Podcast: What are the best practices for preserving food?

Clinton Monchuk: (00:07) 
From Canadian Food Focus. This is Ask a Farmer. I’m your host Clinton Monchuk, a Saskatchewan farmer. In this podcast, we talk to food experts to answer your questions about your food.  
 
Clinton Monchuk: (00:29) 
Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Today we’re going to be talking a little bit about preserving food. Now, we’ve realized just in recent years the cost of food has kind of changed our desire to eat healthier. Canning food is a topic of interest now amongst Canadians. So people want to understand more about this. We’re going to be exploring this topic more in depth, and as I mentioned, I am definitely not in the know on this subject. We have some experts with us today. So with this episode, we’re going to have Connor Flynn and Martha Rogers who are both certified Master Food preservers, help us develop some of this knowledge, the skills and the confidence around how to safely preserve food. So how are we doing Connor and Martha?  
 
Martha Rogers: (01:19) 
Well, we’re just great and we’re so excited to be here today, talking about our favorite topic, which is food preservation. And canning is one of the most common methods of food preservation that we know about. So we’re very excited. And Connor, what about you?  
 
Connor Flynn: (01:38) 
Yeah, I’m very excited to dive deeper into this topic and as part of what I do for my job, teaching people about it, and my passion for food and, and preserving it. And I’m a family man, so as part of what we do as a family, we really do a lot of food preservation, because it brings back lots of memories from my childhood, but to instill new memories for my children and just for the sheer practicality of preserving things when it’s harvest time and saving money and preserving vegetables and fruits when they’re in their prime. So, yeah, I’m excited to be here.  
 
Clinton Monchuk: (02:16) 
Martha, and maybe we’ll start with you. Just give us a little bit of a background of some of your experience. I also want to know what involves being a certified master food preserver. That’s a new one for me, so just maybe explain that a little bit more in some of your background. Then we’ll hit Connor up.  
 
Martha Rogers: (02:32) 
I’ve always been really interested in food. It’s been a passion of mine forever. I was a university professor until relatively recently in faculty of health, but I always loved food and loved preserving food. And then I stumbled upon the Master Food Preserver program, which is available across the US through many university cooperative extension programs. And I decided to take it, which was through Cornell in New York. And it’s just a three day intensive program. And then if you want become certified, you have to spend about a year developing a portfolio that will demonstrate your competence in all forms of food preservation. And then they, you know, give you the certification. And that’s where I met Connor.  

Clinton Monchuk: (03:28) 
And Connor. Let’s talk a little bit about you.  
 
Connor Flynn: (03:31) 
My love for food started at a young age with my grandmother, baking pies and making pickles and a lot of fond memories. And I just stumbled into it ironically, teaching what I teach today in a high school program, hospitality and tourism. I became a chef, a cheese maker, I was in food sales. I’ve married into a farming family now, so I help out on their farms. So it was all real full circle for me, understanding the farming side. And when I started teaching, we were preserving food just out of sheer necessity. We, at the school I work at, we get food donated through something called the London Food Coalition, which is an organization that collects perished food and drops it off to locations that are in need. And, sadly at our school, we have a lot of mouths to feed.  
 
Connor Flynn: (04:21) 
So we were getting hundreds of pounds of tomatoes at a time, or fruit that was going off, and we needed a way to utilize it to feed more students down the road. We couldn’t feed, we couldn’t get rid of it right away. So we were essentially just starting to preserve. I had some experience doing this in kitchens, and I just started doing it. And how I really came in contact with Martha was when we had a health inspection here at the school, and the health inspector was asking, how are you guys doing this safely? I had already looked into what was available in this country, in this province, in terms of training. And the long and short of it is there wasn’t much available. So I kind of called her bluff and, and just said, Hey, I’m just really not sure where you want me to get this training that you’re speaking of to satisfy their concerns from a food safety perspective. So during that time, I had found Martha, I think just by Googling. And I contacted her and she suggested going to Cornell, and that’s sort of how we met. So Ithink that that sums it up in a nutshell. 
 
Martha Rogers: (05:33) 
And we both, I think, share a real passion for helping develop some kind of infrastructure for food preservation in Canada, which there is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the US. And both Connor and I really love teaching in many formats, like whether it’s small group workshops, or whether it’s in the classroom, or whether it’s writing to communicate information about food preservation. But fundamentally, we would like to see much more of a stronger infrastructure in Canada. And yeah, we have a long way to go.  
 
