Table Talk: Exploring Food Transparency and Traceability

Embark on a culinary journey with Hari Pulapaka, the force behind the Global Cooking School. Discover the importance of food transparency and traceability, where every bite tells a story. As a mathematician-turned-chef, Hari's passion for ingredients with a clear backstory has fostered collaborations between chefs and farmers, aiming for an honest food industry.

Explore sustainable seafood and Hari's innovative approaches at Pastelsia. Learn about Hari Cafe's principles of Harmony, Accessibility, Resilience, and Innovation. Discover how technology and education shape consumer choices and trust in food labeling.

Contemplate the future of seafood and aquaculture, with a focus on ocean health. Get a sneak peek into Hari's upcoming heart-healthy cookbook, highlighting the link between culinary arts and sustainability. Join us for an enlightening discussion that challenges your perspective on food and its impact on the industry.

Don't miss Hari at the Organic Food and Farming Summit on April 19 for the Summit workshop – "Plating the Harvest: Embracing Local at Restaurants". Grab your tickets now! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of Fresh Take brought to you by Florida Organic Growers. 2024 Organic Food and Farming Summit. Summit passes are currently on sale. Find out more information about the summit and get your tickets at wwwfoginfoorg. And now on to the show.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Hello everyone and welcome to the special episode of Fresh Take. Today we're diving into the intriguing world of food transparency and traceability. Join us as we explore the importance of knowing where food comes from, how it's produced and the steps being taken to ensure greater transparency in the food industry. Hari Pulapaka is a CEO and founder of the Global Cooking School and tenured math professor at Stetson University in Florida, and is here to guide us through the seemingly complex conversation. Hari, welcome to Fresh Take.

Speaker 3: 0:58

Thank you, lana, pleasure to be with you.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I'm really excited to have you on our show and you know really go into this discourse about the interconnectedness and growing consumer awareness for transparency and traceability in the food supply chain, especially because, with the movement of farm to fork, consumers are really seeking clarity on accountability and driving this transformative shift. So I'm really curious to know how you really became fascinated by this topic. What got you into food and learning more about where you come from in that background, oh sure, yes.

Speaker 3: 1:39

So that's a load of things, but I'll try to be as succinct and useful as possible. I came to this country in 1987 to pursue graduate school in mathematics, and several years later I completed my PhD in mathematics from the University of Florida in 1995. And then I, you know, got a few temporary positions in academia and finally landed on a tenure track position and then now a tenured position at the University that I'm at in the land, florida. So in 2004, this is a story that I often tell I found myself facing a professional midlife crisis, as I called it, and I got interested and intrigued by an informal commercial on television in the afternoon. That was for culinary school, and it just was something that I had never considered. I like to cook always, and I had never considered actually learning how to cook professionally.

Speaker 3: 2:29

And that just intrigued me and that I sort of enrolled myself in culinary school literally two weeks later and I completed my culinary degree and associate's degree in the culinary arts from the Cordon Bleu program in Orlando back in the day. And so in 2008, I did a couple of odd, you know, cooking gigs in Alaska and Canada just to get some experience, yeah, and then I thought that would be it. And then it just it, just so something that became part of me and it sort of started growing in me as an interest, beyond the fact that I was now somewhat trained in the field of culinary arts. So in 2008, in the thick of the financial crisis of our lifetime, I decided with my wife to open a high end fine dining. I guess now the phrase would be farm to table.

Speaker 3: 3:17

It's not something we necessarily pushed as a phrase, but it's an important phrase to consider as a concept a restaurant named Cresse C-R-E-S-S, and we ran it successfully and really passionately for 11 years straight, and, just prior to the pandemic, we sold the restaurant, knowing that I would have other things to do in life, and so did my wife. So I founded the global cooking school in 2017 as an idea that I knew would have to come to fruition once the restaurant days were behind me, and so, anyway, that's a very fast forward sort of story of how I got into food. I basically was curious about cooking professionally, and then I found myself owning a restaurant because I couldn't stop cooking and I love to cook passionately. But in terms of my interest in the topics that you just alluded to at the beginning of the hour of traceability and transparency, that's a much deeper concept.

