logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2023
31m 48s

The growth of GM food

Bbc World Service
About this episode
tail spinning
Up next
Apr 29
The food writers
Ever wondered how anyone gets a job writing about food? Ruth Alexander talks to Melissa Clark, recipe columnist and newsletter host for the New York Times; Laura Rowe food journalist and former content director of Olive and Delicious magazines in London, and Malin Turunen of MatM ... Show More
26m 29s
Apr 22
Can we eat for exam success?
It's exam season in many parts of the world and with her own daughter studying hard, Rumella Dasgupta began wondering how much food matters during this difficult and stressful time. Is there such a thing as a brain food and are there any foods in particular that we should be aimi ... Show More
26m 28s
Apr 15
How to eat more fibre and why you should!
Food Chain presenter Ruth Alexander was confident that she was eating a healthy diet, in particular, a diet that included enough fibre. But it turns out, like many of us, her fibre intake has been falling short of the recommended amount. In fact all over the world most of us are ... Show More
26m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2021
GMOs - from 'Frankenfoods' to Superfoods?
Since they first appeared in the nineties, GMOs have remained wildly unpopular with consumers, who see them as potentially sinister tools of big agricultural companies. Ivana Davidovic explores if the new scientific developments might make them shed their bad image. She visits No ... Show More
17m 29s
Apr 2023
GM mustard in India
Could growing genetically modified mustard be the answer to oil shortages in India? Each year India spends billions of dollars importing 70 percent of its cooking oil from other countries like Argentina, Malaysia and Brazil. We speak to a farmer struggling to make a profit growin ... Show More
18m 42s
May 2021
Could we turn poisonous plants into edible crops?
<p>There are over 400,000 species of plant on earth, they’re on every continent including Antarctica. But humans only regularly eat about 200 species globally, with the vast majority of our nutrition coming from just three species. Many of the fruits, leaves and tubers that other ... Show More
27m 59s
Nov 2020
Amalia Leguizamón, "Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina" (Duke UP, 2020)
In 1996 Argentina adopted genetically modified (GM) soybeans as a central part of its national development strategy. Today, Argentina is the third largest global grower and exporter of GM crops. Its soybeans—which have been modified to tolerate being sprayed with herbicides—now c ... Show More
1h 1m
Oct 2022
Will Kenya benefit from GMOs?
Kenya has recently lifted a ban on the cultivation and import of genetically modified goods. The country is facing the worst droughts for 40 years and there are concerns that millions could be at risk of food insecurity. These GMO’s - genetically modified organisms - are species ... Show More
18m 14s
Nov 2021
Genetic dreams, genetic nightmares
Professor Matthew Cobb looks at how genetic engineering became big business - from the first biotech company that produced human insulin in modified bacteria in the late 1970s to the companies like Monsanto which developed and then commercialised the first GM crops in the 1990s. ... Show More
27m 29s
Apr 2018
Anna Zeide, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry” (U California Press, 2018)
Most everything Americans eat today comes out of cans. Some of it emerges from the iconic steel cylinders and much of the rest from the mammoth processed food empire the canning industry pioneered. Historian Anna Zeide, in Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the A ... Show More
52m 34s
Aug 2016
Organic Food
People are going bonkers for organic, but what are you really getting when you buy them? Better taste? Fewer toxic chemicals? A cleaner environment? Farmers Mark, Andy, and Brian Reeves, nutritional epidemiologist Dr. Kathryn Bradbury, Ass. Prof. Cynthia Curl, and Prof. Navin Ram ... Show More
35m 5s
May 2022
Genetic Testing: Is It Better Not To Know?
Sasa Woodruff loves food—she's been accused of having far too many cookbooks. But in 2019, a phone call from an unknown caller changed her relationship to eating. A genetic counselor called to tell her that she had a rare genetic mutation which could lead to a lethal form of stom ... Show More
15m 30s
Sep 2021
The business of seed banks
Increasingly scientists are using genetic material from wild plants to make agricultural crops more resilient to climate change. To find out how, Rebecca Kesby heads to the Millennium Seed Bank for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in the south of England. There she meets Dr Chris C ... Show More
17m 28s