Connor Flynn: (06:14) 
Yeah, we’re behind the times in comparison to the US and her and I are really trying to change that now.  

Clinton Monchuk: (06:21) 
So it’s interesting because, you know, just in that conversation about the differences between Canada and the United States, I think you’re seeing more people though up here in Canada are taking an interest in it. So a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are probably thinking is there an opportunity for me to start preserving food? So let’s just kind of break down some of those basics for new beginners that might be interested in getting into the process and just talk about some of the food safety and the, the science behind preserving food. So I’m going ask you both right off the start, what are some of the different ways, we’ve mentioned a little bit about canning, but maybe you could explain that a little bit more in depth. And some of the other ways and methods that we preserve foods.  
 
Martha Rogers: (07:06) 
We all do some form of food preservation because we refrigerate things or we freeze food, that’s food preservation. But there are many other methods: fermentation is very popular these days. It’s so healthy for you. We have dehydration, so dehydrating or drying of all kinds of foods. And then we have canning and various types of canning. So there are many, many types of methods of food preservation. And Connor, I don’t know if you want to add something to that.

Connor Flynn: (07:44) 
There’s a lot of misinformation out there. And understanding the fundamentals of food preservation, all the different forms is really the key. And I have five children, and right down to my daughter who’s almost three, you know, like we were making jam. I just, I think people, once they can understand the fundamentals of the safety, the food safety part, I think people should not be so intimidated. And like so many things in our world, we have this excess of information. So it’s just going to the right sources. And, like most things, we have good fundamentals. We can apply these to all the different types. And I find myself–it’s like layers of an onion. I’ve done dehydrating, and then when I get deeper into it, it just goes deeper. I mean, there’s so much history and culture in all these different methods. So, I know we’re going to be focusing on canning today, so I guess let’s continue on that.  

Clinton Monchuk: (08:42)

So maybe let’s go right into that then. Some of the different methods of canning. And I’m going to try and pull in some of my experience with my family in doing this, which, when I say quote unquote family, it really was my mom. What are some of those different methods in terms of canning of fruits and, and vegetables that we could use? And how does this affect some of the food safety [concerns]? What are some of the things to watch out for?

Connor Flynn: (09:09)

Like any kind of safe food handling, we need to focus first on the environment we’re in, where we’re going to be preserving food– in this case, canning. You know, when we jump into this topic, we sometimes get ahead a little bit and focus on, well, what equipment and what are the methods and how do we do that? But we need to start, I think, right at when we walk into the kitchen, we need to have clean hands, clean workspace, clean utensils and and good quality produce. This is, I think, the first place to start. I don’t know if Martha wants to add to that.

Martha Rogers: (09:42)

No, I totally agree with that. And in our canning world it’s called bacterial load. So you want to make sure that the bacteria that you know, naturally occur in your kitchens and your hands and all of that, that every space is clean so that you keep the load to a minimum. But in terms of canning, the fundamental difference, there are several types of approaches to canning. And, one approach is for high acid foods, and that includes fruits. Most fruits–not melons and not figs–but most fruits and any vegetable that has been acidified, such as you would do with pickles, for example, you add vinegar. So that makes it more acidic. Those types of fruits and vegetables can be safely canned using a water bath canner, or an atmospheric steam canner. We’ll get into more detail on that.

Martha Rogers: (10:42)

But you can also can low acid foods, and that would include vegetables, meats, fish, poultry, and so on. But it requires a different approach to canning, and that involves pressure canning. So the temperature has to be raised to at least 240 degrees Fahrenheit in order to safely can foods that are low in acid. So that’s the basic question, are my products low acid? Am I doing low acid canning, or am I doing high acid canning? So that’s the the fundamental question, I guess, to decide what approach to canning you’re going use from there. Then we can go into methods.

Clinton Monchuk: (11:29)

Just a water bath with some of these fruits and vegetables. Is that what you do? Just to kind of clean it, get a good stock and you know, go to town or..?

Connor Flynn: (11:40)

I mean, it’s pretty simple. We…you’re going to wash the vegetables and remove, depending on what you’re using, you might peel it and then wash it. Yeah. And just not, don’t use anything that’s not, that doesn’t look good. And in some cases, we blanch to lower the bacterial load when we blanch. It also affects what’s happening inside the jar when we are water bath canning. Right? So sometimes when we’re water bath canning, we can have something called siphoning. Siphoning would be where we lose some brine and we have too much of a head space between the top of the lid and the jar. But so sometimes we blanch to create less swelling of whatever we’re canning. And in some cases, the blanching is to kill the bacterial load that might be present on top of the veg or on the vegetables.

