Do you know who’s washing your dishes? Emily Thomas talks to pot washers from around the world, about what they love and loathe about life at the sink. A kitchen can’t survive without the pot washer, yet we rarely give them a second thought, lavishing all our attention instead on the chefs. But maybe we should. Being a pot washer, dishwasher or kitchen porter as it’s variably known, can be the first rung on the restaurant ladder, and many a great chef started out with a scourer in hand. But the ...
Apr 18, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Restaurateurs with guns, chefs wielding knives, and severed heads in bin bags. Life as a food inspector is a lot more fraught than you might think. Emily Thomas meets three food safety officers from around the globe who reveal what it’s like to be one of the most feared people in the industry. They have the power to close a restaurant. Some can even make arrests. No wonder they’ve got some stories that seem to belong more in a mafia film than a food show. And the danger doesn’t end there. It’s n...
Apr 11, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast What happens when food meets fiction? In this programme from the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, presenter Emily Thomas is joined by a panel of guests and an audience to find out how poems, plays and novels can help us better understand our food, and also how food can be used as a narrative device. Poet and novelist Ben Okri, farmer and author Suzanna Crampton, and playwright and former script-writer for BBC radio drama The Archers, Graham Harvey, share some of their work. How do they balan...
Apr 04, 2019•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are trillions of bacteria living in our guts and there's growing evidence that they can have a major impact on our mental well-being. So could we soon see a food supplement that can treat depression? The science behind this so-called gut-brain axis and whether we can manipulate it isn't yet conclusive, but there are plenty of believers. We speak to a woman who says her irritable bowel syndrome and anxiety disappeared after she started taking kefir, a fermented milk drink. She was so convin...
Mar 28, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Breastfeeding is highly recommended for babies the world over and in many countries it's seen as a mother's duty. No wonder, then, that women who cannot or choose not to breastfeed can feel ashamed, inadequate, or even irresponsible. But it turns out that these women are actually the majority. According to figures from the World Health Organisation only 41 per cent of babies are exclusively breastfed for their first 6 months. Two mothers tell us what they put themselves through to try to exclusi...
Mar 21, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast How does a tiny community living on a series of rugged, windswept islands in the south west Atlantic Ocean manage to eat a varied diet? The Falkland Islands have more sheep than people, and its waters are teaming with squid, but fresh fruit and vegetables are very hard to come by. And when it does arrive, almost all of it by sea, it’s not at all cheap – a pineapple, for example, can cost up to $20. But there are efforts to change that - food writer and chef Gerard Baker meets the islanders tryin...
Mar 14, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do some fruits and vegetables achieve superstar status, appearing on T-shirts worn by celebrities, or in tattoos adorning some of the biggest names in music? Who is behind the rise of avocados and kale, and who benefits most from their A-list status - savvy farmers, slick marketeers or health campaigners? Emily Thomas explores whether fruit and vegetables should play the fame game: Is putting a single food on a pedestal good for consumers, producers, or the planet? Jess Loyer, from the Unive...
Feb 28, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Are processed foods and urbanisation numbing children’s sensory abilities, and should we teach them to smell, touch, taste and even listen to their food to improve their diets and self-awareness? Emily Thomas meets three people from different parts of the world who work in ‘sensory food education’, which encourages children to explore all aspects of a food. They want young people to be taught these skills in schools, but is this really a job for teachers rather than parents? And could sensory fo...
Feb 21, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Rohingya people in Myanmar and the Uighur people in China are familiar to many of us through news reports. And usually their story is told by journalists in sombre voices reporting on the political situation or alleged human rights abuses. But in this episode, Rohingas and Uighurs themselves will tell us another story - about their cuisine. Because when you are far from home, feel your culture is under threat and you can’t get hold of the people you love the most on the phone, food can be a ...
