Cook and author Rachel Khoo’s motto is butter makes everything better. So the news that cows are destroying the planet has come as quite an affront. Rachel cares as much about a healthy environment as she does a delicious croissant. Yet suddenly she’s being asked to choose: plants or cows. To find out if a switch to veganism can really slow global warming, Rachel meets the devoted animal campaigners fueling the fight... Will they convince her to go vegan to help save the planet?

Contemplating a switch to veganism Rachel Khoo asks what we risk losing if we start to reject food for the planet’s sake. What if veganism destroys more than it saves? In the Tale of Two Tables, Rachel meets a dairy farmer, a burger cook, and a Michelin-starred vegan chef who are prioritising the environment above all else.

Chef and author Rachel Khoo remains unconvinced that embracing a vegan diet is the only way to help save the planet. So she considers the merits of sourcing one’s own meat... from the wild.

Rachel Khoo sets out to explore different farming systems only to discover that the “best” sort of farming might actually be the “worst” for the environment. In 50 Shades of Farming, Rachel learns about feedlots, grassland parasites, bobby calves, dairy yeast and the reality of meat processing, and wonders whether there is such a thing as one global solution to the vast problem of our food system.

Are consumers driving the change we need? Or do big corporations hold all the power? In San Francisco, food starts-ups selling plant-based products and developing lab-grown meat are amassing funds and power at a startling rate. Is the future of food found in a lab or on the land?

If Big Business is driving the shift from meat and dairy to plant-based products... will it also drive a change to more environmentally-friendly farming practices? In northern California, a vegetarian-turned-cattle rancher asks us to think of livestock as just as important to nature as the birds and the bees; whilst in the UK, Rachel Khoo joins a rewilding safari to discover that reconnecting with nature might be the change maker we need.

When we talk about food, what we’re really talking about is soil... as Rachel Khoo discovers when she gets her hands dirty with a bunch of farmers who say a global shift to veganism could be worse for the environment than continuing with beef and dairy.

Just as she was losing hope, Rachel Khoo meets a young vegan chef who cooks from the heart. Rachel begins to wonder if in the rush to save the planet through new products, we’ve overlooked a rich treasure trove of old food and farming knowledge that has the answers we’re looking for. In the final episode, Rachel looks beyond the politics of division and discovers what it means to be a food citizen.