— Laura Pochettino

Well, thank you. Well to those of you who just joined because this is a root veg episode my I am a seafood chef and seafood evangelist by trade training and birth. I think I just think that Seafood is to me just the most interesting category of ingredients. It comes from everywhere. It comes from people everywhere. It was really the very first sort of industry in this country in the United States. Seafood is is the first, you know, sort of heirloom food for settlers and pilgrims. It was upon the backs of cod that this nation. was you know founded by the white settlers, certainly, there are heirloom foods that go far back Beyond us our presence here. And I don't mean to negate the importance of that. But Seafood is just such a rich part of the modern history of this nation. It's delicious. It's interesting. It's storied. It's an industry that spans the globe and though it Seafood represents 2% of our Global food supply. It represents almost 10% of global livelihoods. That's how important it is and outsized. It's important is in terms of the economics and culture of it. I think it's delicious. It's fun to cook. Oh and it's also very very healthy for us. And omega-3 fatty acids are essential to healthy aging but also to essential to healthy pregnancies and and early developing years. They help us retain, you know, they help improve our mental health. They ward off against a number of ward off a number of different lifestyle and diet related illnesses. Seafood alone can't do this. We have to live smartly across the board and eat mostly vegetables, of course and small adequate delicious enjoyable portions of seafood. But to me, it's just It's a broad category and you know, I started off as a seafood chef and I got really interested in sustainable Seafood, which I found it was our responsibility to really fix the problems with seafood, but in the 20 or so years that I've been engaged in that effort so much progress has been made. Yes. There is very much progress left to be made, but I now see Seafood not as our responsibility to fix but also our opportunity to use Seafood to fix people and to build new economies in coastal areas like here in Maine and all over the world to build healthier Public Health outcomes and populations and just to eat deliciously and it's better for the environment than is any land animal protein. So a lot of reasons for that there but small question that I very much appreciate with a very big answer to which I'm dedicated my career.