Over a coffee in community arts space The Place in Newport, south Wales, The Food Programme presenters Sheila Dillon, Leyla Kazim and Dan Saladino choose two books each from the year: one that has made them cook, and one that has made them think. Sheila also meets George Harris, creative director of Tin Shed Theatre Company, to hear why food has become part of their work, and leaf through a very special cookbook that has been passed down through George's family. Wondering what the next generatio...
Dec 03, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sheila Dillon looks at what the current conflict in Gaza has done to food supplies in one of the most densely populated places on earth. After Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, the Government of Israel responded with air strikes on Gaza, and launched a ground offensive. To date, more than 14,800 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run government. Hundreds of thousands ...
Nov 26, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jimi Famurewa talks to men learning or rediscovering cooking later in life, maybe due to a change of circumstance or loss of a partner, to hear how it's changing their lives. In the programme we meet the participants of the latest Man with a Pan cookery course, run by Community Chef at Lewes Community Kitchen, as well as a weekly class run by Age UK in north London. Jimi also chats to the team behind Men’s Pie Club, which uses food as a tool to help tackle loneliness and social isolation with me...
Nov 19, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Saladino explores the Mexican spirit mezcal and the diverse world of agave spirits. Contents include: Gary Nabhan (Agave Spirits book): https://www.garynabhan.com/ Agave Road Trip Podcast: https://agaveroadtrip.com/ Sin Gusano: https://www.singusano.com/story Kol: https://kolrestaurant.com/ El Pastore: https://www.tacoselpastor.co.uk/ Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
Nov 12, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sheila Dillon presents more winners from the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2023, including who was crowned Best Streetfood, Takeaway or Small Eatery and the winner of the Food Innovation Award. We also hear stories of the amazing finalists and winners in the Community Food and Young Countryside Champion Awards. Finally, the winner of this year's prestigious Derek Cooper Outstanding Achievement Award is revealed in recognition of their impact on the UK's food and farming. Presented by Sheila Dillon...
Nov 05, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Join Sheila Dillon from the International Convention Centre Wales in Newport for the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2023. In this first episode from the ceremony, we hear the winners of awards including Best Food Producer, Best Drinks Producer and the brand new for 2023 Digital Creator Award. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Natalie Donovan for BBC Audio in Bristol.
Nov 03, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast A pilot public health scheme in south east London is prescribing fresh fruit & veg to people with chronic disease and mental health conditions. Sheila Dillon meets Dr Chi-Chi Ekhator, an NHS GP and lead at the A.T Beacon Project, to hear how the prescriptions are working, and how it’s a part of their mission to bring healthcare out of GP surgeries and into the heart of Lambeth’s most hard-to-reach communities. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol...
Oct 22, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Saladino finds out what happened to people who embarked on a wild food adventure, including chef and Arctic explorer Mike Keen and a group of British foragers involved in the Wild Biome Project. After three months, their physical health has been analysed, including their gut microbiomes. Are there lessons for us all? For more information on the test results: Mike Keen's Arctic exploration: https://www.mikekeen.co/#Greenland-Expedition Wild Biome Project: https://monicawilde.com/the-wildbiome...
Oct 15, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kombucha has been around for a while but it has not had huge success in this country like it has in the US and Australia. In this programme, Jaega Wise looks at why that may be as well as sampling some drinks from our BBC Food & Farming Awards finalists and investigating the health claims of kombucha. This programme features Old Tree Brewery, William Kendall, Mark Ilan Abrahams, Paul Cotter, Lucy George from Peterson Tea and Kara Monssen. Presented by Jaega Wise and produced for BBC Audio in...
Oct 08, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Local food networks thrived during lockdown with more people turning to local producers, farm shops and veg box schemes as supermarket shelves ran dry. But how are they doing now? The Covid pandemic was a reminder that localised networks give our food system resilience during disruption, but also that they pay farmers fairly to produce food in a nature friendly way, and helps them stay in business. The cost of living crisis has been one of the biggest difficulties for this system recently, as co...
Oct 01, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 25 years ago two Monmouthshire farmers had a plan. BSE had hit the rural area hard, and they wanted to create a food festival to showcase the area's produce. They set about putting it together in the relatively unknown town of Abergavenny. 25 years on and the event is now one of the UK's best known food festivals that attracts a star-studded line up of chefs and producers, hosting demonstrations and discussions and much more. Sheila Dillon has been going to the festival for many years, and in th...
Sep 24, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Judges have been visiting the finalists in this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards. This episode of The Food Programme celebrates the businesses shortlisted for the street food and take-away category. This year it's been extended to include small eateries as well. Chefs Sam Evans and Shauna Guinn won the award eight years ago. Now they're back as judges. We sample Malaysian rendang cooked in a traditional clay pot at Joli in London; meet the cooks at Maasi's in Cardiff who've invented the "naanw...
Sep 17, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Saladino judges the The Food Innovation Award part of the BBC Food & Farming Awards. He is searching for big ideas that can change the food system. In this programme he meets the three finalists: Wildfarmed grow cereals, alongside farmers that share their values, using a regenerative farming method that prioritises the health of the soil. They are aiming to create an alternative to industrial farming. Too Good To Go is an app that lets you rescue unsold food from bakeries, cafes and supe...
Sep 11, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast As summer draws to a close, Jaega Wise heads to the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) to learn what goes into feeding the thousands of fans gathered for the Green Man festival. Over the past 20 years or so, the food at music festivals has evolved from mostly burgers, chips and noodles, to an array of traders cooking foods from all over the world, sit-down banquets, and chefs on the line up. So what has driven this change, and can it continue to thrive while the cost of everything involved in p...