Speaker 3: 4:11

That's a much deeper kind of passion and certainly interest of mine, because, to me, as a mathematician first and now, of course, a full-time professional chef as well, I'm constantly inspired by facts, right, so facts drive my work, and so when I am able to wrap my brain around an ingredient in this example that has a story, a story that I can personally tell that, a story that I can validate and verify, because those facts are important, I find myself cooking with that much more inspiration and ultimately helping tell the story of those individuals and entities who, along the way, have made that beautiful ingredient. Hopefully may possible for me to express myself as a cook, so it sounds very sappy and kind of maybe contrived, but frankly, this is exactly what inspires me. This is how I cook. I cook because ingredients inspire me, and the ingredients that have the stories of where they came from, what they went through and how they came to be inspired me the most.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Right, I really like that. I mean, the storytelling piece of food to me is one of the most impactful and powerful ways that we can pass on knowledge and information, and I think that is a truly inspiring way of kind of connecting to the food system. And so I know that you are very much involved in the cooking world, still with the global cooking school, so I will tell us more about that. What does that look like? How does it work? And I know that there's a soft launch happening August 29th of 2024. So I'd love to learn more about what that is and how people can get involved.

Speaker 3: 5:59

Thank you. Thank you for that opportunity to express that. So, as I mentioned, in 2017, two years prior to letting go of the restaurant formally I made the decision in my mind to really wrap my head around what the next generation of my next chapter of my life would look like, and I knew it would definitely involve food still very actively, but also education, more so than I was able to perhaps do in the restaurant world. So the global cooking school made all the sense to me because, you know, cooking is, of course, in the middle of it, school because that's the academic side, and the education piece. Global is because, frankly, that's my outlook, much to a fault. Sometimes, I always think beyond. You know the immediate world that I live in and I've come from a far land away a long time ago, and so to me they're all pipes, you know, and making those connections on a much larger scale than just, maybe, a farm or a restaurant, I think, is important to me, of course. So when I opened the school, the company global cooking school, I didn't really have the opportunity to actually have a physical school, even though I had already taught a number of cooking classes in the restaurant that were very successful and well received. So I knew that cooking classes would be a component of that.

Speaker 3: 7:08

But, frankly, as soon as the restaurant sort of went away, we were hit by a global pandemic. So I kind of put all that on pause and so about two years ago I've re-energized the active chef in me when they've done a lot of philanthropic events, because there was a lot of need. So I've been doing my omakase, as I call them, my little tasting menus on average about two a month. In fact I have one this week. It's on the cuisine of Japan, and I choose cuisines and cultures that speak to me, but also food that I think I can do a respectful job of as a chef and I think that my audience would have an interest in supporting. So I've been, for the past two years, been cooking these themed events twice a month, really two days Wednesday, thursday, just like eight to ten people in a small, intimate space here in the land that used to be a coffee tasting room, but it's not much anymore but, perhaps that might change in the near future.

Speaker 3: 8:08

So that's what I've been doing for two years is doing these globally inspired themes chef dinners In the fall. I think the spark is lit for me. I feel like I'm in maybe the final chapter of my chef life, so I need to sort of pull together all of the pieces of my experience, my interests, my ability to make impact and, ultimately, my own enjoyment to try to express myself as a chef and also as an academic and a thinker and a person of the world. So in the fall I'm hoping to soft launch a diversified portfolio of things that global cooking school will sort of entail, and for now it sounds very, maybe self centric, and of course it is. I'm going to name this entity Hari H-A-R-I, and Hari, and perhaps Hari Cafe stands for Harmony. First H for Harmony, a for accessibility, r for resilience and then I for innovation. So I'm hoping to combine all of these entities of letters of makeup by name to really give substance and foundation to the next and the last, perhaps the last chapter of my chef, my chef life.

Speaker 3: 9:31

I like to call it my chef prof life or prof chef life, and so there are some things that have to be finalized and formalized, but I'm hoping to launch for public consumption, essentially not just select nights of the week, but rather a number of regular bases, a suite of services, including cooking classes, including creating content for education. Of course, my omakase is still hosting as a venue for other chefs and other food printers to do master classes, to do lunch and learns, for special groups, to do pharmaceutical dinners for physicians and companies that want to heal our world in the best way they can. So it's a wide net that I'm hoping to cast to try to take advantage of all the things that I think food has the power to do, which is to bring people together first and then, hopefully, make good from there.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Wow. Well, I can't wait to see what that looks like with the soft lunch and hopefully even take part in that.

Speaker 3: 10:36

We love to have you. Just let me know.

Speaker 2: 10:38

That sounds wonderful and I think it's such a comprehensive idea of offering education, cooking classes, continuing your cuisine-focused dinners and the global integration of that. I think there's a lot of things that can obviously do with the knowledge that we have in the food system, but utilizing your background in culinary arts is definitely one way of shining the light on some of what we talked about earlier with the storytelling. So I think that's a really great thing that you're working towards, and I'm also really interested to learn about your role as a strategic advisor for Pastelsia and learning about how you got into the world of learning about transparency and traceability. So please tell us more about that.

