It’s the world’s most consumed vegetable oil, used for everything from frying food to making it last longer – but can palm oil be produced in a way that doesn't wreak enormous environmental and human damage? In conjunction with another BBC World Service programme, Crowd Science, we visit the Sabah region of Malaysian Borneo, where different groups are working together to change the way palm oil is produced. Presenter Graihagh Jackson hears about a certification system aimed at raising standards ...
Nov 21, 2019•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Running a bakery is hard work - you’re up all night mixing, kneading, proving and baking, and then when the sun rises you need to actually sell your bread and run the business. It’s physically demanding too - repetitive strain injuries to hands are not uncommon. So who’d be willing to put themselves through it? Emily Thomas meets three artisan bakers from different continents to find out what drives them, and why they think most of us have been eating bread all wrong: Islam Sabry, who runs Cairo...
Nov 14, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The food industry has a big problem with packaging, but what if you could simply eat your wrapper or coffee cup instead of throwing it away? Could packaging made from food ingredients prevent our oceans and landfill sites from being clogged with waste, much of it plastic? Could it still preserve and protect our food from damage or spoiling? And does it taste any good? Emily Thomas speaks to two companies developing edible products - one producing plates, cups and bowls, the other making a protec...
Nov 07, 2019•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast How dangerous is your takeaway? If you ever order food through an online delivery service like UberEats, DoorDash, or Deliveroo, you probably think only about the meal that will soon will arrive at your door - will it arrive quickly, and piping hot? You possibly don’t think much about the person delivering it, let alone whether they have put themselves at risk in getting it to you. These companies allow customers to order food from a range of restaurants, and then provide a delivery service - by...
Oct 31, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Across the world, as fruits ripen, teams of pickers set out across the fields. Without them, produce would be left to rot and farms profits would plummet. But in many countries, population shifts and changes to immigration laws have left farmers struggling to find enough people to do the work. The effect has been particularly pronounced in the US where President Trump has cracked down on immigration, and the UK with its plans to leave the EU. Enter the robots. Over the past few years, interest a...
Oct 17, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast How can you have a successful relationship with someone whose eating habits you find repulsive, infuriating, even morally abhorrent? What do you do when your wife and mother are locked in a fierce battle over what you eat, when your long term partner insists on eating sandwiches in bed, or when you’re in love with a vegan but like nothing better than a chicken teriyaki? As part of Crossing Divides, a BBC season bringing people together in a fragmented world, Emily Thomas meets three couples who ...
Oct 10, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do the most famous names in film, sport and politics eat for dinner, and what does it say about who they really are? Three private chefs give us the ultimate insight into the lives of the rich and famous - after all, what's more exposing than what and how we choose to eat? Emily Thomas hears about the Premiership footballer who wanted to helicopter a chef to his home to make him and his girlfriend oven chips, the politician who had a romantic meal with not one, but three beautiful young wom...
Oct 03, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Farming has some of the highest suicide rates of any profession in many parts of the world. Emily Thomas explores why depression and stress amongst farmers is a global problem that is thought to be on the rise. It can be an incredibly tough business and many farmers struggle to make ends meet. But aside from financial pressures, are there other aspects of agricultural work and life that could contribute to mental illness? Farmers in Australia explain why social and physical isolation, along with...
Sep 26, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ken Hom is a Chinese-American cook who became famous for introducing Chinese cooking to the British public through a BBC TV series in the early 1980s. Since then he has written almost 40 books, sold around eight million woks, and become regarded as an authority on Chinese cuisine. Emily Thomas visits the 70-year-old in his Paris flat to hear about his life told through five memorable dishes. He describes his impoverished childhood in Chicago’s Chinatown, from using his mother’s packed lunches to...
Sep 19, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast What’s it like to live and farm on one of the world’s most active volcanoes? Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy, regularly erupts, blasting lava and ash over the Mediterranean island and causing dozens of earthquakes each year. So why do so many food producers stake their livelihoods on its rocky slopes? Benjamin Spencer, an American wine expert who has adopted Etna as his home, meets its wine, olive and fruit growers, as well as the chefs whose dishes take inspiration from the fiery mountain. They exp...
