Fed with Chris Van Tulleken

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BBC Radio 4 FM

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Fed with Chris van Tulleken

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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.

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: 6. The Fast Food Trap

6. The Fast Food Trap

Series 1: Planet Chicken

BBC Radio 4 - Fed with Chris van Tulleken, Series 1: Planet Chicken, 6. The Fast Food Trap

Dr Chris van Tulleken gets a taste of a guilty pleasure: sinful yet delicious fast food.

Dr Chris van Tulleken gets a taste of a guilty pleasure: sinful yet delicious, salty, fatty, irresistible. It's fast food.

Chris has learned how to make better chicken choices, and what those choices really mean.

So why is he STILL eating CRAP?

Like many of us, Chris is always trying to eat better food: healthy, high welfare, good for the environment. This kind of consumer demand is making the chicken industry better, in tiny increments. So why do so many of us give ourselves a pass when it comes to the food we KNOW we shouldn’t be eating, yet we do in absolutely vast amounts… fast food?

Chicken is at the very heart of this industry. As a cheap meat that doesn’t have a strong taste, can easily take on other flavours and doesn’t have any religious restrictions, it’s the ideal takeaway ingredient; from nuggets to chow mein to tikka masala.

And although we might be careful about chicken choices when buying it raw to prepare at home, somehow we don’t seem to mind turning a blind eye to the origins and nutritional content of our fast food favourites, especially if we’re hungry…

Chris discovers just how bad this food can be for both us and the planet, and why we’re powerless to resist it.

Produced by Emily Knight and Lucy Taylor

Fed with Chris van Tulleken: Series 1: Planet Chicken

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Fed with Chris van Tulleken

Series 1: Planet Chicken

6. The Fast Food Trap

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