Feb 14, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast What drives people to stake their livelihood on sponge? Three cake makers discuss the pressure and privilege of creating show-stopping centrepieces for major celebrations. From a perfect replica of a cow to a cake hanging from the ceiling, they reveal the engineering and money that go into some of the most formidable bakes. Emily Thomas meets Claire Ptak, owner of Violet Cakes, who made the cake at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, Pardeep Gill from Sweet Hollywood which specialises in w...
Feb 07, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast André Cointreau had a very privileged start in life, born into two illustrious French drinks dynasties - Cointreau and Rémy Martin. But his decision to buy a food business didn't go down well with the whole family. Unperturbed, he went on to become the chief executive of Le Cordon Bleu, transforming a small Parisian cookery school into a global culinary empire that has trained some of the world's most famous chefs. In this episode he tells Emily Thomas about his life through five memorable dishe...
Jan 31, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Carving up carcasses and slicing up flesh. Day in, day out. Doling out blood for pet leeches, and helpings of animals brains. What drives people to do it? And why do they see themselves as animal lovers, and therapists? Emily Thomas meets three butchers from Limerick, Lagos and Brooklyn to find out what it’s really like to be a butcher. Why is the trade disparaged in some parts of the world? And why in others has it become ‘trendy’ to leave an office job to join the trade? We hear how business m...
Jan 24, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast When a cool character cracks open a can of a well-known branded drink on screen, do you barely notice or roll your eyes? Whatever your reaction, their choices may well be influencing yours. Food is a powerful narrative device in film and product placement is highly lucrative. Put the two together and show business becomes big business for the food industry. Emily Thomas finds out how the product placement of food in film has changed over time and where it’s headed, as new technology makes it eve...
Jan 17, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Giving away unwanted food to people who need it, sounds like it should be easy. But in this episode we find it throws up some peculiar challenges. What do you do with 12,000 cakes, or vast amounts of unwanted crocodile meat? Over the past few years food banks have been opening up in places they have never been seen before, from some of the world’s richest cities to its poorest slums. But are they always the best approach to feeding the hungry? Three people who run food banks in Singapore, Nigeri...
Jan 10, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Find out what happens after the show ends. Emily Thomas catches up with some people who’ve appeared on The Food Chain over the past 12 months and hears about the unexpected things that can happen after you step off our stage. Propping up the bar with her is an experimental archaeologist who said she’d happily taste food thousands of years past its 'use by' date. Did she do something she probably shouldn't have in a historical food vault in Italy? Joining them - the man whose appearance on the sh...
Dec 27, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast A former-coffee lover goes on the hunt for a decent cup without the buzz, and discovers why it's so hard to get flavour without a fix. Emily Thomas delves into the complex art of caffeine extraction and discovers that taste is not the only challenge when it comes to taking the bounce out of a bean. The environmental and economic costs of decaf coffee soon add up, meaning a cup may carry a higher carbon footprint and be made with cheaper beans than the full-blooded stuff. Could a caffeine free co...
Dec 13, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Does bourbon have the strength to reinvigorate a whole city? And is it really wise to seek answers at the bottom of a barrel? Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon and its history is richly steeped in the drink. But now its largest city, Louisville, has decided the future should rest on it too. Could ‘bourbonism’ revive the city? According to Louisville's mayor, tourism based on the amber liquor is ‘shooting through the roof’. But, for many, alcohol is a gateway into other forms of...
Dec 06, 2018•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do we get so angry when we talk about food? When conversation turns to meat in particular, it doesn’t take long for debate to become heated and emotive. Voices get louder. Insults are hurled. Death threats are issued. Earlier this month, a group of UK scientists suggested a tax on red and processed meat would save thousands of lives. The discussion that followed quickly changed from being scientific and factual, to personal. It’s not the first food debate to have turned ugly - and in this ep...
Nov 29, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who gets to decide what our food tastes like - and what gives them the authority to do so? Emily Thomas meets three people who are employed by the food industry to choose how processed food should taste. One of them has had his tongue insured for over one million dollars. All of them can identify complex flavour combinations with a single bite. They even speak in their own language...sometimes. So what’s it like to have such an enhanced sense of flavour? When you can smell someone else's meal in...
