Feed: a food systems podcast
Is local or global more sustainable? What role should meat play in our diets? Who holds power in the food system? In a polarized world, this podcast explores the visions, values and evidence behind these debates. Feed, a project of TABLE, is in conversation with diverse experts who are trying to transform the food system.
Originally established as a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the TABLE network has since grown to include la Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) and la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. This podcast is operated by SLU.
For more info, visit https://tabledebates.org/podcast/
Episodes
85 episodes
7. Transitioning to fossil free food
What would a food system free of fossil fuels look like by 2050? What insights surprised the experts featured in this series? And what trade-offs must we navigate to shape this future? In our final episode, we shift from acknowledging the 'foss...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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47:38
6. Fossil fuels in our kitchens
Fossil fuels are hiding in plain sight in our kitchens—powering stoves and cooling refrigerators, plus they're fueling supply chains. They shape how we cook, eat and connect with food. In this episode, we explore how to reduce reliance on fossi...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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47:39
5. Ultra-processed foods, plastics, transport
When we talk about the future of food, we usually picture what's growing in the fields or what's on our dinner plates. But maybe we should pay a little more attention to everything happening in between. Processing and packaging consumes the lar...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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54:46
Raj Patel on fossil fuels, food, and Columbus’s wicked legacy
What are the hidden costs of our current food system and its deep reliance on fossil fuels, a system that burdens citizens with financial, health and environmental consequences? With Raj Patel, research professor at the University Texas at Aust...
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Season 4
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32:57
4. Farm machinery, precision agriculture, big data
Fossil fuels are woven into nearly every aspect of modern agriculture - from powering farm machinery to creating plastics and supporting data-driven tech like precision agriculture. But what would it take to reduce or even eliminate their use o...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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40:01
3. Do we need fossil agrochemicals to feed the world?
Since 2020, over 120 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer have been produced annually—a number set to rise by 50% by 2050. It’s easy to assume this is non-negotiable, that without it, we’d face a food crisis. But do we really need all this fos...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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48:28
2. The rise of fossil fuels in our food
How did fossil fuels become so embedded in our food systems? We trace this journey from the industrial extraction of guano, through the game-changing Haber-Bosch process, to today’s globalized food system. Along the way, we uncover the hidden i...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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43:45
1. There's fossil fuels in our food?!
“For many of us, how fossil fuels are integrated across the food chain is highly invisible.” When we bite into a juicy apple, barrels of crude oil and natural gas cylinders might not spring to mind. But fossil fuels ar...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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37:14
Introducing Fuel to Fork
When we bite into a juicy apple, barrels of crude oil and natural gas cylinders might not spring to mind. But fossil fuels are the hidden ingredient behind all of our food. For every calorie that ends up on our plates, around 10 calories of fos...
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Season 4
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0:34
What biodiversity do you care about?
Are food systems allies or enemies in the fight to save biodiversity? With our planet facing a biodiversity crisis, the answer depends on who you ask and what forms of life we prioritize. We speak with farmers, biophysical modelers, and biologi...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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34:46
Animal welfare and ethics (w/ Tamsin Blaxter)
How do philosophers, animal welfare scientists, and farmers differ in their understanding of what a good future for farmed animals looks like? TABLE researcher Tamsin Blaxter discusses the complex relationships between humans and non-human anim...
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49:24
Valuing nature in our economies (w/ Adan Martinez Cruz)
Environmental economist Adan L. Martinez-Cruz (Senior Lecturer at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), argues that markets are a fundamental aspect of human society. He suggests that assigning a monetary value to natural resources ...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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28:46
There is no master metric for biodiversity (with Ville Lähde)
Philosopher and environmental researcher Ville Lähde (with the Finnish BIOS Research Unit) argues that we need to understand biodiversity differently at a fundamental level in order to preserve it. Biodiver...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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40:23
Nature knows best: Naturalness in the Ultra-Processed Foods Debate
The idea that more natural food – food which hasn’t been transformed by human and industrial intervention – is best for us is a powerful one. Psychologists have found a strong preference for that which is “natural”, even when people differ in w...
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Season 3
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53:44
Presenting "Less And Better?: Ep 1: Its Complicated"
It feels like one of the biggest questions of our time: what do we do about meat? Rather than choosing either extreme – business as usual, or ruling out meat altogether – some people suggest the best approach is one of ‘less and better meat’. B...
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34:11
Women Scientists from Global South on Food Security (Part 3)
500 scientists from 60 countries gathered at the 5th Global Food Security Conference in Leuven, Belgium. Instead of saying, "you had to be there," we bring you voices and reflections from the conference. Host Matthew Kessler recorded dozens of ...
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25:53
Economics of Food System Transformation (Part 2)
500 scientists from 60 countries gathered at the 5th Global Food Security Conference in Leuven, Belgium. Instead of saying, "you had to be there," we bring you voices and reflections from the conference. Host Matthew Kessler recorded dozens of ...
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40:20
Is Global Food Security a Solvable Puzzle? (Part 1)
500 scientists from 60 countries gathered at the 5th Global Food Security Conference in Leuven, Belgium. Instead of saying, "you had to be there," we bring you voices and reflections from the conference. Host Matthew Kessler recorded dozens of ...
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32:40
Is cultivated "meat" unnatural? Is meat today natural?
While many wonder about the technological hurdles preventing cultivated meat from entering commercial markets, fewer ask a more basic question: will people actually eat it, or will they find it too unnatural? In this episode, we're joined by Co...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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36:03
Does CRISPR make our food unnatural?
If more and more gene-edited foods become common on our plates, is that a sign of a promising or worrying food future? With Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr, food anthropologist and host of the podcast A CRISPR Bite, we unpack whether i...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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29:38
What's a natural diet? (with Richard Tellström)
What influences the meals we enjoy today? Meal historian and cultural researcher Richard Tellström from Stockholm University suggests that the surrounding natural environments and ecosystems only play a minimal role. Instead, he argues that our...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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18:43
What's a natural diet? (with Amy Styring)
Around 6000 years ago in Northwest Europe, our ancestors transitioned from hunter-gatherer societies to sedentary farming. How did their diets change during this time? The field of archaeological sciences and chemistry teamed up to shed new lig...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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25:37
Can we eat enough white-tailed deer to restore forest ecosystems?
Is it possible to eat enough white-tailed deer to keep their populations low enough to restore ecosystems? We posed this question to Bernd Blossey, professor at Cornell University who specializes in the management of invasive species and the re...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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31:08
Eating invasive crayfish - a solution to our ecological mess?
Are invasive species natural? If we introduced them, do we have some responsibility to manage them? What if we could reduce their numbers through the natural process of eating?In this episode, Jackie Turner (TABLE) joins crayfish trappe...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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21:15
Grasshoppers - agricultural pest or sustainable food?
What if we shifted our perspective from seeing some animal species as a problem to seeing them as an abundant and tasty source of food? Over the next few episodes, we’ll hear three "problems" in three regions: grasshoppers as pests in Mexico, i...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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25:06
