Noma chef René Redzepi and editor Matt Goulding on making a food TV show

"Through the lens of these eight ingredients, we learn something about our world, our past and also about our future. In my opinion, it inspires you to want to understand more about this wonderful world of food and why it matters so much," says René.

How did they go about choosing the ingredients?

"If the series were about the eight ingredients that have had the biggest impact on us, then we'd end up with a lot of staples, right? We'd have rice in the east, wheat in the west, corn and potatoes and soy. I think it becomes very one-note if you do a series like that, at least for what our ambitions were.

"We really wanted to kind of touch on the many textures of our humanity. Of course, we do have a couple of those fundamental, society-altering ingredients – rice and corn in the case of this season – but also things that are not essential to our survival, but absolutely essential to our humanity and the pleasure that we derive from life. Chilli peppers have no significant nutritional role in the human experiment, but is a reflection of our psyche, a reflection of some type of particular drive that we have as a species. It's the same with coffee. Those are the questions that the series tries to ask," adds Matt.

"I'm inspired by the great nature documentaries of the world. I'm inspired by David Attenborough. Let's make Planet Earth, but with food. That meant using René's curiosity and his experience as a guide, to bring us from one place to the next and ask the questions, but not always to have the answers."

The show as their 'concept album'

With each episode of the series, they made the decision to make each one as stylistically different to one another, yet still within a unifying whole.

"We always talked about this internally as a concept album. This is our Dark Side of the Moon or OK Computer.

"Some are swashbuckling and wild and fast-paced. Some are a little bit more slow and pensive and methodical. In the case of pig, we live the entire episode in a single medieval village in central Spain to examine the relationship between this village and a single pig, but also our relationship as humans with this animal that has come to feed us so prolifically in the 21st century," says Matt.

The theme of each episode is used to dictate the feel of it.

"You want every song to have its own rhythm and cadence and lyrics, but all tied and united to this larger whole, so that the viewers feel like they're kind of going into the unexpected every time that they start up a new episode. So, chilli pepper is a climb up Mount Scoville, which is the unit they use to measure chilli heat.

"As you get higher and higher up that mountain and you make your way towards Noma and this big final meal that René and the staff have there, it gets wild and the soundtrack, writing, editing and colours all match the pace."

Filming on a global scale

Their filming process involved 16 countries on five continents, starting in the midst of the pandemic in 2020.

"Nothing about Omnivore was easy. Let's be honest here," says Matt.

"We worked with eight different directors from six different nations around the world and in total, thousands of people worked on it. Especially the local crews in these countries around the world who came forward and gave us access to these incredible stories."

Not only a global pandemic, but other geopolitical troubles meant that often filming had to be changed on the fly.

"We couldn't get into Ethiopia. The day we were flying there, they revoked our passport because of the civil war. That meant rewriting the coffee episode from scratch. There are dozens of those kinds of examples that ultimately demonstrate the scope and ambition of this project. We had these incredible partners in Apple who were very willing to go on a journey that wasn't like any that exists in the food world."

A disconnect in our food system

Despite a seemingly simple subject matter, their aim was to change people's fundamental attitudes to their relationships with the buying and consumption of food.

"Food is problematic, but it's also amazing and marvellous," says René. "I think we can all agree that we are so disconnected from where our food comes from. I think one way of seeing the proof is all the food we throw away daily – some reports say up to 30 per cent of the world's food is wasted. We should value what we eat and how it's grown tremendously, because it impacts who we are, how we feel and how the world is."

"The show, it's not there to judge what you eat and what you don't eat, " adds Matt. "It's there to inspire you, to remind people that food is everything. And, that when we make choices about what we're going to eat for breakfast or lunch or dinner, that has real impact on shaping the world.

"We want people to be inspired to learn more. Next time they pick up a coffee, they might think of trying somewhere new and seeing if that specialty brew actually tastes different because there's someone in Rwanda or somewhere else that's actually made this for me."

Listen to the full episode then delve into the Good Food podcast archive for more culinary adventures.