Sep 03, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast If food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and also a lens through which we can interpret our history and how we live now, then surely it deserves a museum? The UK has only just got its first permanent Food Museum. It’s in Stowmarket in Suffolk, recently rebranded from The Museum of East Anglian Life. Sheila Dillon visits its beautiful 84 acres, with its historic buildings, crops, orchard, kitchen garden, water mill and animals to find out how the museum team are reinterpreting its collections...
Aug 27, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Wedding food is one of the biggest costs on the big day but the sit-down three-course dinner is making way for food trucks and festival-style take-aways. We explore how the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have affected couples and caterers. We find out why it's called "a wedding breakfast" - even though the reception's rarely in the morning and ask what's happened to the traditional wedding cake. We also meet a chef who's campaigning to stop food waste and caters for weddings with food th...
Aug 20, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast World leaders met in Rome to fix the food system. Dan Saladino reports on what happened at the United Nations summit and looks at some of the big ideas put forward for change. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
Aug 13, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mushrooms like Chaga, Reishi, Lion’s Mane and Turkey Tail are popping up all over the place at the moment, in supplements, powders, and even coffee. These are the so-called medicinal species of mushroom that have been used for centuries by our ancestors, and currently today in Traditional Chinese medicine. Sheila Dillon started taking these mushrooms a decade ago as part of diversifying her diet after becoming seriously ill, but they weren’t that easy to buy then. Now they seem to be everywhere....
Aug 06, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Saladino and psychologist Kimberley Wilson explore the latest science about food, mental health and boosting our brain power. Featuring Professor Michael A Crawford (Imperial), Professor Felice Jacka, Professor Felice Jacka of the Food & Mood Centre, Deakin University, Australia and Professor Ted Dinan, psychiatrist at University College Cork. Also, from the Radio 4 archive, Dr Bernard Gesch, Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of O...
Jul 30, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ultra-Processed Food makes up more than 50% of all calories consumed in the UK - but UPFs are being linked with obesity and disease, and there are calls for tougher regulations. In this programme, Sheila Dillon meets the Conservative MP for Stourbridge, Suzanne Webb, who says current government guidelines about healthy eating do not go far enough. She says regulators need to stop focussing on individual ingredients, and should focus on health outcomes. The term Ultra-Processed Food, or UPF, was ...
Jul 23, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The practice of smoking is one of the world’s oldest food preservation methods, but which techniques are catching fire today, while other processes risk being extinguished? We hear from producers bringing diverse barbecue and smoking techniques to new audiences, as well as those keeping traditional processes alive. Leyla Kazim visits Cue Point to hear from Mursal Saiq and Joshua Moroney about their unique ‘British Afghan Fusion BBQ’ that brings an inclusive style of smoking to a wider audience w...
Jul 16, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Saladino hears from the bakers in Ukraine supplying fresh bread to the frontline, and journalist Felicity Spector travels across the country to visit the bakeries supplying people in need, the elderly, displaced and soldiers. Produced by Dan Saladino.
Jul 10, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eighty six year old Fergie MacDonald remembers shooting Red deer as a nine year old boy. The Second World War was on and food was scarce in his home village in the rugged Moidart peninsula, in the Scottish Highlands. It was of course a crime, as he freely acknowledges - the deer belonged to the local estate. But his family had to eat. His mother roasted, boiled and salted the venison and, as Fergie says, "you acquired a taste for it." Today he's still eating vension, but it comes from animals sh...
Jul 02, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Italy is famous the world over for its delicious food and beautiful countryside. The two come together in the form of the agriturismo, a type of farm-stay where the food – produced on the farm itself – takes centre stage. Agritourism there has been hugely successful since it was first established in the 1980s as a way to make small farms viable. It now contributes around 1.9 billion euros to the Italian economy every year. Agritourism is in its infancy in the UK, where a young generation of chef...
Jun 25, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast The diets of children in the UK are now mostly made up of ultra-processed food, so can we learn from the French in how they teach children healthy eating habits? Sheila Dillon finds out. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol
Jun 18, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sheila Dillon explores how food habits are formed in the early years, and how parents and nurseries are coping with a food environment full of unhealthy ultra-processed food. Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol
Jun 11, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast From Nobel winners to great innovators, Dan Saladino explores the history of prize-winning food ideas that changed the world, including researchers who uncovered the secrets of our stomachs to the plant breeds transforming the future of wheat. Nominations are now open for this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards until June 19th, including Best Innovation which was created to celebrate ideas that will make food production better for us and for the planet. For more than a century, and around the wo...
Jun 04, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast The BBC Food and Farming Awards are back for 2023 and now is the time to get nominating. This year the judging will be lead by former Masterchef winner, and founder of the Mexican restaurant chain, Thomasina Miers. In this programme, Jaega Wise meets Thomasina at one of her London restaurants to discuss how she plans to approach judging, and she chats to Sheila Dillon about how the awards came about, and why she believes they are still so vital. This year the awards will all have a climate first...
May 31, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Leyla Kazim examines the growing influence apps, maps and lists are having on restaurant recommendations, food writing and the way we eat. Leyla sits down for lunch with Michael O’Shea from the restaurant recommendation app Jacapo, ‘the social network for people who love food,’ to hear why he thinks apps like his have the potential to reshape the way people find new places to eat. She meets Jonathan Nunn from online magazine Vittles in Green Lanes, North London, where they discuss the rapid traj...
May 21, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Can you eat like a hunter-gatherer in 21st Century Britain? Dan Saladino meets a group of people doing exactly that to see how their bodies change during the three-month experiment. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
May 14, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
