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BBC Radio 4


Investigating every aspect of the food we eat


The Food Programme

Restaurant businesses say it's getting tougher to survive? So what does it take to thrive? Dan Saladino speaks to leading chefs, some successful, others less so.

Featuring Mark Hix, Cyrus Todiwala, Imogen and Kieron Waite, Julian Dunkerton, Simon Rogan and Hugh Corcoran. 

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Restaurants: A Survival Guide

Christmas is a time for giving, and for many charities, that often means food. Jaega Wise explores the tradition and looks into the planning that goes into festive food donations.

Food historian Carwyn Graves explains how the custom of giving food at Christmas has evolved over the centuries, and why the season inspires so many to give back to their communities.

In Aberdare, we meet the team behind Company at Christmas, who host a festive feast for anyone who doesn’t want to spend Christmas Day alone. The new CEO of Fareshare discusses how the charity manages the extra surplus food during the festive season, while Tim O’Malley from Nationwide Produce Ltd explains how his company has been working to ensure as little fresh food goes to waste as possible.

In Glasgow, Social Bite founder Josh Littlejohn discusses why Christmas has become a cornerstone of his social enterprise and charity, alongside one of the volunteers who will be there to greet guests. Meanwhile, Lesley Gates in Bridgwater—known locally as Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo—shows how she’s helping people make the most of their Christmas dinner ingredients through practical demonstrations on saving money and reducing waste.

And in Cumbria, Rahina Borthwick, founder of the Grange-Over-Sands Community Foodshare, reflects on the importance of giving within her seaside town. She shares how their community space has become an important gathering point, including for Ukrainian refugees to celebrate Christmas together.

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Natalie Donovan.

Christmas: The Gift of Food

Dan Saladino explores the impact a Christmas Carol and other Charles Dickens novels have had on festive eating, with food historian Ivan Day and food writer Penelope Vogler. 

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

The Dickens Effect: How the Writer Influenced Food at Christmas.

In the year 2000 there were barely any food banks in the UK but today there are nearly three thousand. So what's behind the sharp rise and how did it get to a point where the government says we have "a mass dependence" on food banks? 

In this episode Jaega Wise tells the story of the food bank. She hears from those using the Bristol North West food bank. They talk openly about how the food bank helped turn their lives around. She also visits a "social supermarket" in south London where people on benefits are able to shop from donated stock cheaply. 

Dr Andy Williams from Cardiff University discusses how the food bank model was imported from the United States where it had its roots in the Great Depression and Emma Revie of the Trussell Trust gives her view on why there has been such a surge in food bank usage.

Jaega also visits Middlesbrough where the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is opening a "Multibank" - these are warehouses full of donated stock that includes food and other household goods. Gordon Brown talks about his ambition to open Multibanks all over the country to tackle the growing problem of food insecurity.

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Robin Markwell

Food Bank Nation

How will Artificial Intelligence (AI) transform the food industry? Experts say it's already having an effect - whether through self-service checkouts or the algorithms that determine which recipes you see online or the way supermarkets are using it to predict the next big food trend.

Jaega Wise heads to the Waitrose Headquarters in Berkshire to find out how their product development team is using AI to inform which ingredients they stock on the shelves. She also talks to the firm Tastewise which makes software that calculates food trends by analysing social media and online menus.

A restaurant in Glasgow is already using embodied AI in the form of robots which serve their customers. Jaega witnesses the robots in action and finds diners are divided over their use. She also talks to consumer affairs journalist Harry Wallop about how supermarkets use our data and the futurist Tracey Follows who gives us her take on what might happen next in the world of AI. Jaega also hears the tipped top food trends for 2025. 

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Robin Markwell

Food and AI

Emulsifiers are among the most common food additives found in ultra-processed foods (UPFs), a much-discussed category of foods commonly defined as those made using manufactured ingredients. They are often packaged and have a long shelf life. Research examining the impact of diets high in UPFs suggests higher rates of obesity and diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

However, discussions about labeling these foods as "ultra-processed" have also sparked debates about whether their negative effects are primarily due to their high fat, sugar, and salt content, or whether they stem from the effects of processing itself, particularly the additives they contain.

In this episode, Jaega Wise explores one of the most commonly used additives in UPFs—emulsifiers. She investigates how they work, what they do, their history, associated health concerns, and their potential future developments.

Featuring: Nicola Lando and Ross Brown from the online specialty cooking supplies company Sous Chef; Tim Spector, professor of epidemiology at King’s College London and co-founder of the personalized health app Zoe; food historian Annie Gray; John Ruff, Chief Science Advisor at the Institute of Food Technologists; Professor Barry Smith at the University of London’s Centre for the Study of the Senses; Professor Anwesha Sarkar, an expert in colloids and surfaces at Leeds University’s School of Food Science and Nutrition; and Dr. Benoit Chassaing, a research director at The Institut Pasteur in Paris, who studies microbiota and the health impacts of certain emulsifiers.

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Natalie Donovan

What's this emulsifier doing in my food?

Want to lose weight? How much can you achieve through exercise? Dan Saladino investigates with the help of Mike Keen, a chef and Arctic explorer. 