Speaker 3: 11:29

Sure. So Pastelsia is a company that was bought out by a company that's named, believe it or not, where food comes from.

Speaker 3: 11:39

This company is based in Colorado, and they own a number of smaller companies that are into the world of certifications and things like that as it relates to food.

Speaker 3: 11:48

And so Pastelsia is a company that was founded by my dear friends Corey and Laura Pete. They live in Canada and their focus was primarily to provide assessments and certifications for seafood and for seafood suppliers as well as seafood consumers, and so they were the original founders and consultants for the James Beard Foundation Smart Catch Program, which I've been a member of since its inception, and our restaurant was always Smart Catch approved. And so Pastelsia has maintained that sort of leading edge competitiveness in terms of offering assessments and certifications for anyone who's interested in sort of assessing their own seafood demand as well as supply. And so I was approached by them several years ago to see if I would be interested in being a strategic advisor, because I've had a lot of experience with promoting sustainable seafood. I'm sort of ad nauseam about telling people where my seafood comes from. I was one of the first people in the state of Florida to promote lionfish, but general for the general public. I've done lots of demos with lionfish.

Speaker 2: 12:59

Very cool.

Speaker 3: 13:00

Yeah, and some might say whole foods, you know became interested because of chefs like me to offer lionfish in their seafood town. So lionfish being an invasive species, you know, and having no real natural enemy in our waters, is kind of prolific and causing a lot of damage to local species. So I've been interested in sustainable seafood for all of my chef life and I think I cook seafood really well. Some might argue I'm one of the best in our region. I hate to say it like that. So I love seafood, I love to eat fresh seafood. I like to source really sustainable and local and transparent seafood.

Speaker 3: 13:37

Having said that, that's a real challenge.

Speaker 3: 13:39

Seafood, being as perishable as it is, is unfortunately subject to a lot of lack of transparency and lack of traceability. So that's became sort of a personal challenge of mine is to really highlight those people who are doing the right thing and certainly not supporting those who are not. So Pastelche knew about me and knew about my sort of not just experience but rather perhaps some level of expertise when it comes to thinking about these kinds of things as it relates to seafood. So they reached out to me a few years ago and I've been a strategic advisor for them in various capacities. We've done a lot of work together. We've cooked at the James Beard House together to soft relaunch the Smart Catch program, and now Smart Catch is entirely under Pastelche and where food comes from. So Pastelche specializes in promoting and certifying and assessing sustainability standards that are what you might call place based Meaning. It's also paying attention to the terroir and the individual stories of suppliers and consumers, beyond maybe some sort of a standardized model that works for many but not necessarily works for all.

Speaker 3: 14:56

So, place based sustainability, I think, is another avenue for those of us who care about transparency and traceability of food in the food systems and in this case specifically seafood. So I'm a big fan of trying to cast the widest possible net that makes our food systems more resilient and better for all.

Speaker 2: 15:19

I love that and I think there's something to say about, you know, companies and organizations really dedicating to increasing awareness on some of these topics. And, speaking of that as well, I'd like to also define what transparency and traceability mean for some of the folks that might not be familiar with these terms. So Purdue University defines transparency as the disclosure of information about a product's production process, ingredients and environmental and social impacts, whereas traceability is defined as the ability to track the movement of a product along the entire supply chain, from its origin to its destination. So, hari, I would like to know, you know, do you think that consumers are really looking at this as an important marker when they're purchasing their food, and why do you think there's a need you know for these topics to exist in our world today?

Speaker 3: 16:20

Sure, that's a great question because, by their very definitions, these two terms tend to sound very academic and certainly very technical.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Right.

Speaker 3: 16:31

So the average person going to a grocery store or going to a farmer's market or what have you, may not think about this. It's just trying to put some food on the plate at the end of the day food on the table. So I would say, if we can raise awareness about the fact that these terms, as technical as they have to be in terms of being able to execute them and monitor them and actually function with them in a system, they, at the end of the day, they target very basic human ideas. You know, to say something is transparent is really referring to honesty, and I think most people would say, hey, if you're being honest, I appreciate that. So what does that have to do with just putting food on the plate? Well, we know now that, because of some of the not so transparent processes out there, our food systems have gotten kind of unhealthy. The food in the marketplace has gotten a bit unhealthy and I don't think there's a person out there who would say you know, I don't, I would like to be unwell, or I don't want to be healthy, or I want to be sort of lied to, or I want to pay more than I really should be paying. So none of those things are aspects that the average consumer would necessarily be ambivalent about.