Clinton Monchuk: (12:29)

I’ve got to plead ignorance here. Can you explain what blanching is? I am 100% greenhorn on this.

Connor Flynn: (12:35)

Yeah. So it’d be, it would be like quickly cooking vegetables, for example, if maybe with your mother you saw her peeling tomatoes or peaches. So this would be a quick dunk into boiling water. And then generally it’s removed and you’re either going into an ice bath or cold water, which then stops the cooking. And in this case, with the tomatoes and peaches, it wilts the skin and you can peel the skin off very easily.

Clinton Monchuk: (13:00)

Yeah. Here I’m thinking Blanche from Golden Girls here, and trying to think if she made up something .

Martha Rogers: (13:07)

That’s good.

Clinton Monchuk: (13:09)

So Martha, you had actually mentioned a little bit about the acidity level, right? So if it’s, there’s a difference between the two acid, how do you even know that? Like, is there somewhere where you can check on some of the sites, or…?

Martha Rogers: (13:22)

There is, but I would say that Connor and I agree, and what we were instilled with in our program was that you need to use a recipe that is from a reputable source that’s developed within a test kitchen over the last 20 years. So things like, Bernardin’s website or book, Ball [Mason Jars], Test Kitchens of America, Canadian Living…where the recipes themselves have been actually developed in a test kitchen where they determine the acidity level. Because it’s one thing to say, oh, well, I’ve got strawberry jam. That’s pretty easy to assess. The acidity level strawberries are high in acid, but if you are doing something like a relish or a salsa, you have a mixture of vegetables. So the complexity of determining acidity is much greater. And this is why we would strongly recommend not just Googling recipes to choose; you need to use a reputable source, because it’s not just acidity, but the processing time in a test kitchen is determined using a thermocouple. So they, they put a probe into the jar to assess how long it takes for heat penetration to actually get into the jar. So it’s going to be different between a jar of jam or a jar of salsa. So it’s really important, number one, to choose a recipe that is modern and from a reputable source or from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, they have a million recipes. But don’t Google, and don’t just like think you can wing it. This is not for winging it.

Clinton Monchuk: (15:12)

It leads me to the next question. So obviously there’s been advancements in the science and the technology around this through the years that you do actually have these test kitchens set up to give the general kind of accepted practices and the best practices for this. Do you feel that they’re constantly evolving? Like is there always new things that are coming out when it comes to technology and science on this?

Connor Flynn: (15:37)

Yeah. And in terms of evolving, I think for sure, like if we look at cheese making as a parallel, people in, in Europe, and maybe in Canada, were dying of listeria poisoning because at one point, cheese making was an artisan craft. And until the science caught up, it’s now what we see it today, which is part science and part artisan. That’s kind of where we’re going with the canning, except in terms of the creativity. As a chef, I had a really hard time kind of setting that down, where I wanted to throw a little bit of this or add a little bit of that into this salsa or to this chutney or to this relish. And I’ve really become a believer in that creativity that I want to put into the jar, I just do that after. So I just take whatever the product is that I’m preserving, and try to just spend that energy and passion into finding the best of the best, you know, the best peaches, the best tomatoes, and then taking it and preserving it at its prime. And then when it comes out of the jar, that’s when I use my creativity again.

Martha Rogers: (16:45)

I think Connor and I are agreed. We’ve done, I don’t know, thousands and thousands of jars of this and that. And we have committed to using recipes from reputable sources, modern, et cetera. And neither of us have ever felt constrained in any way by making this type of commitment. So it’s a basic principle of safe canning. It’s an example of how things have progressed in terms of the science. Years ago, it was thought that all jars and lids had to be sterilized, and it was a big production for everybody to have to sterilize everything and then sterilize the can the lids before you even got to the canning process. But now, through all the research, it’s been proven that if your processing time is longer, 10 minutes or longer, you don’t have to sterilize the jars. It makes things a whole heck of a lot easier.

Martha Rogers: (17:47)

They have to be hot and warm to receive the hot jam, but they don’t have to be sterilized. And just recently, like within the last, I don’t know, seven or eight years, a lot of research has been done on the lids so that even now, change has been made where you don’t have to warm the lids. Normally, like when, when we were doing it, you’d have to warm the lids to soften the adhesive that would create the vacuum. But now you don’t even have to do that. They’ve proven through the research that the lids will adhere even at from room temperature. So you don’t have to do that. So all this new information is coming all the time. So it’s great and exciting to keep on top of it. Not to mention this is a whole lot simpler than like, what it was before, sterilizing everything.

