The Food Chain

What do Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Lady and the Tramp have in common? Both use food in subtle ways to immerse us in their stories and help us make sense of fictitious worlds - from jumping chocolate frogs to kissing over spaghetti. The same is true for many novels, where food can be an integral part of building characters, plots, even entire worlds. Graihagh Jackson speaks to three world-acclaimed writers – two authors and one Nollywood script writer and film director - to find out how and why they employ food in their work. How do you create make-believe foods for a science fiction world, yet still imbue them with meanings that real world listeners will understand? When you’re trying to appeal to multiple audiences and cultures, how do you stop your food references getting lost in translation? And can food be used to highlight or send subtle messages about subjects that are traditionally seen as taboo?(Picture: Artistic depiction of a woman lying on top of an orange. Credit: Getty Images/BBC)

Australia's bushfires are thought to have killed more than one billion animals, and although many of the country's wild species have been worst affected thousands of livestock have also died, some of them buried in mass graves.The severe droughts that partly fuelled the flames have been affecting cattle in Australia for several years, destroying many of their grazing lands - a vital source of nutrition. There are also signs that the extreme heat in some parts of the country could even be making these animals infertile. Graihagh Jackson speaks to Gundula Rhoades, a livestock vet from New South Wales, to find out more. We also hear about the impact of climate change from two other farm vets. Edwin Chelule, from Nairobi, Kenya, says droughts there have been making dairy cows less productive, destroying families' livelihoods. And Emily Gascoigne, a sheep expert from the south west of England, tells us some disease patterns have been changing.All three work in an industry that's a big part of the climate change problem – livestock are responsible for almost 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions - so can they use their medical expertise and close relationship with farmers to bring change? (Picture: A farmer standing near the bones of a dead cow in a drought-affected paddock in New South Wales, Australia. Credit: Getty/BBC)

New Year's resolutions about food often involve cutting down on something, or giving something up, but how about committing to trying something new for the next 12 months? How much harder is it, and what do we learn about ourselves along the way?Graihagh Jackson meets three women who went to extraordinary lengths in search of change: a working mum who cooked a different meal every day of the year to escape a cooking rut; a writer who made her own salt from seawater and learned how to butcher a sheep as part of a pledge to only eat non-processed foods; and a blogger who logged and photographed everything she ate for 365 days.We hear how difficult, expensive and exhausting the challenges were, but also how they brought each of these women closer to their families and friends, as well as their food.(Picture: A tree through four seasons. Credit: Getty/BBC)

The award-winning star of Netflix series 'Salt, Fat, Acid Heat' and author of the best-selling cookbook of the same name tells us about her life through five of her most memorable dishes. The Iranian-American writer and cook has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in the last few years, but has struggled to come to terms with that success and says she still feels like an impostor and outsider. She very nearly took a completely different career path - she tells Emily Thomas that her dream was always to be a poet until a magical experience at a fine-dining restaurant changed everything. Even now, though, she doesn't aspire to run a restaurant or establish a culinary empire - she doesn't like the person she becomes when put in charge of a team of chefs. This episode was recorded at The Cookery School at Little Portland Street and was first broadcast on 30 May 2019. (Picture: Samin Nosrat. Credit: BBC)

Does your stomach turn at the thought of a Christmas pudding? How about pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving? Foods like these, commonly served at annual celebrations, are deeply ingrained in our cultures, but why, and how hard is it to reject them?We meet three people who dislike dishes that traditionally appear during festive or other holidays, and ask why they continue to serve them anyway: Ed Levine, a food writer and broadcaster from the US, explains his antipathy towards pumpkin pie; chef and restaurateur Emily Roux, daughter of Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr., tells us how she dodges Christmas pudding and turkey; and Al Pitcher, a comedian from Sweden, recalls his traumatic experience tasting one of the country's most famous national dishes - sour herring. Why can it be so hard to admit our dislike of these foods, and what’s the best way to banish them from our tables without upsetting family, friends or even entire nations? Thanks to Canal Digital Sweden for the extract from Al Pitcher's surströmming video.(Picture: An unhappy young boy looking at a Christmas pudding. Credit: Getty/BBC)