Speaker 3: 17:54

So I think, instead of focusing on the technical definitions, we just we're just talking about hey, what you're buying is what you're getting. That's a very basic thing to ask for. And then, beyond that, the label is validated, it's been verified and true. So we demand those kinds of standards in just about everything else in our lives. But when we so the fact that we're asking for those very same standards when it comes to food, the thing that nourishes it every day, the thing that goes, keeps us going, the thing that goes into our bodies and hopefully keeps us healthy and strong and vibrant and excited and satisfied for a long time, well, that's pretty basic to ask for that. So I think you know, I think the average consumer, if they don't overtly care about it, if you reframe the question and ask them the same thing in the way I've just described, I would suspect that the response rate for yes, we care about these two things would be much higher.

Speaker 2: 18:56

Yeah, I agree with that, and I think that you know there's even really I want to say more basic ideas out there that relate to this in terms of, for instance, I recently found out, in even working in the food industry for so long, that the USDA and FDA are regulating different types of food, and you know that alone is one bit of information that could maybe help someone looking at a label you know what, who's regulating this and where it's being passed through. So I feel like there are a lot of different steps to take when people are looking at food and where it comes from. So are there opportunities that you think exist for consumers to care more about this or learn more about these topics?

Speaker 3: 19:50

Absolutely so, I think. So the opportunities are unfortunately not as prevalent as you would like them to be, in the sense that you must even to this day, you must actually seek this information out. Now. That aside, if you go to a grocery store and pick up just about any sort of packaged good, you will see a number of labels on that packaged good, and that's because labeling, I believe, has sort of gotten out of hand a little bit. So I think I think it's in the best interest of our food systems and hopefully public and private investments will help make this a better sort of scenario in the future that our labeling needs to be more, of course, has to be accurate, but has to be efficient and has to be useful and has to be accessible. So the ability to have a particular label on a brand for a small company can cost a lot, and so most companies will just do the bare minimum.

Speaker 3: 20:52

And it goes back to the idea of place-based traceability. Not everyone has the ability to have some sort of a certification brand on their seal on their product. So, in terms of food labeling and the labeling of especially, transparency and traceability in fact you know they're an extreme example of that. Just give you an example you can, in a local grocery store, go and there's a particular brand of poultry that comes from somewhere in Virginia, I believe, and there's a QR code in the back and when you scan the QR code you it takes you to a web page and a website that talks more about that farmer and the farm where that poultry came from. So it's not nearly as extreme as a segment or an episode of Fortlandia, but you know the chicken's name, but that exists now.

Speaker 3: 21:41

That exists now you can scan a QR code and, of course, it's the most expensive brand on the shelf. It's, I think, a know your farmer. I'm not trying to pick them out necessarily, but it's something like that and that exists. So that sort of made its way into the regular grocery store. So I think you're going to see more and more of that, because you always need one disruptor right In the market, but you need one disruptor who can be successful, and then the others are, then the others start playing catch up, and so I think you'll see the more mainstream brands as well start to do more and more of that.

Speaker 3: 22:16

Once they get their act together, as it were, and they get past their generic sustainability statements on their websites of that actually doing the good work, they will be proudly showcasing that traceability and that transparency of their products. So probably then end with AI AI being what it is now and growing leaps and bounds. I would say in the next five to 10 years, you will see that labeling on food products that have to do with traceability and transparency is going to really explode.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Right, that's something I'm definitely seeing in the grocery store and, just like you said with the chicken you know, scanning a barcode and learning where exactly this chicken was grown and the farm that it came from, those are the kinds of things that I think are taking it to the next level with technology. So that's kind of exciting to me. You know someone that's obviously really interested in farming and farming practices. I think more and more consumers are also trying to figure this out and learn more about you know where their food is coming from. So that type of consumer education is pretty unique and I think we're entering a new chapter, it seems.

Speaker 3: 23:28

We are. If I could just add to that, I think it has to also do with leading edge sort of marketing and business models, because a business that wants to scale at any level, when they can set themselves apart from the competition, as it were, with the implementation of such practices and such technologies that are actually not as expensive as you might think, they're going to set themselves apart. So, in fact, I'll just bring it back full circle to our restaurant. We opened the restaurant in 2008.

Speaker 3: 24:00

I was the one who always took. I went to the farm myself I still do and I picked the produce myself. I still do and despite my full crazy day, I would go to the local farms and pick up my produce and come back with grocery stores with the produce. But while I was at the farm, I always took photos and sometimes did a photo up with the farmer and a photo of the farm and I posted that in social media letting my guests know that, hey, this evening we're going to have this fresh broccoli on the seafood special, and guess what? The seafood came from here. I was that guy. So for me this is like normal. This is what I've done for the past 15 years Now. It wasn't advanced technology, it was just me on my cell phone taking a few photos and doing real time posts, but it had the same effect. It had the same effect because my guests would come to me and go. I came in just for that black drum that you picked up at the local seafood market.