Clinton Monchuk: (18:42)

Okay. Now we’ve reached the part of the podcast where we talk about the fun farm fact. Did you know that here in Canada, and this is not a really fun farm fact, but we waste 50 million tons of food every year. This works out to roughly about 79 kilograms per year per household. And this was based on some information that we pulled from the Government of Canada here in 2024. Now, this is one of those things that when I see a stat like this, and I think that we can probably take some of this food and put it to better use, right? And this is where preserving some of these products that are maybe getting close to the end of life in say, our fridge or something like that, and making them into something that we can use later on. I want to know both of your thoughts on this in terms of how we can reduce our own waste in our households by using, you know, preserving practices.

Martha Rogers: (19:44)

Well, I know Connor’s been on the dehydration plan. Do you want to talk about that?

Connor Flynn: (19:52)

Yeah, sure. I mean, this one sort of infuriates me a little bit just because we have so many hungry mouths in our world and our country, And even at this school, we’re in a place where we can’t take a home-canned item and donate it to the soup kitchen, or even from a industrial kitchen, they won’t accept that, right? So hopefully we can change that. But yeah, at home, just a simple example. I’ve got my wife fully trained. She’s an unofficial master food preserver. And she, if we don’t know what we’re going to do with some produce that’s in the fridge and we notice we’re going to be out of town or something, she just simply dehydrates it, you know, mushrooms, tomatoes… And I’ll tell you, fun fact, I think you can fit a bushel of tomatoes in a two-liter jar–I forget, a two or three liter jar. So what’s interesting about dehydrating is it takes so much moisture out and it weighs nothing, that you can actually pack quite a bit of produce into a small container, and it’s very simple to rehydrate that. So I am on team dehydrate. It’s so simple and quick to do, where canning, you really have to commit to a full day if you’re going to be canning something.

Martha Rogers: (21:10)

It’s a way of thinking as much as it is knowledge of how to do it. So it’s just like, to change your mindset. Yes, change your mindset. Don’t throw out anything. Well, unless it’s bad, of course.

Clinton Monchuk: (21:26)

Unless it’s bad. If it’s growing legs, yeah, you better get rid of it. In terms of some of the, what I would say, maybe outdated, practices that you’ve heard of or misconceptions around canning, what are some of the most common that I think a lot of our listeners have probably heard that, that you just have to say No, that’s, that’s in fact incorrect.

Martha Rogers: (21:52)

One thing is wax. We used to put, make jams and jellies and put the melted wax on the top. That’s a very common misconception. In fact, they shouldn’t even sell it anymore. The design of the wax was to keep oxygen away from the jam or the jelly so that it would prevent the growth of mold and bacteria. But it doesn’t really have any evidence to support that that is the case over the long term. Whereas our new lids will be effective once they’ve sealed for 18 months to two years, or even longer, honestly. So that’s one thing waxing. And one thing that people don’t think about is the influence of altitude on canning. So altitude, the higher that you are, the lower the boiling point. So it takes longer for things to process in a water bath or a pressure canner.

Martha Rogers: (22:51)

So it’s very important to actually know your altitude. So where I am, I live in a valley. I’m at 730 feet, which is low. So all of the recipes that are developed in test kitchens are developed for altitudes of between zero and a thousand feet. Hmm. So if it’s over a thousand feet, then you have to adjust the processing time to accommodate that. So even if I drive up the hill to make jam with my friend up up the hill, I’m already at 1400 or 1600 feet. So we have to, at that point, make the adjustment of five minutes to our processing time. Or similarly, if you’re doing pressure canning, they will tell you how much pressure that needs to be added to your processing time. So if you’re using really good quality recipes, those recipes will tell you, you need to adjust the processing time by five minutes, add five minutes or 10 minutes, or you need to add more pressure in pounds to your pressure canning. So that’s one thing. And my third thing, when Connor was talking about tomatoes, I was doing a workshop and somebody said, well, my family likes to add baking soda to the tomato sauce when they’re canning it, because it, it makes the tomatoes less acidic. Oh boy. Really the wrong, wrong thing. Tomatoes hover around 6.7, 6.8, there’s a range. Now because of hybridization, some tomatoes have been designed to be less acidic. But adding baking soda, which is alkaline to tomatoes, is a no-no.

