The Meat Paradox by Rob Percival

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The Meat Paradox by Rob Percival: Episode 4

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - The Meat Paradox by Rob Percival, Episode 4

What is the best diet for our future? Rob Percival explores the options.

Rob Percival says our use of arable land to sustain intensive farming is wildly inefficient and contributes to the global emergency. What is the best diet for our future?

Rob Percival is the head of Food Policy at The Soil Association.

He thinks our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. By novel technologies and the logic of globalisation, by geopolitical tensions and the evolution of cultural preferences, by shocks to the status quo - pandemics and economic strife, the escalation of the climate emergency - and by how we choose to respond. It will also be shaped by our emotions.  In short - by the Meat Paradox.

'Should we eat animals?' was, until recently, a question reserved for moral philosophers and an ethically minded minority, but it is now posed on restaurant menus and supermarket shelves, on social media and morning television. The recent surge in popularity for veganism in the Western world has created a debate over our long held relationship with meat.

We must all find a way of balancing competing and contradictory imperatives while understanding the psychology of our dietary choices.

Written by Rob Percival
Read by Alec Newman

Abridged by Polly Coles
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4

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

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How empathy, ethics, the economy and ecology will shape our diets in the future.

Book of the Week. Rob Percival, an expert in the politics of meat, looks at how empathy, ethics, the economy and ecology will shape our diets in the future.

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The Meat Paradox by Rob Percival

Episode 4

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