Nov 22, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode includes audio of the slaughter of farm animals, which some may find upsetting. But if you happily eat meat, should you be willing to listen along as cows become beef? Would you be happy to witness it? And what might change if you did? Emily Thomas visits Tideford Abattoir, a slaughterhouse in the south of England to get an uncomfortably close up view of animals becoming food. As our food supply becomes ever more global and industrial, many of us have become distanced from the origi...
Nov 15, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Three top food stylists - all of whom have ghost-written and cooked on behalf of the world’s top chefs - step out from behind the scenes. More often than not, when it comes to food in the media, a lot of what you are seeing, and reading is the work - not of a top chef - but a food stylist. ‘Home economists’ as they are also known, do everything from cooking the dishes you see on screen, to ghost-writing whole cookery books, with all kinds of weird and wonderful food tasks in between. They churn ...
Nov 08, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast A powerful colossus is controlling most of what we eat. Who has the guts to take it on? Emily Thomas meets three people who have gone up against the food industry. From following trucks across Thailand to expose slavery in the fishing industry, to going undercover in Europe to reveal the hidden ingredients in processed food, to finding their phones have been infiltrated by spyware, these are people prepared to take risks. They talk about what it feels like to have such a powerful opponent, why t...
Nov 01, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you think you’d like your other half to be able to cook like a Michelin-starred chef, this episode might make you think again. When a professional cook is at the top of their game, there might just be someone at home, picking up the pieces of a brutal schedule. Emily Thomas sits down with three people who are in long-term relationships with successful chefs and restaurateurs. They lift the lid on what it’s really like to live your life alongside someone in a profession notorious for being int...
Oct 25, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever felt the urge to share exactly the same culinary experience as your ancestors? Do you care what ancient Roman bread tasted like? Or what a 16th Century courtier smelt as he lifted a slice of roast beef to his mouth? Would you understand yourself, or today’s food system, better if you did? And if the closest you come to experiencing the past is watching period dramas on television, are you bothered by whether the pigeon is actually chicken - or the fish, cream cheese? How real do we...
Oct 18, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Emily Thomas explores a stereotype with potentially life-threatening consequences - the idea that eating disorders are a problem that only affects white women in wealthy countries. She talks to black women in South Africa, Nigeria and the US who have had eating disorders. Their experiences and their cultural backgrounds are very different, but they all say the prevailing stereotype that eating disorders are a ‘white’ problem, makes it harder for black women to speak out and get the help they nee...
Oct 11, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast From diet pills to vomit rooms, the Food Chain investigates the rise of eating disorders in China. Is this an inevitable consequence of economic development? And if so, why are eating disorders still all too often seen as a rich white woman’s problem?’ In the first of two episodes to explore the rising prevalence of eating disorders outside of the western world, Emily Thomas speaks to women with the illness in China and Hong Kong, who explain how hard it is to access support for binge-eating dis...
Oct 04, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Emily Thomas brings together a straight-talking crowd who are not afraid to ruffle a few feathers - even when they belong to the world’s most successful restaurateurs and chefs. Three restaurant critics from across the globe don't hold back as they swap notes on the job, reveal the tricks of the trade, and divulge how they really feel after writing a scathing review. Do they ever get sick and tired of eating out? And are their friends afraid to invite them over for dinner? Plus, we hear how the ...
Sep 27, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Emily Thomas asks whether we’re on a slow but steady path to abandoning our pervasive, long-standing, and arguably slightly peculiar habit of drinking milk from cows. In many European countries and the US, alternative plant-based milks are growing in popularity, and cow's milk sales are declining. Is this just a blip in our millenia-old love affair with dairy, or a steady drip towards a cow's milk-free future? Three guests debate the potential effects on global poverty, the environment and our h...
Sep 20, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the second of two 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 nutritional deprivation than...
Sep 13, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the first of two episodes on food and grief, 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. (Photo: A raw onion. Credit: Getty...
Sep 06, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
