Fed with Chris van Tulleken

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Fed with Chris van Tulleken: Series 1: Planet Chicken: 2. A Chicken and Egg Story

How chicken got big. Chris van Tulleken unwraps the forces that shape what we eat.

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Factual: Food & Drink

Factual: Science & Nature

How chicken got big. Chris van Tulleken unwraps the forces that shape what we eat. This is how we changed chicken and chicken changed us.

Fed with Chris van Tulleken is a new food podcast, investigating the entangled web of forces that shape what ends up on our plates. In the first series, Planet Chicken, Chris digs into the story of one of the most widely eaten meats on earth - to try to get to the truth of why we eat so much of it, and what that means for the birds, for us, and for the planet.

If there's one thing Chris knows, it's what he should and shouldn't be eating.

He's across the dangers of ultra-processed foods: those nutritionally empty snacks that fill our supermarket shelves and entrance our kids. And at the same time, he's confident he knows what we should be eating: good, old fashioned whole food - recognisable ingredients, no mysterious additives, no harmful rubbish.

Something like a nice wholesome roast chicken, perhaps? In fact, in the van Tulleken household that's a family favourite.

But recently, Chris has been getting asked more questions - by neighbours, people on the street, even government ministers: and he's realised there's a massive gap in his food knowledge.

Sure, he knows what happens in our bodies once that delicious gravy-drenched chicken dinner passes our lips: but what about everything that comes before that? Where it's from, how it was reared, how it was processed? Can he say what toll the process of getting that chicken from farm to plate might've have taken on the animal, the environment, the nutritional content?
Because in a world where so much food comes via an industrialised, globalised food system; where we're subtly influenced at every turn by advertising and price tags; and where ALL food choices ultimately come with a cost of some sort - how much do any of us really know or want to know about the consequences of our dinner?

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Fed with Chris van Tulleken: Series 1: Planet Chicken

Series 1: Planet Chicken

2. A Chicken and Egg Story

BBC Radio 4 - Fed with Chris van Tulleken, Series 1: Planet Chicken, 2. A Chicken and Egg Story

How human innovation turned chicken from backyard bird to multi-billion dollar industry.

Dr Chris van Tulleken explores why we eat what we eat, what it's doing to us, and the planet, and who's pulling the strings

So we started farming this bird called chicken, and it spread around the world. But what does it actually TAKE to feed us the amount of chicken we want to consume?

100 years ago this was a scrawny, egg-laying bird, only good for a stew once her eggs ran out – no one ate chicken meat. Fast forward to today and it’s the most consumed protein on the planet. How did we come to eat it in the first place, and what are the consequences of producing chicken meat on the vast, industrial scales we now consume it?

Dr Chris van Tulleken uncovers the extraordinary accident of history that birthed a new industry, and changed the way we eat – and think about – meat forever.

Produced by Emily Knight and Lucy Taylor.

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Fed with Chris van Tulleken

Series 1: Planet Chicken

2. A Chicken and Egg Story

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