Investigating every aspect of the food we eat
The winners of the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2022 are announced at a ceremony at the National Museum Cardiff. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Clare Salisbury for BBC Audio in Bristol.
The winners of the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2022 are announced at a ceremony at the National Museum Cardiff. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol
There's a growing anxiety around avocados. With more awareness of their impact on the countries where they are grown, some chefs have been reducing their presence on menus. Are worries about their sustainability well-founded? Why do we focus so much on avocados and could we replace this contentious fruit with something else? Leyla Kazim meets chef Adriana Cavita at her new Mexican restaurant to talk about growing up with Avocados and how she has tackled the issue of their sustainability. Leyla t...
Sheila Dillon and chef Michael Caines meet the three Best Food Producer finalists of 2022, a community farm in Sussex, a business making cultured butter, and processor of wild Scottish venison. Ardgay Game is a family run business which sources the highest quality wild venison from the Highland estates of Scotland. Their team of expert butchers turn this source of sustainable wild meat into a premium product which is exported all over the world. The Edinburgh Butter Co produce cultured butter ma...
As rising temperatures supercharge the UK wine industry, Jaega Wise finds out what this means for winegrowing at home and abroad, and the mixed blessing climate change presents. She finds out how winegrowers, viticultural scientists and wine trade experts feel about the double-edged sword of climate change, and what the future might look like for the industry both in the UK and further afield. In Sussex, we hear from winemaking duo Dermot Sugrue and Ana Dogic about their estate Sugrue South Down...
Dan Saladino explore three big ideas that are set to influence the future of food and farming: the reinvention of wheat, supplies of wild meat into hospital kitchens and 'taste education' for children. Each one is a contender in this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards, in the innovation category. Dan heads into a forest to see how the cull of a growing deer population is resulting in better hospital food. He visits a team of crop scientists who are taking wheat back in time and through its evolu...
Welcome to the world of cocktails and the people who make them. As Jaega Wise discovers in this programme, it's a world of extremes. On one hand, in the past decade, bartending has become a respectable, profitable career for some. International awards and competitions have thrust people like Monica Berg of London bar Tayēr + Elementary, and Max Hayward of Cardiff's Lab 22 into the media spotlight. But the other side is darker. Zero hours contracts, long hours, bullying and harassment. And a hosp...
As energy bills rise to their new capped level at the start of October, Leyla Kazim shares some inspiring stories of giving that she has heard while on the road with the BBC Food and Farming Awards. Judging is currently underway for the Awards, which will be held for the first time this year in Wales. Given the financial situation the UK is in, with food inflation at its highest rate since 2008, perhaps it's no surprise that many of this years finalists are involved with getting food to people w...
The quality of hospital food around the country remains a very mixed picture, despite various initiatives over the last decades. But now there is real optimism around a major Independent Review of NHS Hospital Food in England, published in 2020. Sheila Dillon looks at the barriers that have been holding back progress, and talks to Prue Leith, an Independent Advisor for the review, about the latest on progress with carrying through its recommendations. Sheila meets catering teams at the Northern ...
The co-op that's saving land, a food culture and villages at risk of being abandoned. In Benevento, Italy, Lentamente is also giving former convicts a future through farms and food. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
Thirty years ago, Dave Myers, a specialist prosthetic make-up artist walked into a pub in Newcastle after scoring a job on a Catherine Cookson TV drama. Beyond the throng of TV crew sipping their white wine spritzers, he spotted the then assistant producer Si King, eating the pub's curry of the day at the pool table. He walked over, introduced himself and said to the landlord, "I'll have what he's having." That was the moment one of the UK's most popular TV double acts was born. The Hairy Bikers...
Sheila Dillon hears the story of one of the most loved and admired chefs in the business, Jeremy Lee, and celebrates the joy of his simple ingredient-led cooking. As chef proprietor at Quo Vadis in London’s Soho, and previously at the Blueprint Café, Jeremy Lee has been creating ever-changing regional, seasonal and historically inspired British cuisine. He learned in the kitchens of some of the key creators of what’s often called the Modern British Cooking movement, the qualities of which he has...
The latest calculations from economists point to an inflation rate for average shopping baskets of just under 12 per cent, but as Dan Saladino hears from has been retailers, analysts and supermarket customers, everyone is expecting that that figure to increase by the time winter arrives. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
Meet the chef who ran away with the circus. Ols Halas is one of the longest-serving cast members at much-loved Gifford's Circus. As well as being head chef in Gifford's travelling restaurant 'Circus Sauce', he also drives the lorries, helps put up the big top, he's even performed. He lives and breathes the circus life. Sheila Dillon meets Ols on tour in Gloucestershire on an August morning as the circus pulls into town. She hears stories from the travelling restaurant kitchen, as well as food st...