Speaker 3: 24:53

So I would hear that they came in because I did a post four or five hours ago in the day. So that's, that's that works. It works as a business model and guess what it's? For me it was not a shtick, it was the way I told stories and I still do so. It was the story of the food. I wanted my guests to know the story of the food because I was going to be busy in the kitchen. I didn't have time to repeat the story to every guest. Just go check out the post. You can see where the stuff came from.

Speaker 2: 25:20

Wow, I really love that idea because I mean, I mean that's for many chefs. I don't know how feasible that is right To make that that quick of a turnaround with the posts and getting people at your door, but I, it's a.

Speaker 3: 25:34

I was an early adopter of those technologies.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yeah, it seems to be that there are people that are really looking for exactly what you just spoke about is is that time type of transparency where we can see exactly what's happening, and I think one of the biggest reasons for that is because of our health and what's happening with, you know, chronic disease and managing food safety risks and all of these things that also tied back to food. So I kind of want to dig deeper into the traceability portion of this conversation and learning more about how you think the traceability process can can get a little bit better in the US food system.

Speaker 3: 26:21

Sure. So I think you know there's a lot of technology that has to come into play and the technology exists. I mean, you look at Amazon, right. You look at these big, big box stores where you can order something in three hours later you get the stuff and all along the way you've you're able to track where that product is in this journey. So that technology has been around for a long time. The question is can food companies adopt them as seamlessly?

Speaker 3: 26:45

Food is a little bit more of a finicky product because it's not as predictable as some something that was on the shelf. There's some perishability involved. There's uncertainty involved. There are weather patterns involved. There are uncertainties. The variables are many, many more than which is static. You know retail type items, right. So I think you know a few are. Codes are an easy one.

Speaker 3: 27:08

However, being honest, on a blockchain like the large blockchains like IBM and Google are being used by large food service companies and large firms these days to kind of manage and track the journey of the food as it makes its way from farm to table and beyond. So I think it's just a matter of time. I think it depends on which market you're in, if you're in a very progressive market in this on in this country, you will see that those things are around you. If you're in a much more sort of old school, not so progressive market, you may not see that. So I think they exist.

Speaker 3: 27:45

It's a matter of where you live these days and I suspect parts of Europe are pretty advanced in this matter. So I think, because of the fact that it's a union and there's a lot of a free movement of goods between all those countries and the fact they're all bound by the European Union and they're basically the charter, that they're obligated in some way to share that knowledge and that information seamlessly because it's part of a larger collective, as it were. In the United States, yes, there are some federal laws that kind of govern the journey of food, but still there's still a lot of sort of independence when it comes to food moving from certainly from state to state, but sometimes even from county to county.

Speaker 2: 28:28

So I think.

Speaker 3: 28:29

I think it has to do with where you live and and, ultimately, the state of how much centralizing can happen with food systems in this, in this country, and the journey of food.

Speaker 2: 28:43

Right, and actually that makes me think of the opposite of that decentralizing the local food systems, right, because I think that that's been a term that's been thrown around pretty recently in terms of kind of stepping away from the more kind of monopolized industrial strategies that have taken place, you know, over the last couple of decades in the food system, but making them more localized through, you know kind of county level, those kinds of ways of managing the system a little bit better. Do you think that that's that that type of strategy holds promise?

Speaker 3: 29:22

I think so. I mean in terms of scale and the ability to be effective. Certainly the smaller the scale, the more effective one can be, as long there's a will and there's this investment. But there's no but other than then it comes back to maybe. I guess this is a market model, because in the sense that if there's a part of the country that doesn't particularly care, then it's. It's citizens, as it were, are kind of out of luck, and you don't get that transparency if there's no mandate from anywhere else. So I think it's a mixed bag. I do think that it will, at least in the short term and midterm, create more resilient local food systems. There's no question about that. Long term, is it a better model for cohesive, large scale transparency and traceability? I'm not so sure.

Speaker 2: 30:13

Well, I do. I do feel like there are roles, obviously, that the consumers can play as well to drive positive change and involvement of the practices that take place. Have you seen, first and foremost, through your experience with the global cooking school, with the roles being a strategic advisor on transparency and traceability solutions, have there been things that you've witnessed that consumers have done that have really impacted that, the way, the technology or the ways that these food companies, or maybe even government level, have been thinking about how to transition or evolve how we're doing things currently?

