Meet Mike

About a decade ago, in our very first Politics of Food class as part of Boston University’s Gastronomy program, the professor asked us to go around the room and explain the lens through which we viewed our place in the food studies program. Was it environmentalism and sustainability — how our food choices can impact the planet? Or maybe we looked at the program as a means to open up one’s own food business or restaurant? Maybe it was about access, a chance to study food deserts and scarcity?

For me, food is about pleasure. For many, a meal around the table with friends and family is the most pleasurable part of the day. Cooking a meal is often our one opportunity to be truly creative and experience the pleasure of creating something real with your own hands on a daily basis. It’s about the pleasure of discovery: new flavors, cuisines, spaces, and ideas. And it is also about all of those issues mentioned above — getting more pleasure out of food when you know it had a limited negative impact on the environment, or fighting to make sure that everyone has access to the pleasures of cooking and eating together. But ultimately that is the goal — enjoying the pleasures of delicious food. And it’s more important than ever, during a time when we increasingly have a fraught and sometimes downright negative relationship with food.

I had started that program thinking I would focus on food policy — I had spent the early part of my career in politics — but ultimately I focused on food anthropology. I wanted to understand the food choices that people make, or that are made for them. I completed my thesis on the final meal choices of death row inmates, looking at the symbolism of what they chose and why we as a society choose to offer the option of a final meal in the first place. My final project took me to Tanzania, where we studied whether gastrotourism could be a viable way to experience the country’s culture nondestructively, operating alongside the country’s safari industry. In the summers and between those courses I earned my culinary, baking, wine, and cheese certificates.

Since then I’ve worked for a food trends and research company, ultimately overseeing the TrendSpotting team as the company “Trendologist,” focusing on early-stage trend identification. Our team publishes the company’s seven TrendSpotting magazines (which puts my undergraduate degree in magazine journalism to use), custom client publications, and we lead trend immersion tours and ideation sessions across the country.

I have also been a recurring guest on Fusion TV’s “The AV Club Show”; have been featured on WGN Radio, CBS Radio, and Gimlet Media’s “Why We Eat What We Eat” podcast; I’ve been quoted and published in numerous newspapers and magazines; I speak at many conferences across the country annually; and I was even a judge on Food Network’s “Eating America.”

In my spare time I’m on the board of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, I teach cooking classes around Chicago, I co-founded a monthly food swap in the city, and I enjoy traveling and meeting up with my cookbook club once a month.

SOME SHOTS FROM THE ‘GRAM