First Exeter Food Network Mezze Seminar

You are warmly invited to attend this year’s first Exeter Food Mezze Seminar (a mixed menu of taster talks).

 

These seminars are designed to allow us to familiarise ourselves with the work of colleagues across the university with shared interests in food, to offer them valuable commentary, and to generate ideas for future collaborations.

 

The session will be held on Teams TEAMS LINK from 9:45-11:15 on Thursday 23rd October.

 

The speakers, their topics, and brief abstracts appear below. Presentations will be short (7-8 minutes), followed by time for discussion of each.

 

Please do join us online.

 

Best wishes

 

Harry

 

*****

 

Cassandra Lowe, Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Why do we have a hard time resisting “junk foods”?

 

In modern food rich environments, where high calorie “junk foods” are readily available and often cheaper than healthier alternatives, many individuals find it difficult to limit their consumption of appealing, but unhealthy, ultra-processed high calorie foods. Others have minimal issues maintaining a healthy diet. Here, I will present my work demonstrating the causal cognitive and brain mechanism that can explain individual differences in dietary behaviours, and how we can target these mechanisms to improve individual and population level dietary behaviours.

 

Semih Celik, Lecturer in History of Science and Citizenship, Department of Archaeology and History

Agriculture in the Age of the Ottoman Anthropocene: Environmental Effects of Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Reform in Northwestern Anatolia

 

How did 19th-century Ottoman policies to boost food production reshape people’s relationship with the land? This talk explores that question through tax registers from 1840 and 1845 and the empire’s first detailed agricultural survey conducted in the district of Biga in 1856. By examining the environmental consequences of these reforms, I highlight how food security policies contributed to anthropocenic change in Northwestern Anatolia. I also reflect on how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) tools can help us better understand these historical transformations.

 

Tiago de Melo Cartaxo, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Seeding Change: From Milan’s Food Policy to Cornwall’s Pact and the UK’s Future

 

The Cornwall Food Policy Pact project focused on addressing food waste and promoting a regenerative economy in Cornwall in collaboration with local stakeholders. Drawing inspiration from the successful Milan Food Policy, our research aimed to map and discuss a policy framework to tackle food insecurity and reduce waste. Based on the Milan experience, the project reached key conclusions and recommendations for effective policy implementation in Cornwall and other places in the UK. These recommendations were presented to policymakers in Westminster.

 

Eve Kasprzycka, Doctoral Candidate and Sessional Lecturer at the University of British Columbia, and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Exeter

Multispecies Justice and the Ethical Implications of Farming Atlantic Salmon

 

Instead of addressing unsustainable and inhumane systems of producing protein, the animal body becomes the side of redress; innovations applied to the intensive farming of terrestrial animals are now practiced in aquaculture, such as selective breeding, genetic engineering, confinement technologies and the widespread use of growth hormones and antibiotics used to mitigate negative health impacts caused by living in filthy and over-crowded conditions. This talk examines the chemical, hormonal, genetic and chromosomal manipulation of farmed Atlantic salmon to question the requisite of animal welfare or what welfare means in the context of factory farming. My presentation challenges the supply-and-demand logics used to strengthen global investment in intensive salmon farming by examining wider contexts of farming carnivorous fishes and misinformation pertinent to aquaculture’s greenwashing.