The bittersweet world of chocolate is complex - cocoa beans are produced by some of the poorest people on the planet and turned into chocolate for some of the richest, and the sweet stuff is haunted by child labour, slavery, trafficking and deforestation. But could the rise of artisan chocolatiers change this? We speak to three people who are putting traceability and sustainability at the heart of their chocolate businesses, and find out just how difficult that can be - still today, there is no guarantee your chocolate bar is free from the industry's ills.One of our entrepreneurs, in Ghana, tells us about her determination to put one of the world’s biggest cocoa producers on the chocolate map, and a chocolatier in Singapore explains why she gave up a career in banking to make chocolate bonbons. Plus, we ask whether consumers are willing to pay a relatively high price for bar that's been more ethically sourced.We also get up close with a cocoa pod, find out what 'bean to bar' really means, and discover the science behind how chocolate is actually made.(Picture: A chocolatier making a chocolate truffle. Credit: Getty/BBC)

Sommeliers are to a restaurant’s wine what a head chef is to its food. These waiters taste and study thousands of bottles, and the best can even tell you exactly where a wine was grown and when its grapes were harvested, just with a sniff and a slurp. But to some they can seem part of a stuffy, exclusive and mysterious club. We meet three sommeliers from the USA, Sweden and London who are all trying to change that image and guide even the most clueless of customers through their wine lists. We hear how much wine they actually drink, how they deal with know-it-all customers and a master sommelier tells us how he passed one of the most difficult exams in the world. Plus, we put all of them to the ultimate blind taste test.(Picture: Cameron Dewar, Fernando Beteta and Emma Ziemann. Credit: Cameron Dewar, Fernando Beteta, Emma Ziemann, BBC)

Award-winning chef, restaurateur and writer Marcus Samuelsson describes his extraordinary culinary and personal journey from one of the world's poorest countries to Sweden and then to Harlem, New York. His life in five dishes takes us from his birthplace in Ethiopia, where his mother died when he was just a few years old, to his adoption by a couple in Sweden. He tells Emily Thomas how his adopted grandmother taught him about homemade locally-sourced food and installed a work ethic in the kitchen that he’s never lost. His sense of culinary adventure then took him through some of the top restaurants in Europe and on to the US, where he’s now opened a string of restaurants of his own, cooked President Obama’s first White House state dinner, published many books and become a regular feature on TV cooking programmes. He's also rediscovered the foods of his birthplace and tells us about the emotional moment he met the father he'd long assumed was dead. Marcus reveals how racism was a career obstacle, but that it also contributed to his success, and explains why his focus has changed from cooking for the one per cent, as he puts it, to a more democratic dining scene.(Picture: Marcus Samuelsson at Red Rooster Shoreditch. Credit: BBC)

It’s the world’s most consumed vegetable oil, used for everything from frying food to making it last longer – but can palm oil be produced in a way that doesn't wreak enormous environmental and human damage?In conjunction with another BBC World Service programme, Crowd Science, we visit the Sabah region of Malaysian Borneo, where different groups are working together to change the way palm oil is produced. Presenter Graihagh Jackson hears about a certification system aimed at raising standards on smallholders, reducing the industry’s impact on biodiversity, and boosting incomes. And she speaks to an organisation fighting for the rights of indigenous communities against land-hungry palm oil companies.Plus, what can consumers do to affect change in the industry? We hear how it's sometimes difficult to know whether products contain sustainable palm oil or not.For more on the steps being taken to lessen palm oil's environmental impact listen to Crowd Science: Should I stop eating palm oil? (Picture: A man harvesting palm oil. Credit Getty/BBC)

Running a bakery is hard work - you’re up all night mixing, kneading, proving and baking, and then when the sun rises you need to actually sell your bread and run the business. It’s physically demanding too - repetitive strain injuries to hands are not uncommon.So who’d be willing to put themselves through it? Emily Thomas meets three artisan bakers from different continents to find out what drives them, and why they think most of us have been eating bread all wrong: Islam Sabry, who runs Cairo's Baker, in Egypt; Lee Utsumi, of Lee's Bread, just outside Tokyo, Japan; and Seth Gabrielse, co-owner of Automne Boulangerie in Montreal, Canada.Plus, what happens to your waistline when you're surrounded by freshly baked bread and pastries all day?(Picture: Islam Sabry, Seth Gabrielse and Lee Utsumi. Credit: Cairo's Baker, Automne Boulangerie, Lee's Bread, and BBC).