Fed with Chris van Tulleken

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Factual: Science & Nature

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

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?

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Fed with Chris van Tulleken: Series 1: Planet Chicken: 5. Fine Print

5. Fine Print

Series 1: Planet Chicken

BBC Radio 4 - Fed with Chris van Tulleken, Series 1: Planet Chicken, 5. Fine Print

Dr Chris van Tulleken asks if we can trust what's on the label when it comes to food.

Dr Chris van Tulleken asks how much we know about our food, and whether we can really trust what's on the label.

Do YOU know what you're eating? Are you sure?

Dr Chris van Tulleken is keen to make good food choices, and buy the best chicken possible for his dinner. High welfare, tasty, and good for the environment, ideally. But it's not as easy as that. How CAN he make good food choices if he has no idea what he's buying?

Chris explores what we actually know about the food we buy, and to what extent we can trust what's on a label. 

He also uncovers the startling truth about two very different ways that we buy chicken - lifting the lid on why sometimes, even the most moral meat shoppers turn a blind eye...

Produced by Lucy Taylor and Emily Knight.

Fed with Chris van Tulleken: Series 1: Planet Chicken

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Fed with Chris van Tulleken

Series 1: Planet Chicken

5. Fine Print

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