Speaker 3: 31:04

I believe so and I'd like to think that chefs and people who produce food for others have had a lot to do with that. You know, I've considered myself a chef advocate for all these years, in the sense that I'm advocating for better, a better food system in the way that I can define it, and so I think that consumer demand is driven, I think significantly. Here we are having this conversation because I think chefs and farmers do influence the way consumers kind of behave and ask for things in the marketplace. So I think the specific examples are I go back to seafood I mean there have been a lot of in a lot of times that been sort of very controversial farming practices. Let's take bluefin tuna, for example. For a long time it was fish because it was a market in Japan and places in Europe and that paid high dollars. So there was a lot of illegal fishing of big, large top credit to bluefin tuna. And so there was, you know, places like Monterey Bay, quarantine, seafood Watch and others like them said no, you should not be eating bluefin tuna. And then it came down to what depends these stocks in this part of the world. Maybe the Atlantic bluefin tuna is not so bad. Pacific bluefin tuna don't touch it. So those kinds of pushes and sort of push back against a blatant no, you shouldn't do this came from, ultimately, consumers becoming more educated and saying, no, we're not, we're not stupid. I mean, you just tell us the real story and we'll sort of help you make the right decision, because we're not evil people in the end. As consumers, we also want to do the right thing and so we want our children to have this. We don't want these things to be overfished and become extinct, and so I think these things take a long time. Unfortunately, it's not like the changes sudden or the demand is suddenly experienced in the marketplace, but I do think advocacy from from individuals and food systems who are respected like chefs, like farmers and like some in a well meaning politicians even believe we're not an educators for sure, and and folks like yourself, time to tell the good stories and the good word. I think we are the people, we, we, we have the ability to scale that thing that we think is the choir where the choir, and we think, of course, this is the only way to do it. I don't know the way to do it, but by repeatedly kind of behaving in the way that we should in our own lives and then telling that story repeatedly and having a cohesive kind of messaging and I think does have a huge impact in larger demand. That happens in the marketplace from consumers.

Speaker 3: 33:53

So I think the seafood stories are prevalent. There's so many examples of like, say, gulf shrimp. I gave you the example of bluefin tuna. There are many others like that.

Speaker 3: 34:01

Golden tile is a great example in Florida. If you go to Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch recommendations. For the longest time golden tile was not even on that recommended list. But there's a very well managed golden tile fishery in the state of Florida and they became aware of it. Then they understood that, hey, this is just, it's just a matter of having more information. But the locals knew it, we knew that, we know the story, we know that we're not overfishing gold tile. I mean, the fishermen will tell you when it's time to stop for the most part.

Speaker 3: 34:31

So I think I think that demand that we seek in the marketplace to improve our food systems comes from many sources and I'd like to think that advocates like us have a huge role to play. So I'm not sure if I really answered your question, but I think I think that consumer awareness and demand doesn't just come from the average consumer. It comes from advocates like ourselves who then trickle that down to the consumers. Because of the way we sort of practice what we preach and create delicious food in the process, that then becomes a normal thing for a consumer to demand in the marketplace.

Speaker 2: 35:05

Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that answer. I think that was a great way of responding to that question, because I think, as a even for me, you know, as someone that's an educator I often forget kind of the role, the impact that we have on the average consumer, and so it's kind of nice to hear those words set out loud again, because, you know, we do this work every day and it's something that is just kind of ingrained in us, but it does make an impact and I truly believe that.

Speaker 3: 35:35

So thank you for mentioning that, and I also want to kind of remind ourselves to thank ourselves from time to time to keep it going.

Speaker 2: 35:45

Yes yes, for sure, for sure, and I think the seafood landscape is one that is really a great area, especially when it comes to transparency and traceability. So I want to hear from you how do you think that the world of seafood is changing and how is it now being traced? Because I know that there are a couple of different labels out there for, like tuna, you know, canned tuna and different things of that nature, but I've, you know, we've seen so many documentaries and things out there that talk about the illegitimacy of some of these labels and things. So I'm just trying to figure out what is it that we should be really looking out for when it comes to seafood?

Speaker 3: 36:31

Sure, it's a really layered question there. So the first fact of the matter is that the wild seafood stocks are limited. There's no way around that. The world cannot be fed with just wild seafood, even though everybody wants their wild seafood. If you're a seafood lover, because you feel like wild seafood is going to taste the best and it's going to be the least harmful and things like that, well that's a very limited stock. So we have to look more and more to aquaculture. We have to look more and more to farm raised.