Sep 12, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Most of us have no need to hunt in the wild for our food, so why is foraging seeing a resurgence in some parts of the world? Emily Thomas speaks to professional foragers in Peru, Sweden and England to find out the appeal of combing rocky shores for seaweed or trekking up mountains for rare fruits. Is it the love of a freebie, the thrill of the chase, or simply a sense of wonder at our natural world? We hear about the rules governing what, where and how much you can harvest from the wild, and tha...
Sep 05, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Belgium is the latest European country to put restrictions on religious slaughter methods. For many this is purely an animal welfare issue, but others see the changes as part of an anti-immigration shift pushed by right-wing nationalists. For some, the new laws are an assault on religious freedom. Emily Thomas visits the country to explore the impact the new laws are having on Muslim and Jewish communities and businesses, and to find out whether ritual slaughter practices are being driven underg...
Aug 29, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast For decades we’ve been warned about the demise of the British pub, but despite this the number of young people signing up to run them appears to be rising. Pubs have been the cornerstone of UK communities for centuries, but around a quarter of them have closed in the last decade - taxes, cheap alcohol in supermarkets, and the smoking ban are often blamed. But that’s not putting off people in their twenties and thirties from taking them on. Emily Thomas is in the pub with three young publicans - ...
Aug 22, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast What’s it like to have food in your blood? Would you want to spend all day working with your family, even if it was in a brewery or a chocolate factory? Emily Thomas meets the descendants of three dynasties to find out how well work and family really mix when it comes to the food business. Kayo Yoshida, the first female president of Japanese sake brewery Umenoyado explains how she broke with tradition when she asked her father if she could inherit the family business instead of her brother. Bob ...
Aug 15, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Social media hasn’t killed off the food blog apparently. Emily Thomas meets three food writers from three continents, who reveal their power and influence over what and how we eat. How much money do they make and how does social media fit with their business model? Have they disrupted the publishing industry and democratised food writing, or lowered standards - opening it up to any old amateur with a laptop? What’s a popular Instagram account worth, and does anyone really have the time for long ...
Aug 08, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast If access to a city is blocked food supplies can quickly plummet, electricity and water can become scarce, and people can be forced to find new ways to feed themselves. Black markets thrive and some may risk their lives to feed their families, but creativity and compassion may also flourish and a food shortage can inspire ever greater heights of inventiveness. Emily Thomas meets people who have lived under siege in Aleppo, Syria, and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. A journalist reveals how it feel...
Aug 01, 2019•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is the person making your coffee secretly thinking about you? Which orders make their heart sink? Emily Thomas is joined by three top baristas in Dublin, Brazil and India. They explain how making coffee was once seen as a low-wage, unskilled job in much of the world, but these days, it holds a certain cache. But what's driving the meteoric rise of the barista - and who ultimately is benefitting? Most still earn a very low wage - like many of the farmers producing the coffee - whilst big cha...
Jul 25, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Angela Hartnett is one of the UK's most high profile chefs. She tells Emily Thomas about her life through five memorable dishes, from learning to cook with her Italian grandmother, to being awarded a Michelin star just four months after opening her first restaurant. Plus, she explains what it was like working alongside the notoriously fiery Gordon Ramsay for 17 years. (Photo: Angela Hartnett. Credit: BBC/ Getty Images)
Jul 18, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast A deadly and highly contagious disease is sweeping across Asia, killing millions of pigs and destroying the livelihoods of millions of farming families. African Swine Fever is not harmful to humans, but it kills infected pigs in just a few days and there is no known cure. The virus has taken hold in the world’s most densely populated pig farming region, spreading from China – home to half of the world’s pigs – to Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, Laos and North Korea in the last year. So can it be st...
Jul 11, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Vegetarian and vegan food companies are under attack for using words like ‘burger', ‘sausage’, or ‘steak’ to describe their meat-free products. The meat industry and some politicians argue such words can only be used to describe foods that came from an animal and that plant-based alternatives should come up with new names to avoid consumer confusion. But can you really claim ownership of a word? And what’s in a name anyway – is this argument about transparency and trust or marketing and profits?...