Clinton Monchuk: (24:44)

So what kind of disaster would happen from putting baking soda to can a tomato? Because you’re changing the pH level.

Martha Rogers: (24:49)

Exactly. Changing the pH level puts you at risk of botulism. That is the risk.

Clinton Monchuk: (24:58)

Ah, that’s the risk, okay.

Martha Rogers: (25:01)

Yes.

Clinton Monchuk: (25:01)

Gotcha.

Martha Rogers: (25:02)

So adding something alkaline like baking soda is really, really in the wrong direction and is extremely unsafe because it really puts you at risk of botulism.

Clinton Monchuk: (25:13)

That’s a really good point to make sure all our listeners understand. And the other point around altitude, I live in the prairies, okay? So you don’t really think of high altitudes, but where we farm, it’s right around 1600 feet above sea level. Wow. So it, you would, you would have to actually make those adjustments, right?

Martha Rogers: (25:32)

Yes, that’s right.

Clinton Monchuk: (25:33)

You don’t think of it, but on this side of the Rockies, yeah, it actually is fairly elevated. So that’s a really good point for us to realize too. One of the things is, as somebody that’s really new to this game and trying to learn a little bit more, what would you recommend Connor, as if you’re a beginner in terms of canning, what would be that first thing that you should make at home that that kind of gives you, that get up and go to say, okay, I can do this, I can do this a little bit more with something else.

Connor Flynn: (26:02)

I don’t know if I’d start with pickles. There’s some complexities there, about how do you get a pickle crisp and all these things. But honestly, one of my favorite things, and my kids will eat a jar at a time, is pickled asparagus. I just don’t find it very difficult. You can cut the asparagus right to size. It’s easy to get into the jar because of the shape of the asparagus. It’s just straight, straight up. So it’s just something that’s pretty easy. And I think also, it’s not something that a lot of people have thought about eating, but honestly, when I go into my pantry or my cold cellar, that’s my number one favorite thing to eat pickled is asparagus. Yeah. And it’s a nice one that you can get out of the way in the canning season quite early, because if you become a serious canner in the summertime, it’s very busy. And it’s sort of like, no, the strawberries are ready this week, this week, it has to happen. With asparagus, it’s earlier in the season, at least in this province. And you can kind of get that under your belt and there’s no pressure that, you know, the next week you have to do peaches or pickles, you know what I mean?

Clinton Monchuk: (27:12)

You know, Martha, you touched on it a little bit around botulism. What other methods other than don’t put baking soda in our canning, especially with tomatoes. But what other kind of methods can we ensure in our kitchens that we’re doing the proper precautions to prevent botulism or, or even other foodborne illnesses?

Martha Rogers: (27:37)

Well, I would say the number one thing is to follow a good quality recipe, modern and from a reputable source. With botulism, the incidence is actually very small across the country, but if it does happen, it’s very, very severe. And I mean, it can lead to deaths and so on. As everybody knows, botulism tends to relate to like, low acid foods. So vegetables or inappropriately canned meats and fish and poultry and so forth. So that’s why it’s very, very important to actually follow the recipes. But if you do that and you understand the theory, the science that, you know, if we’re working with vegetables or meat or fish or poultry, it has to be done correctly using a pressure canner. The pressure canner will raise the temperature through pressure to 240 degrees, which will kill the heat-resistant spores of botulism because they’re…They’re really kind of a nifty bacterium because they can create these special spores around themselves when they’re exposed to heat, and that protects them against the heat of, let’s say a water bath canner. That’s why you have to go to a higher pressure canner situation. So it really basically comes down to following up a proper recipe and method. And it’s good. Like, we can all do this, and it’s so rewarding to actually, you know, go in your garden or go to the local market and pick up whatever is growing and do something with it. It’s so satisfying.

Clinton Monchuk: (29:30)

Yeah. So, this kind of gets to the next one. And this question was, you know, using grandma’s recipe or reviving some of the old recipes that might be household favorites from the past, but not too sure if they meet the same modern canning safety standards. What do you think about that? Is there a way to kind of update some of these things, or would you just say, shy away, just go to some of those trusted sources right now for canning?