Speaker 3: 37:02

But with that comes a different challenge is the ability to manage the health and the well being and the sustainability, the traceability, the transparency of that seafood which is farmed, or some sort of a hybrid model that's maybe partly wild and partly sort of farmed, if that makes sense. So there are lots of labels out there, for sure. You know. Monterey Bay Aquarium, seafood Watch is a great one. They've been around a long time. They're very good about doing research, but they're not necessarily good about keeping up with what the restaurants are doing. They can only do recommendations. Ocean wise is a good one. Asc is another one. Msc has been around a long time. The Marine Stewardship Council has been around a long time. Fish Choice is a good one, whole Foods has its own Sustainable Seafood Model, msc has its own thing and then you got, you know, many smaller ones like that. So there are lots of labels out there.

Speaker 3: 37:57

But at the end of the day, I think aquaculture is something that is our future as a species. But we have to be a little cautious as we navigate that space. There's still a lot of trepidation from chefs to put farmed products. If they're like you know, they're diehard wild seafood chefs, it's hard to sell a farmed product to them.

Speaker 3: 38:21

So I think, as far as traceability and transparency goes, on paper it's easier to trace aquaculture than it is to trace wild ocean caught seafood, because really the big wild seas out there, the oceans, are largely unmanaged. You don't really know how people are catching stuff. They may tell you one thing, but you know in the middle of the ocean when no one else around them, you don't really know the practices that are going on there. But something that's more controlled in a controlled environment, like aquaculture, you can, on paper, have more ability and certainly more transparency with those products. I think that's the good news. The good news is the bad news sounds like we won't have a lot of wild stock for our future generations. The good news is the aquaculture that we will have to depend on on paper has the ability to be more transparent and traceable.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Yes, and I think that there is also good. The other part of the good news, too, as far as what I've seen, is the fact that there is this now new wave of regenerative ocean farming that ties into aquaculture and is now working, you know, with mutually beneficial ecosystems for seaweed and for fish alike, and I think there's a lot of newer models taking place that are trying to really increase the environmental impacts in terms of lessening sorry, the environmental impacts that we have through agriculture and the way in aquaculture, obviously, and harvesting our food. So I think there's a lot of exciting things happening there.

Speaker 3: 40:06

Absolutely, and I think in everything which is a new and emerging technology is going to cost a little bit more at first, and that's the knock on everything. That's really better is it tends to cost a little bit more. Organic is a good example of that and so, but it's a matter of scale and it's a matter of omnipresence. You know when those things. It may not happen in the next year or so, but we're not trying to solve the world's problems a year from now, even though the urgency is clearly there. We're trying to keep making sure that this thing doesn't implode in itself in the next few generations, and so I think the fact that we're taking those steps now and becoming more aware and reacting in some proactive ways is a good thing, and the good practices and the creative and the forward leaning practices and business models need to be supported. So I agree with you.

Speaker 3: 41:06

Just takes me back to a very brief. The only time I've ever appeared in the New York Times is a decade ago roughly, when somebody maybe six years ago somebody interviewed me briefly for an aquaculture operation in New England for basically Chilean Mediterranean sea bass, and so they were raising this in a little tank and basically in brackish water, and they wanted to do my opinions and I gave them my two cents about that. So that's my claim to fame. It's the only time I've been mentioned in the New York Times. That's better than that.

Speaker 3: 41:41

That's not something to be proud of, but no. So I think this thing about looking for solutions that are hybrid and sort of trying to take advantage of the fact that seafood generally does well in really clean natural water. But when you try to simulate that environment and make it artificial, as it were, then you're going to have some differences in flavor and texture and outcome. So to try to, you know, really hybridize that and say, okay, let's take the best of that and the best of this and see what we can do and see what that looks like. I think that's where the future has to be, because I think otherwise the demand will fall. If you just dump the marketplace with really poor tasting and poorly produced seafood that's in an aquaculture setting, I don't think people are going to go for that.

Speaker 2: 42:32

So yeah, and I think that there's. There's still a lot more to be done in terms of educating consumers and getting a lot of clear information out there that's supported by, you know, reputable sources and all those things. But speaking of increasing awareness, I'm really excited to have you at our upcoming summit, the organic food and farming summit in April this year for our chef panel called plating the harvest and racing local at restaurants. It's going to be really insightful and will this panel, you know, as you know, will include other chefs and farmers talking about successful efforts and collaborations to include local ingredients on their menus. So I want to hear your take on what you know, what you're excited about when it comes to this upcoming workshop, but then also some of the other things that you have coming out soon.

Speaker 3: 43:33

Thank you for that. Yeah, I'm also very much excited and looking forward to being there with you all in Tampa I'm hoping this is still a work in progress to even do some cooking while I'm there. We'll see how all that works out beyond just being on the panel, because as a chef and cook, I love to cook and any excuse to make some food makes me happy. So we'll see how that one goes.