Mike has had numerous adventures in Greenland, including kayaking thousands of miles, and sometimes doing nothing at all. What happened to his weight on this trips has left him puzzled. 

They enlist the help three experts, Chris Van Tulleken, author of Ultra Processed People; Nigel Smith of the UK Sports Institute and Andrew Jenkinson, surgeon and author of Why We Eat too Much and How to Eat.

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Food and Exercise: A Puzzle

What's behind the rise and rise of low alcohol and alcohol free drinks? The sector grew by a quarter last year alone, fuelled by our changing relationship with alcohol. More than fifteen million people are thought to have considered taking part in Dry January this year and younger drinkers in particular are turning away from alcohol and embracing alcohol-free versions of beer, wine and spirits or entirely new drinks coming onto the market.

In this programme Jaega Wise considers the changes in the drinks industry. She eavesdrops on an alcohol-free workshop with the mindful drinking movement Club Soda and speaks to its founder Laura Willoughby. She hears from the alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint and the market research company Kam on our changing drinking patterns, including the trend for zebra-striping - alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

Then Jaega visits Bristol to find out how breweries are using different techniques to make alcohol-free beer that is far superior to the much-derided watery and flavourless versions of old. The Bristol Beer Factory tells her that their alcohol-free brand now makes up a fifth of sales. At Wiper & True nearby, they reckon within five years around half of all their beers will be alcohol-free.

The movement towards "low and no" drinks means there is now a World Alcohol Free Awards as their co-founder Chrissie Parkinson explains and Dash Lilley from the Three Spirit brand talks about how some drinks makers are looking to very different ingredients from the plant world to create original flavours.

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Robin Markwell

Low and No

It's 2025, and the same old questions are still being asked about food and health—how do we get people eating better, reduce obesity, improve health, and ease pressure on the NHS? Despite decades of policies and campaigns, the challenge remains. In this episode, Sheila Dillon is joined in the studio by three people whose work is dedicated to finding answers: Dr Dolly Van Tulleken, a visiting researcher at Cambridge University's MRC Epidemiology Unit, who has examined UK government obesity policy, documenting its repeated failures and interviewed several leaders about what can be learned from them; Anna Taylor, head of the Food Foundation, whose organisation has been researching the impact of poor diets, particularly on those living in poverty; and Ben Reynolds, formerly of Sustain, where he played a key role in some of the most successful food campaigns and is now working on food and farming policy across Europe as Executive Director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

Also featured are Henry Dimbleby, author of The National Food Strategy; Welsh food historian Carwyn Graves; and two Food Ambassadors for The Food Foundation Dominic Watters and Magda Rechnio. 

Together, they discuss what’s gone wrong, what’s worked, and, as the new government announces plans for a fresh food strategy, what must be put in place to ensure it delivers real change.

Presented by Sheila Dillon
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Natalie Donovan

Broken Policies

Sheila Dillon revisits the idea of our grannies’ cooking and how it shapes us, hearing from listeners who sent in their own stories. Why does learning to cook from your granny seem to be such a powerful experience? What about those grannies who leapt at the chance technology offered to escape the endless cycle of cooking from scratch? And – for those of us who feel we’re relying too much on processed food - can we find a granny substitute to help us put down the takeaway menu and pick up a peeler?

Guests include:
Dr Polly Russell - food historian
Alicia Weston - founder of Bags of Taste
Sophie Beckett - Public Health Research Officer at Birmingham Museums Trust
Jonny Murphy "The Hungry Hooker" 

We'd like to thank all of the listeners who wrote in to us following the broadcast of the programme "Nan the Wiser", but we'd like to say a special thanks to Matthew, Lynn, Mary, Tony, Marie, Peter, Rob and Giselle. 

Presented by Sheila Dillon
Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Beth Sagar-Fenton. The Assistant Producer was Jo Peacey.

Archive from Birmingham's Food and Drink Oral Histories Project:
Interviewee: Doris Evans, 1984. From the City Sound Archive, courtesy of Birmingham Museums Trust
Interviewee: John Baker, 1984. From the City Sound Archive, courtesy of Birmingham Museums Trust

Second to Nan

Two of the country's largest wholesale markets are on the brink of closure. The City of London Corporation has decided to shut the historic meat market at Smithfield and the fish market at Billingsgate, bringing to an end centuries of food history. Sheila Dillon is given a tour of Smithfield market by the historian Matthew Green who describes how Smithfield features in the work of Charles Dickens and was once described as the "kitchen of the universe" by the writer Ned Ward in 1702.

The programme hears from the Smithfield traders who work through the night butchering and selling meat to restaurants and shops across London, the South East of England and beyond. 

There has been considerable opposition to the closure of the markets. More than 37,000 people have signed a petition asking the City of London Corporation to keep the markets where they are including Alicia Weston who we meet at Ridley Road street market in East London. Here fishmongers are concerned about where they will source their supplies if Billingsgate closes. The City of London Corporation chairman Chris Hayward responds.

Finally, the author of Hungry City Carolyn Steel and Professor Tim Lang from City University reflect on the importance of wholesale markets in strengthening food supply chains as well as their contribution to the social and cultural fabric of a place.

Presented by Sheila Dillon
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Robin Markwell

Closing London's 'Kitchen of the Universe'

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