyssa reminded me why I started

this podcast in the first place.

She has that rare ability to make you look at something you do every

single day, buying food, eating food, thinking about food, and suddenly

see it completely differently.

The grocery store aisle, the front of a cereal box, the music playing on

overhead, none of it is accidental.

And Alyssa helps us understand why that matters, not just for individuals, but for

communities, for equity for the future of how we feed each other in this country.

I mean, I like to say we're all designers now.

We all have a sense of how our environments affect us and how

we wanna affect our environment.

And that's why what I keep turning over in my head is something she

said early on, that the future is both known and unknown, and that will

deal with what finds and that will deal with what finds its way to us.

There's something quietly courageous about that framing, especially when you

spend your career looking honestly at the harder edges of our food system,

the way Alyssa does that combination of clear-eyed critique and genuine openness.

I think that's exactly the kind of thinking the AgriFood

sector needs more of right now.

So thank you, Alyssa, for bringing your research, your stories, and your entire

interdisciplinary mind to the future herd.

It was a genuine pleasure.

Now, if you wanna dig deeper into the subjects that we cover here on the Future

Herd, well, we got a website for you, the future herd.ca, in which we not only have

the episodes we produce, but knowledge, uh, that we generate associated with each

episode to dig deeper into the policy, into the research, into the ideas.

We've also got a near daily intelligence brief that gives you a heads up on what's

going on in the sector and the world, and of course, our commons platform

that looks to get your input, your perspective on the issues we cover.

And if this conversation has meant anything to you, well, I'd love you

to share it with your friends, with your dogs, with anyone you think,

uh, wants to engage their food in our food system more directly.

Well, that's it for me and Harriet.

Uh, thanks again.

We will see you guys soon.