Speaker 3: 43:53

In terms of yeah, I wanted to also, if I could just mention that another thing that I've absolutely promoted all of my chef life is to promote what I term lesser seafood, you know, species that are not the top of the chain, not the oh I want my group. Or snapper, tilefish kind of all the time. Or Chilean sea bass, or tuna or salmon. What about those other lesser types of seafood into the sea trouts and the catfishes and the drums and things like that? So I've always promoted other species of seafood, which are sometimes plunifold and very sustainable. So as we move forward with our need to consume more seafood, we should not forget that there's some very, really delicious species out there that are not overfished. We just have to not think of them as just bait or lesser species because, frankly, many of them are actually very healthy and good for you and they're certainly very sustainable. So I just want to throw that in there into that mix, of course.

Speaker 2: 44:56

No, thank you for mentioning that, and I do want to highlight too that even with that summit event panel that you're going to be on as well, we are. I did get confirmation from our event coordinator that we will have the chefs and farmers collaborating to provide input on the event menu so that attendees can indulge in fresh you know from the farm produce and even local chicken. So we are definitely excited about that and I know you chicken with the QR code.

Speaker 2: 45:28

Hopefully we'll have the QR code on there as well, and you know, looking forward to also learning more about your upcoming cookbook. And you know what's that? What's that all about?

Speaker 3: 45:39

Yeah, so this is a three year project. It's in its third year. You know just the timing of it all. My wife is a physician in town. She's a lifestyle medicine train, a podiatric surgeon. We ran the restaurant together. She were equal partners and everything. She's incredibly talented and forward leaning. So the two of us were basically recruited by a publishing company, a Hatherly out of New York, who distributes through Penguin, to write for them a whole food plant based cardiac recovery cookbook.

Speaker 3: 46:12

So, it's going to be. I wrote it. It's already in its final stages. Hopefully it's going to come out. The scheduled release date is June 11th of this year. We'll see if that happens. I'm hoping it will.

Speaker 3: 46:23

But it's definitely been a three year project, it's been a labor of love, and Jennifer has a lot of great medical information in there, and I have all the food information in this An idea. The goal there is to help at risk cardiac patients, or patients who already had a cardiac event of some sort, to navigate the life of a limited diet and having to maybe cut out some sodium, cut out some fats in their diets and still want to enjoy food and have an enjoyable experience with food. Not it be just medicine. And so that's where the book comes in is to try to, you know, give people really some easy to do at home ideas to make tasty food that's globally inspired and but still pays attention to their dietary needs as cardiac, at risk cardiac patients. So that's the book that's hopefully going to come out this summer. We're very excited and we can't wait.

Speaker 2: 47:11

That sounds great, and we'll definitely include a link to that once that is available in our about text for this podcast episode, so anyone listening could try to check that out and hopefully make a purchase on that too. But we also want to, you know, wrap up the show with asking you, hari, what advice do you have for people aspiring, you know, to bridge the fields of culinary arts and sustainability?

Speaker 3: 47:37

Ah.

Speaker 3: 47:37

So if there, I guess the advice would be to be honest and don't try to don't try to fit a niche that you think exists, or don't try to keep up with trends, and my life has been built on just being transparent myself, and so I think with that comes natural storytelling.

Speaker 3: 47:57

So I think there's there are plenty of like minded people like you and like me out there. It's a matter of just being a sort of yourself and following with passion everything you do, and in the process, usually good things will come is what I believe Most of the things that have come on my plate, figuratively and literally, have been, not because I've necessarily gone out and solicited them. This podcast is an example of that. It's just that like minded people sometimes just connect, and it's a much smaller world now and it's easy for people to connect. So I think my best advice I can give anybody is to just be yourself but be completely passionate and resilient about everything you care about. As it relates to bridging the gap between sustainability is a general idea and food systems is a very specific application of it.

Speaker 2: 48:48

That's a beautiful response. I really, you know, I resonate with that and I really want to thank you for sharing that advice and for sharing today's you know insightful discussion on food transparency and traceability. I really felt that this conversation was one that was much needed and super excited to share this with her, with her followers.

Speaker 3: 49:12

Thank you, lana. What a thrill it's been. I look forward to, of course, seeing you in person and but also listening to your other podcast. I've caught a few in the past and I look forward to catching more. Excellent, thank you for what you're doing. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 49:26

Thank you. Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you also at the summit. And for everyone listening, we hope this episode has shed light on the importance of us understanding the journey our food takes, you know, before it reaches our plates, and the significance of transparency and fostering trust and accountability within the food industry. So thank you for tuning in to Fresh Take Until next time. Stay curious, stay informed and savor every bite with a newfound appreciation for the journey it takes.

Speaker 1: 49:59

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