Jul 04, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast How powerful can a steaming pile of rotting food be? One third of the world’s food is lost or wasted, greenhouse emissions are warming our planet, and about a third of the world’s soil is degraded. Composting our food waste can help with all of this. But does it make economic sense and does it deserve it’s moniker ‘black gold’? Emily Thomas meets people in the compost business to ask whether composting at scale will ever turn a profit without government money. And why, if compost is so good for ...
Jun 27, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a dream shared by many a food lover - a restaurant of their very own. A showcase for their skill and creativity. A passion that also pays the bills. But are aspiring restaurateurs always aware of just how difficult the restaurant trade can be? Is food is the most dangerous passion to have when it comes to business? Emily Thomas meets three cooks in Abuja, Toronto, and London, and hears how they poured heart, soul and bank balance into opening their own restaurants - before packing it all in...
Jun 20, 2019•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Millions of children in India risk being deprived of a good education because of hunger. Poverty means they often go to school on an empty stomach, making it hard for them to concentrate, and malnutrition can mean they don’t even make it to the classroom – they either cannot face the journey or need to work to buy food for their families. But over the last 20 years Akshaya Patra has been trying to change that by ensuring almost two million children get a free school meal each day. The organisati...
Jun 13, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The world faces a daunting challenge - how to feed a growing population without harming the planet, our economies, or our health. With a billion people still going hungry, obesity and diabetes on the rise, and warnings of a climate change emergency, how can we change our food system for the better? Emily Thomas meets four remarkable people and projects trying to meet that challenge, from cheap and nutritious meals aimed at increasing school attendance in Kenya to campaigns cutting out millions o...
Jun 06, 2019•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast The award-winning star of Netflix series 'Salt, Fat, Acid Heat' and author of the best-selling cookbook of the same name tells us about her life through five of her most memorable dishes. The Iranian-American writer and cook has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in the last few years, but has struggled to come to terms with that success and says she still feels like an impostor and outsider. She very nearly took a completely different career path - she tells Emily Thomas that her dream was always ...
May 30, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Could candy be the next target in the global fight against rising levels of obesity and diabetes? Dozens of governments have already imposed taxes on sugary drinks, and now some are considering doing the same with sweets. So how worried are confectionery companies and what can they do about it? How do you replace or even reduce candy’s key component, and can you do so without causing upset? We hear how consumers don’t take kindly to their favourite treats being messed with, even when they taste ...
May 23, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast How do you eat when you have no home? Nowhere to store food, nowhere to cook, no table to eat at? In this episode we are with homeless people in two of the world’s most prosperous cities - London and Los Angeles - to talk about how they feed themselves. This is a tale of two cities - a surprising story perhaps of the abundance of food in the most deprived parts of society. What does it tell us about our global food supply chain? (Photo: Homeless man looks out on LA and London streets. Credit: BB...
May 16, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast At heart, the organic movement is driven by ethics, not market-forces. It started out as a reaction to large-scale industrial agriculture, with an anti-establishment vibe which abhorred mass produced, processed food. But, as demand for organic products has grown, big business has moved in, and now accounts for an increasing amount of the market. Big Food has money and clout. It can support farmers to transition to organic, and throw its weight behind marketing the virtues of organic methods and ...
May 09, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the second of two James Beard Award-winning episodes on food and grief, Emily Thomas explores the food experiences of the widowed. In parts of the world where widowhood is seen as a source of shame, widows might be excluded from mealtimes, forbidden from eating nourishing food, and even forced to take part in degrading eating rituals. And even in some of the world's most developed countries, where widowhood elicits sympathy rather than suspicion, the bereaved are still more likely to suffer n...
May 02, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Emily Thomas explores how food can help us navigate through the darkest of times - the days, weeks, and even years following the death of someone we loved. In times of loss, should we use food to remember the dead or to reconnect with them? A neurologist explains the science behind grief and appetite, and people who've been recently bereaved talk about the foods and eating rituals that have helped them through it. This programme won the James Beard Award for Best Radio Show in 2019. It was first...
Apr 25, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
