Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg (by Food Tank)
Sep 25, 2026 · 32 min · 12 segments
Food Tank is live all week at WNYC-NPR's The Greene Space to talk solutions for food, agriculture, and environment during Climate Week NYC. Food systems leaders celebrate author, nutritionist and NYU…
Dani NierenbergHost
Cathy KaufmanGuest
Frances Moore LappéGuest
Amber RubarthGuest
Ruth ReichlGuest
Kim SeversonGuest
Kathleen FinlayGuest
Marion NestleGuest
Next we have Ruth Reichl, an author and the former editor-in-chief of Gourmet Ruth.
So the other day I made the terrible mistake of looking at Marian's Wikipedia page.
She is one of the very first Americans to understand in a serious way that food and nutrition are about so much more than something to eat.
She started with nutrition, which was, at the time she began studying it, so simplified that it was taught as home economics.
But having mastered molecular biology, she quickly realized that nutrition was actually a bigger subject.
And so for her entire career, she has insisted that those of us in the food world cover it all.
She insisted that this subject is really, it's sociology, it's agriculture, it's history, it's community, but above all, it's politics.
And when Cy Newhouse asked me to take over Gourmet Magazine, I was kind of channeling Marian when I said to him, your magazine is just all wrong.
I mean, this should be the Bible leading the conversation about what food really is.
And it's because of Marian that we really have, we have a new generation of food people.
Marian has always been, for me, the most inspirational person in this business of ours, the pathfinder showing us the way.
But to be honest, when I thought about toasting Marian today, the main thing I thought of is this.
Next we have Ruth Reichl, an author and the former editor-in-chief of Gourmet Ruth.
So the other day I made the terrible mistake of looking at Marian's Wikipedia page.
She is one of the very first Americans to understand in a serious way that food and nutrition are about so much more than something to eat.
She started with nutrition, which was, at the time she began studying it, so simplified that it was taught as home economics.
But having mastered molecular biology, she quickly realized that nutrition was actually a bigger subject.
And so for her entire career, she has insisted that those of us in the food world cover it all.
She insisted that this subject is really, it's sociology, it's agriculture, it's history, it's community, but above all, it's politics.
And when Cy Newhouse asked me to take over Gourmet Magazine, I was kind of channeling Marian when I said to him, your magazine is just all wrong.
I mean, this should be the Bible leading the conversation about what food really is.
And it's because of Marian that we really have, we have a new generation of food people.
Marian has always been, for me, the most inspirational person in this business of ours, the pathfinder showing us the way.
But to be honest, when I thought about toasting Marian today, the main thing I thought of is this.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.