Jon Steinman Premieres Deconstructing Dinner TV

By Bill Metcalfe

Nelson's Jon Steinman has moved from radio to television, with an eye-opening look at pork production. Harmful or Hopeful Ham will premiere on Thursday, April 5 at 6:30 pm at the Capitol Theatre as part of the Deconstructing Dinner Film Festival. 

“This is the pilot episode of what I hope will be a 13-episode series,” says Steinman, “and the concept is that each episode will focus on a specific food—tomatoes, beef, salt, eggs—and for our pilot we chose pork.”

Steinman collaborated with Ontario filmmaker Declan O’Driscoll, formerly a Kootenay resident, for the pilot. O’Drisoll is a winner of the James Beard award (“the Oscars of food films,” says Steinman) for his film Milk War. Steinman and O’Driscoll hope the pilot edition will lead to funding and support for the full series. 

Looking at industry and alternatives

Each episode will follow the pattern of the radio version of Deconstructing Dinner, Steinman says. “In each one the idea is to look behind the scenes at our industrial food system, and then transition into some alternatives.”

In the pork episode we get an up-close look at factory farming, and then a visit to farmers raising pigs in pastures and butchering them and processing them humanely. 

The episode includes interviews with experts on food safety and animal welfare, as well as Shiv Chopra, a Canadian former Health Canada scientist and whistle-blower fired from his job in 2004. He is an outspoken critic of antibiotic use on farms.

Guided by a chef

“Each episode features a chef who is in charge of introducing the food and presenting it through a meal,” says Steinman, “literally bringing these issues into our kitchens.  And the chef also helps close each episode by offering tips on how to prepare the food at home, helping people see their kitchens as a stimulator for change. 

“In the pork episode, our chef is Michael Stadtlander, a famous Ontario chef, one of the most well-known in the country. He is an expert butcher and sausage maker, so we have him on camera with instructions on how to do that.”

The video shows Statlander raising pigs, processing the meat, and then offering Steinman a sample of a gourmet pork dish. 

Viewers will be able to go online and look at the extended footage of all the clips— in this case a tour of a small scale slaughterhouse and a sausage making instructional video.

Deconstructing Dinner: a driver of public discussion

Steinman produced and hosted Deconstructing Dinner weekly at Kootenay Co-op Radio in Nelson from 2006 until 2010. It was syndicated on 50 radio stations in Canada and the U.S. and was the most popular food podcast in Canada on iTunes. The show became an important driver of much of the recent public discussion of food sustainability, and Steinman often speaks at conferences on food issues.  

A selection of brand new food films

“A film festival of food documentaries has always been my dream,” he says.  “I love watching food docs and am amazed at how much power they can carry. Looking at the success of films like Food Inc. and King Corn and Forks Over Knives, all these films have become dinner table conversation and Oscar nominees. So I wanted to create a festival that offering multiple films like that, but new ones, these are first- time films that no one has seen yet.”

Descriptions of the other films in the festival

The Deconstructing Dinner Film Festival is offering seven films from April 5 through 19. See the poster and read descriptions of the films here.