The food writers
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 MatMalin in Stockholm, formerly editor of Swedish food magazine, Allt om Mat.
They discuss their first jobs, how their work shapes our tastes and why they think columns about cake matter more than you might think.
If you would like to get in touch with The Food Chain team, please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
Producers: Izzy Greenfield and Lexy O'Connor
Sound engineer: Hal Haines
(Photo: Woman writes in a notebook next to an open laptop and vegetables on a kitchen counter top. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Your time starts now. |
| 0:07.2 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:09.4 | Absolutely right. |
| 0:11.5 | So, you might like to know that the BBC makes loads of other podcasts. |
| 0:15.6 | Really? |
| 0:16.4 | Wow. |
| 0:17.2 | Many of them are very funny. |
| 0:19.1 | Which I think means... |
| 0:20.1 | A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if we do very funny. Which I think means... A hatful of ha haas. |
| 0:21.7 | And energy! |
| 0:38.8 | Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% to that. Find them all on BBC Sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Just search comedy on BBC Sounds. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in. It can be relaxing to flip through the pages of a glossy food magazine. |
| 0:43.4 | Look for inspiration for tonight's dinner in a newspaper column |
| 0:46.4 | or lose yourself in recipe videos on your social media feed. |
| 0:50.9 | Have you ever wondered what it must be like to make that content for a living? This is the food |
| 0:56.6 | chain from the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander and this week I'm talking to three |
| 1:02.0 | people who've built careers writing and editing stories about what we eat, helping to shape tastes, |
| 1:09.3 | trends and the way millions of people cook at home. |
| 1:12.9 | Joining me is Melissa Clark, recipe columnist and newsletter host for the New York Times. |
| 1:18.5 | Also in London, Laura Rowe, food journalist and former content director of Olive and Delicious |
| 1:24.3 | magazines. And in Stockholm, Marlin Turan, of the website, Mart Marlin, |
| 1:30.1 | Mark being the Swedish word for food. |
... |
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