Since the American Civil War to the present day, fried chicken has been used to create negative stereotypes of black people. These stereotypes and this history has seeped into today’s consciousness which has established a complicated relationship between chef and author Melissa Thompson and the food item. It’s a relationship which she wrote about and she joins Jaega Wise to explore her feelings and attitudes towards this fried dish. Food historian Adrian Miller looks at the presence of fried chi...
In the UK poor diet is a worrying public health issue, and we rank one of the worst in Europe for levels of obesity, particularly among children. Reformulating the most unhealthy foods to reduce sugar, salt and fat is the food industry’s main strategy to turn things around, and this is echoed by the government. Reformulation has been going on for decades, and there has been some real progress recently, for example reducing sugar in soft drinks and some breakfast cereals. However, overall there i...
Protein supplements have been around for a long time but recently it feels like they made the jump from a niche product for gym enthusiasts to something much more mainstream. We are seeing protein being added to all kinds of food products for example, from chocolate bars to cereal. Jaega Wise wants to find out more about these products. Do we need them? What are they made of? How much protein should we be eating? Jaega visits Balance festival in East London to observe how protein is taking over ...
Dan Saladino talks with Sandor Katz about the diversity of fermentation around the world. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
The award winning and inspirational chef tells his food story to Dan Saladino. One of his mentors, Raymond Blanc, explains why Michael is one of the best chefs of his generation. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
In a world where our attention spans are getting shorter, where we are rewarded not for the attention we pay to others but the attention we receive – is it time we re-evaluated the value of attentive growing and farming, and mindful eating? Could paying attention, as cheesemonger and podcast host Sam Wilkin argues, be the secret to great food and drink production and relishing what we consume on a daily basis? Sam takes us to Westcombe Dairy, where he’s been following their transition to regener...
What difference would it make if more people rejected cheap bread made using the Chorleywood Process, and moved to eating 'better' bread, i.e bread with fewer ingredients? In this episode Sheila Dillon explores why some scientists, campaigners and academics believe we ought to be eating more 'proper' bread, and puts her body to the test to see what difference it could make. Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and writer, Tim Spector shows Sheila how she can track her blood glucose levels using a s...
Dan Saladino and Sheila Dillon dig deep into the details of the newly published Government Food Strategy. Produced by Dan Saladino.
The city of Birmingham is about to launch its own ambitious Food System Strategy. It’s vision is to create a bold, fair, sustainable and prosperous food system and economy, where food choices are nutritious and affordable. The strategy faces many challenges – Birmingham has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the country, and worrying levels of food poverty with 6.8 % of residents reporting using food banks during lockdown. Last week the government published its long-awaited Food St...
Dan Saladino meets people saving endangered foods and bringing diversity back to our diets. Groups of scientists, chefs and artists are now finding pioneering ways to rethink the global food system. At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew a programme of events called Food Forever involves exhibitions and installations exploring some of the biggest and most complex questions over the future of our food (including this fantasy world of food abundance by Australian artist Tanya Schultz (Pip & Pop), r...
Sheila Dillon and judges Asma Khan and Michael Caines open nominations for the 2022 BBC Food & Farming Awards, which celebrate people across the UK who've changed lives for the better, through food and drink. To mark the ceremony being held in Wales for the first time, there will be a special new category this year - the BBC Cymru Wales Food Hero award. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol
Falafels are a widely celebrated and much loved food that have become an everyday part of street food culture in many cities across Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Falafel is known for being cheap, easily available, and accessible - no matter what a person's class, background, religious belief or dietary requirements. There have long been debates about whether falafel belongs or is authentic to any one nation or culture. Spoiler alert: this programme does not try to answer that qu...
Dan Saladino and blacksmith Alex Pole explain how our food has been influenced by metals.
40 years ago the BBC broadcast a new TV cooking series called "Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking". It was a first, and showed audiences that Indian food did not rely on curry powder, and that dishes were different depending on what region of India they originated. But that's not all, the series and Madhur Jaffrey's subsequent books (she has written more than 30) had another effect; it made her a model for two generations of women with roots in India. Today Sheila Dillon meets some of those promine...
In our world of globalised food, there are few things that have remained true local specialities, and the Staffordshire oatcake is one of them. This oatmeal, yeasted pancake is an institution in Stoke-on-Trent and surrounding area, but still hardly anyone beyond the Midlands seems to have heard of them. The oatcake has a history stretching back hundreds of years as a staple food for workers of the Staffordshire Potteries – it then suffered a dip in popularity from the 1960s which led to concerns...
No other tinned meat has had the worldwide cultural impact of SPAM. Though often denigrated in this country, it is celebrated across the world particularly in the Asia-Pacific where it became integrated into food cultures after The Second World War. Jaega Wise explores this love of SPAM with Hawaiian chef Sheldon Simeon. She also meets Becky (Hanguk Hapa) in New Malden to talk about Budae Jjigae (army base stew), a dish born out of necessity, it is now a national comfort food. SPAM also saw big ...