Connor Flynn: (29:57)

We do not suggest that [updating recipes] and it may be bad news for some. And I think it’s, as we train people, it’s probably the biggest bone of contention. “Oh, well, that’s not how I did it with my grandma”, or “I’ve done it this way and I’ve never got sick.” So I think, how do we honor your grandmother or other people? And I think it’s just really through intention. The intention was there to recreate safe products, good products during harvest. You know, I know with my children, as Martha mentioned, there’s a lot of pride involved. We, you know, we can peaches, that’s their second favorite thing to eat, and you know, it’s a lot of work, and we’re following the recipe and it’s hot, and there’s wasps and there’s, you know, it’s just, it’s a lot. But they have finally kind of come around to realize the importance of it, the payoff, the sense of pride.

Connor Flynn: (30:50)

So if we can take the intention and the wisdom and pass that on to our offspring and to people that want to know, I think that the same passion and intention that our grandmothers had that can live on through the next generation. And we don’t really need to worry so much about using grandma’s particular recipe. Because as a chef, you know what I mean, recipes are recreated all the time, but it always comes back down to good fundamentals. So if we focus on the safe canning practices as a fundamental springboard, we can create good, safe products and memories and knowledge for years to come.

Martha Rogers: (31:32)

There is a big difference. So I’m with Connor in honoring and keeping those recipes as like mementos from your family, but work with the more modern recipes.

Clinton Monchuk: (31:47)

Sometimes traditions are meant to acknowledge and adapt, right? And I think we’ve done that with a lot of different things in our own families as we’ve adapted to new ways of just being safer, really, right?

Martha Rogers: (31:59)

Yeah, that’s right.

Clinton Monchuk: (32:02)

I know you’ve mentioned a couple already in terms of where people can go for some of these resources, but is there one or two places that you’d recommend as the first places to go to learn more about food preservation and some of the techniques that Canadians can actually use?

Martha Rogers: (32:17)

Oh, well the number one I would say is the National Center for Home Food Preservation in the US. They’re all methods and recipes that are informed by science and are modern and up to date. And they’re changing them all the time. They’re also very flexible. For example, they’ll have a vegetable soup recipe you can do pressure canning with, but they give you lots of variations on the theme. So it’s a great site. I would say the Bernardin book and website are both very good. Ball is great. And Canadian Living, I love their preserving cookbook, it’s excellent. Test Kitchens of America is great, but we don’t have it as much, but they have some really innovative approaches to some jam making. I don’t know, what else? Connor, what do you think?

Connor Flynn: (33:11)

Well, I would suggest for people a book, there’s the book, so Easy to Preserve, which I am slowly learning, is sort of like the bible of food preservation, which we were introduced to through Cornell. And a lot of times when I’m teaching, or I’m doing an upcoming class this weekend, I find myself referring to the recipes in that book just because they’re all in one spot. But I will echo what Martha says, generally, when I’m looking for anything, I would Google “kimchi cooperative extension”, and it’ll come up with one university. The other thing is there’s a website, Healthy Canning is also a very good resource for lots of different… anything you want to do deep dives, go to Healthy Canning. It covers everything.

Martha Rogers: (34:01)

Just for Googling, like what we’re saying is don’t just Google recipes, you know, just don’t take anybody’s, right? But if you do an advanced Google search and then you say whatever you’re interested in, I’m interested in kimchi making. And then for the domain name you put “edu”, you will end up with getting all the university science-based methods for kimchi or whatever else that you’re looking at. So keep with the science, there are lots and lots and lots of resources out there, but we’ve given you some.

Clinton Monchuk: (34:39)

It’s a good start for people. And, and I think this has been a great podcast just to kind of go through some of the specifics and the science around it. It’s always great to understand a little bit more of the science around food too, and, and have two great experts talking about it. So with that, I want to say thank you very much Martha and Connor for being a part of our podcast.

Martha Rogers: (35:00)

Excellent. Thanks very much, Clint.

Clinton Monchuk: (35:09)

I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to our Ask a Farmer podcast. We at Canadian Food Focus value the input from our listeners and ask that you share the podcast with your friends and family. Remember, this is a two-way street, so we seek your input for future segments that are of interest to you about food and farming. To do this, please click on the ‘Ask Us’ icon at the top of our website, canadianfoodfocus.org. While you’re there, feel free to follow our numerous social media links and sign up for our newsletter. This segment was produced and edited by Angela Larson, research and writing by Dorothy Long and Penny Eaton, music by Andy Elson. I am your host Clinton Monchuk, and from all of us at Canadian Food Focus, we wish you good health and great eats.