Sarah Bean Freed is a curious observer, creative communicator, close-reader, and dogged wheel pusher with over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of food + beverage + business + culture. She first fell in love with bacteria (and her own 38 trillion microbes) after enrolling in a food fermentation class in college, and has fermented almost everything from Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation since then.

Sarah Bean is a multidisciplinary marketer with expertise in sustainability communications and sustainability initiatives. She has grown a mustard start-up from a farmers market stall in Santa Cruz, CA into a nationally distributed product; worked as a Programming Associate for the renowned Astor Center and Astor Wines & Spirits in New York City; and was a member of the Marketing team at the plant-based company Califia Farms, with a specialized focus in sustainability communications.

She enjoys hiking the Santa Monica and the San Gabriel Mountains, cooking new recipes, and writing about film. She is the co-founder of Feminar, a discursive space for young female artists, poets and academics in Brooklyn. Her home base is Los Angeles.

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In conversation with Sarah:

Share your life story in six words:
What are we going to eat?

What was your first brush with science?
The 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the catalyst for a grade school obsession with “The Big One” 😬

What’s your current obsession? In other words, what wakes you up every morning?
This might sound trite, but the sun coming up and the smell of coffee. It’s the littlest things. Each day brings with it the opportunity to ask questions, stay curious, make choices, change my mind, keep the truth up front and in focus, find the beauty. Every. Single. Day.

Why do you think bacteria are important?
They’re the show-runners of this planet not us and our “skull-sized kingdoms”.

How do you define science?
Going deeper. Asking questions. Thinking critically. Not accepting the world at face value.

How do you define health?
Laughter.

What are you currently reading / listening to / watching?
Reading: Working through the recipes in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat.

Listening: Science Fridays.

Watching: Just watched Universe, a black-and-white short made in 1960 by the National Film Board of Canada that inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey 💗 which in turn sent me down the rabbit hole of watching a bunch of Sci-Fi classics I’d missed (Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers etc.).

Favorite microbiome-nurturing food?
CILANTRO CILANTRO CILANTRO CILANTRO CILANTRO CILANTRO ON EVERYTHING.

Scientist, dead or alive, you’d like to have lunch with?
Rachel Carson. But instead of lunch we’d go on a beach walk in Southport, Maine.

Microbiome perturbation you’re trying to give up:
Popping Advil.

Favorite science joke or best mindgasm fact?
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

Most mindgasmic thing you’ve learned since being involved with Seed?
Birth of the eukaryotes.

The song you get sh*t done to:
I Wanna Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston.

Social?
milkvillains.com