Platter Chatter

Conversations about food.

Today we are featuring Simran Sethi – the everything green & sustainable freelance journalist, host, writer, contributor and more!

What is your definition of local?

Local food is food that comes from your community. It may be your backyard, it may be someplace down the road, but the food that comes from that area is aligned with the season and the farmers who grew it/ raised it are also part of the community.

What is definition of sustainable?

Local, seasonal, biodynamic/ organic, and small-scale/ independent. I don’t think food is very sustainable when it is grown in monocultures, soaks up a lot of chemicals, and doesn’t keep money in the local community.

When you think of local, sustainable, and community, how would you rank the three (from most important to least) and why?

See above, to me sustainable incorporates local and community. Otherwise, it isn’t sustainable.

What’s one thing people can do to be more local and sustainable?

Pay attention. Think about what goes in your body. It’s your temple! With each bite you take, you can support the things you care about.

We met Simran last summer during our Eat Well Guided Tour of America. She actually joined us on the bus for 3 educational days in Iowa and Minnesota. Simran is a wonderful wealth of everything sustainable and was a welcome addition to the road. Read below find out more about Simran!

Simran Sethi is a freelance journalist, focusing on issues of social and environmental sustainability. The award-winning journalist is a contributing environmental correspondent and expert for NBC News and the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School of Journalism, where she currently teaches a course on Media and the Environment. Sethi is writing a book on the impacts of American consumption for Harper Collins and is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green, 2007), the companion guide to the first PBS series on sustainable business Ethical Markets for which she served as host and writer. She was named an inaugural Goddard Fellow by New York University (September 2007) and is an Associate Fellow for the Asia Society (November, 2007).

Sethi is the co-host/ writer of Sundance Channel’s environmental programming The Green, and a featured commentator and former story consultant for the original series Big Ideas for a Small Planet, the 2007 winner of the Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary. She is the creator of the upcoming Sundance web series The Good Fight, highlighting global environmental justice efforts, and the anchor of the Sundance interstitial business series EcoBiz. Sethi is a member of NBC Universal’s internal environmental initiative Green is Universal.

Sethi co-created, hosted, and oversaw all video and audio content for TreeHugger.com, the largest environmental website on the Internet. Under her management, TreeHugger won the 2006 Vloggie for Best Green Vlog. Lauded in Vanity Fair’s green issue (April 2007) as the environmental “messenger,” Sethi hosted a forum on global warming with Nobel Laureate Al Gore for MSN.com and created an audio podcast series for Gore’s non-profit, The Alliance for Climate Protection. She has been identified as a Variety magazine Woman of Impact (August 2007), and named one of the top Eco-Heroes of the Planet by the UK’s Independent (July 2007).

Sethi has contributed environmental segments to the Oprah Winfrey Show and has been featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Today Show, and Martha Stewart Show, highlighting ways we can become more environmentally friendly. She is the “eco-expert” on the syndicated green home makeover show The EcoZone Project and recent host of Voom HD Network’s social and environmental series Keep It Green on Equator HD. Sethi has lectured on corporate social responsibility and sustainability in media at: the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies Conference, the Green Business Conference, the CERES Conference, Cornell University’s Johnson School of Business, M.I.T., Smith College, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Beth Haverim Temple, Bioneers by the Bay, and the democratic think tank Demos.

Sethi produced and anchored the news for MTV Asia, created and oversaw the MTV India news division, and developed programming for the BBC and others through her own production company SHE TV. She holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management and graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from Smith College.