Food Matters Podcast

The food given to the sick, or those in institutional care, says a lot about the value we place on it in society. Hospital food has long exemplified a degraded view of food, but Joyce Timmins‘ efforts at Rotunda Hospital have won her awards and sparked a new conversation.

Chefs play a major role in determining food trends. Advocacy specialist Paul Newnham works to mobilise chefs globally to take action towards addressing SDG2, Zero Hunger.

The major global tech companies have created their own food culture over the last decade, characterised as excessive and wasteful at times, but trail-blazing elsewhere. IRFU’s Performance Chef Maurice McGeehan explains more, before detailing the food needs of very different professionals – Irish rugby players. Tim Holmes then takes us behind the scenes of the veg garden tended by the team that bring us Guinness.

Northern Europe is generally a good place to look for how the world should function sustainably. In Holland, Geert van der Veer‘s organisation Herenboeren enables groups of 200 people to co-invest in a farm and take control of the food supply in their area.

School closures during lockdown revealed the dependency so many children have on school meals. Serial food entrepreneur, writer and researcher Michelle Darmody explains how it also highlighted the poor quality of these meals and the lack of emphasis on food literacy in our education system.

One former Obama campaigner turned Irish resident, Erin Fornoff explains how growing food can be done anywhere, including the roof of her houseboat.