TABLEdebates.org
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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. Thi...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · June 2026
Feed makes food systems legible as culture, connecting ethics, energy, agriculture, and everyday meals without flattening the debate.
Feed fits Society & Culture because it treats food as a way to read power, habit, ethics, and the infrastructure of daily life. The sampled episodes move through animal welfare, industrial agriculture, fossil-fueled processing and packaging, transport, kitchens, refrigeration,…
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful look at hunger, food systems, and who should help shape the response.
Food insecurity in the UK is the opening frame, but the deeper point is how change gets made without pretending there is one fix. The piece gives room to advocates and keeps circling back to the harder question: how do people living with food insecurity help shape solutions that…
A clear map of how fossil fuels became entrenched in industrial food.
The episode frames fossil fuels as the hidden structure behind industrial food: tractors replacing horses, synthetic inputs replacing natural ones, processing taking over kitchen labor, and seasonal eating yielding to a system built on distance.
A grounded look at diesel-heavy farming and the trade-offs in cutting fossil fuel use.
Fuel to Fork connects Europe's tractor protests to a larger debate about diesel in farming and what a real shift away from it would require. It works best as a systems-level look at the problem, linking machinery, precision agriculture, no-till, electrification, solar power, and…
A grounded look at how food systems carry fossil-fuel history into the present.
This episode treats fossil fuels, sugar, and colonial power as part of the same machinery that built the modern food system, then follows the people and institutions that keep it moving.
A clear history of how fossil energy became the hidden engine of industrial food.
Episode two traces a broad replacement story in industrial food: horses give way to fossil-fueled tractors, natural substances become fossil-fuel agrochemicals, and kitchen work shifts into food processing.
Food aesthetics become a clear lens on gender, health, and political desire.
The episode uses TikTok food aesthetics as a starting point, then moves into something sharper: how masculinity, trad wife imagery, and wellness talk can blur into politics.
A careful look at fossil agrochemicals, farm pressure, and the limits of easy answers.
This episode asks a useful question about whether fossil agrochemicals are really necessary to feed the world, then stays close to the realities of farming instead of drifting into theory.
A final episode that pushes the series into a sharper argument about power, waste, and capitalism.
The episode widens Fuel to Fork from a supply-chain story into a more pointed argument about power and imagination. It returns to the claim that more than 40% of fossil fuels used in food sit in processing and packaging, and that number gives the discussion real weight.
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
Fuel to Fork host Matthew Kessler brings back Jennifer Clapp, a University of Waterloo professor and Canada Research Chair, to trace how fossil fuels shaped agriculture from the 1800s to digital farming.
The host introduces an essay exploring why people disagree about meat, reflecting on polarization and trust-building in food systems.
Ken Giller, a retired professor of plant production systems from Wageningen University, says he spent nearly 40 years on smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa before turning his attention to food-system debates.
Feed returns to Hunger on Our Doorstep and opens on the scale of food insecurity in the UK.
Feed’s episode on agroecology and sustainable intensification centers on a paper from five researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, including Ricardo Bomarco and Helena Rocklundsberg, who reviewed highly cited literature over a year.
Corinna Hawkes traces her systems thinking back to Yorkshire beaches, where she noticed sand and fences shifting every year before studying longshore drift and tidal dynamics in geography.
Jack Thompson fills in for Matthew Kessler on Feed: a food systems podcast, talking with Thin Lei Win of Lighthouse Reports and the newsletter Thinh Inc.
Jack Thompson frames a Berlin dinner as a 2050 future-of-food exercise, organized with three colleagues during a Humboldt Foundation residency and served to 35 invited guests from policy, parliament, academia, activism, and NGOs.
Mike Barry argues that food retail needs simplification, not just more sustainability slogans, and ties that to his experience turning M&S’s Plan A from paper into day-to-day operations.
This episode explores how food systems drive biodiversity loss, featuring diverse experts who discuss solutions from regenerative farming to insect collapse.
This episode explores the hidden role of fossil fuels in the food system, from potato chips to industrial agriculture, with experts discussing its climate impacts, economic ties, and environmental injustices.
Sarah Lake, CEO of Tilt Collective, argues that changing what a society eats is less about persuasion in the abstract and more about changing the options people actually face in supermarkets, restaurants, schools, and fast food.
This episode explores animal welfare and ethics in food systems, featuring a conversation with researcher Tamsin Blaxter.
Matthew Kessler opens by asking how fossil fuels became embedded in global industrial food systems.
Matthew Kessler opens by asking how fossil fuels became so entrenched in global food systems.
Matthew Kessler opens by saying meat has been on his mind.
The conversation starts with a polarizing New York Times essay and the reaction it set off.
Fuel to Fork brings a live Oxford Real Farming Conference session to the feed.
This episode moves away from the field and toward the machinery between harvest and plate.
Jack Thompson opens by placing precision fermentation beside agroecology and asking why both get treated like near-total answers.
Matthew Kessler frames the episode around a blunt question: do we need fossil agrochemicals to feed the world?
Matthew Kessler starts by saying he is heading off on parental leave and introducing Jackie Turner as the host for this conversation.
The episode opens by tying the food system to fossil fuel politics and Donald Trump’s return to the office of the President of the United States.
Matthew Kessler brings the series back to the home kitchen.
Feed: a Food Systems podcast uses one UK statistic after another to show why food insecurity is now part of daily life for many households.
The episode opens on the tractor protests that swept France, Germany, Greece, and Romania, and uses that spectacle to ask why farming still leans so heavily on diesel.
Fuel to Fork opens with a potato chip breakdown that links tractors, fertilizer, frying oil, plastic bags, and trucks to fossil fuels.
The final episode brings the contributors back to reflect on what the investigation has exposed.