Episode 143: Finger Lickin' Frightening! 28 Days of Fried Chicken

Fried chicken for every meal sounds like a stunt, until you see what 28 days of ultra-processed food does to a real body and a real mind. We sit down with Mo Gilligan’s Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy and follow the thread from “harmless takeaway” to cravings, mood shifts, and health markers moving alarmingly fast in the wrong direction, including a jump in HbA1c that edges closer to type 2 diabetes. It’s the kind of watch that makes you look at your shopping trolley differently the next day.

We talk honestly about ultra-processed foods and addiction: why some products are designed to keep you reaching for the next bite, why hunger can feel louder after a weekend of processed snacks, and how “just use willpower” misses what’s really happening in the brain and body. We also get into food and mood, because the documentary captures something many of us recognise: low energy, feeling flat, and that sense your sparkle has been dialled down. If we keep calling it a mental health crisis while ignoring what we’re eating, we’re only treating the symptoms.

Then we widen the lens to the system behind the food: environmental damage from intensive farming, water contamination, antibiotics, and the human cost of production lines where dignity is treated as optional. It’s heavy, but we finish with practical power, what we choose to buy, how to bring the 80-20 rule back the right way round, and how to eat well without demonising food or living on kale.

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