Is there someone in your life who needs to have total control in the kitchen? Someone who breathes down your neck, micromanages your every move and can’t resist explaining exactly how to chop a carrot? If so, you may be in the company of what we’re calling ‘a Chefsplainer’. Or perhaps all this rings a bell because you are a chefsplainer? Whoever you are - this episode of The Food Chain is for you.

Emily Thomas meets a married couple, a mother and son, and two friends to unpack their power dynamics in the kitchen. They explore why some people feel the need to take control over the cooking, how this reflects our emotional attachment to food, and whether what happens in the kitchen reflects or changes relationships outside it. Plus - why do some of us think that it’s ok to behave in certain ways in the kitchen - that we wouldn’t dream of elsewhere?

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email [email protected]

(Picture: couple argue in a kitchen. Credit: Getty/BBC)

Contributors:

Abby Saverino

Calories are ubiquitous across most of the world and have been used to help people manage their weight for more than a century. But have we been counting them wrong all along? In this episode, Emily Thomas finds out how the calorie is a lot more complex than many of us realise.

Historian Louise Foxcroft describes how this measure of energy became the darling of scientists and public health experts across the globe, and the unwitting bedfellow of the diet industry. Geneticist Giles Yeo argues that calorie counting can actually be harmful, encouraging us to make unhealthy choices, and Bridget Benelam from the British Nutrition Foundation explains why she thinks that despite all its flaws, the calorie will be with us for a good while yet.

Sugary drink and fast food sponsors have become almost inseparable from sporting superstars and major events like the Olympics. But why are these epitomes of health and exercise aligning themselves with products linked to obesity, heart disease and diabetes?

Simon Tulett explores the reasons for this relationship's long history and hears about the damage it could be doing to young, impressionable fans.

If this sponsorship is a problem, whose job is it to end it, and can it be done without leaving event organisers, athletes and grassroots sport facing a financial black hole?

Producer: Sarah Stolarz

Contributors:

Michael Payne, former IOC marketing executive;

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

(Picture: Composite of an American football player catching a burger. Credit: Lew Robertson, Rubberball/Mike Kemp, Getty Images/BBC)

When it comes to food, we have a lot more than honey to thank bees for - more than three quarters of the world’s food crops depend, at least in part, on pollinators. But bee populations, we often hear, are under threat, and that’s largely due to human behaviour.

Emily Thomas speaks to three beekeepers about the challenges of making money from honey and the complicated relationship between the human and the honey bee.

If we look carefully into the hive, she discovers, bees can teach us much about the environment, society and ourselves.

Producer: Simon Tulett

Contributors:

Joan Kinyanjui, Yatta Beekeepers, Nairobi;

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

(Picture: A honey bee on the end of a human finger. Credit: Getty Images/BBC)

When you’re competing in a round-the-world race and you have to take all your food with you, what do you bring and how do you cook it?

If you’re scrambling up and down mountains for days on end, or swimming across an entire ocean, how do you find the time to eat, and what can you stomach?

Producer: Simon Tulett

Contributors:

Dee Caffari;

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

(Picture: A runner in the 2019 Marathon des Sables race. Credit: Erik Sampers/Gamma-Rapho/Getty/ BBC)

Do you need a lemon right now but don’t want to leave the house? Just download an app and you’ll have it in 13 minutes. That’s the kind of service you can expect from a swathe of new ‘rapid delivery’ grocery apps. Dozens have appeared around the world since the start of the pandemic, and investors have been flocking to invest, pumping billions into the sector. So are these apps the obvious next step in our on-demand lifestyles, or should they be a cause for concern? When it comes to food, can things become just a bit too convenient?

Tamasin Ford hears from one company boss with big ambitions and a former competition lawyer who’s worried these apps could spell the end for smaller food stores. Plus, we travel to Istanbul in Turkey where people have already been using them for years.

(Picture: Man sat on sofa groceries being handed to him. Credit: Getty/BBC)

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

Contributors:

Alec Dent: Co-Founder, Weezy

When chef Jamie Oliver launched a campaign to improve British school meals, it inspired one headteacher to take things much further.

Charlton Manor Primary School, in south London, now grows its own produce, keeps bees and chickens, and has a restaurant aiming for a Michelin star. Head Tim Baker has also overhauled the teaching curriculum to put food centre stage - from learning about fair trade banana growers in geography lessons to slicing pizzas to help with fractions.

Tamasin Ford speaks to teachers and students to find out how they did it, and asks whether this could act as a model for how to teach our children about food's impact on our health and the planet.

Producer: Simon Tulett

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

(Picture: Students Sarah and Vaidas in the garden at Charlton Manor Primary School)

Contributors:

Students at Charlton Manor Primary School;

The celebrated French chef Raymond Blanc tells Emily Thomas about his life through five dishes.

From a childhood roaming magical forests in Eastern France, to the rather less enticing restaurant scene of 1970s England, Raymond describes how with little grasp of the language and no formal training, he quickly became one of the UK’s best known chefs. His restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, has been thriving for almost 40 years and during that time he has added a string of cookbooks, TV shows and brasseries to his name. Raymond explains how he balances being a gastronome and perfectionist with running a large business.

But we also hear another side to the exuberant chef. The past year has been perhaps one the most difficult of Raymond’s life - closing his restaurants, the isolation of lockdown, the death of his mother and being hospitalised with coronavirus for a month. He tells us why he thinks it will make him a better man.

Meet the unsung heroes of your kitchen drawers.

When you hold a vegetable peeler or potato masher, do you ever think about the person behind it?

We celebrate chefs and cookbook writers - but what about the people who make the tools that make it all easier?

Emily Thomas meets three product designers who explain the thinking behind the everyday objects we keep in our kitchens. We’ll hear about accessibility and segregation - but also art and beauty. Welcome to the philosophy of kitchen gadgets.

Contributors: Dan Formosa, Scott Jarvie, and Gavin Reay.

The Food Chain delves into the world of ‘Ultra-Processed Food’ - a term coined in Brazil that has been provoking debate around the world.

Ultra Processed Food is a term that encompasses a broad range of common products from industrialised bread to breakfast cereals to chocolate bars. A growing body of evidence points to an association between their consumption and negative health outcomes including obesity, over-eating, depression, heart disease, and type-2 diabetes. Countries like Brazil are so concerned they are recommending people avoid UPFs all together. But in some of the world's most developed economies these foods make up, up to 80% of our diets, whilst the public understands very little about them.

Emily Thomas speaks to representatives from the food industry and people at the forefront of the science into UPFs to try to find out whether this is just another dietary buzzword that muddies the waters when it comes to improving the nation’s diets - OR whether it’s something we should ALL be talking about.

(Picture; Cookie talking in chocolate chips, Credit: BBC/Getty)

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email [email protected]

Contributors:

Gyorgy Scrinis: Associate professor of Food Politics and Policy, University of Melbourne