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BBC Radio 4


Investigating every aspect of the food we eat


The Food Programme

Hallyu - the Korean Wave - is taking over. With dramas and films like Squid Game and K-Pop Demon Hunters topping the Netflix charts, K-beauty products filling TikTok feeds and chemist shop shelves, and the global tour of the biggest K-Pop band in the world, BTS, about to begin, there’s no getting away from it’s impact. In this programme Jaega Wise explores how this fascination with Korean culture is driving the popularity of Korean food across the UK. She chats with celebrity chef and author, Judy Joo and meets the restaurant owner catering for some of the most well-known K-Pop bands in the world. Jaega also takes a look at the products hitting our supermarket shelves, and finds out why the sharing concept is central to the ethos of Korean food.

Presented by Jaega Wise and produced by Tory Pope for BBC Audio in Bristol

K-Food

Dan Saladino reports from Parabere Forum, a gathering of food storytellers, featuring Olia Hercules on the Ukrainian cooks who inspired her, indigenous Australian chef Mindy Woods on saving First Nations' cuisine and Palestinian writer Fidaa Abuhamdiya with a powerful story of olive trees and oil from the West Bank. 
 
Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Food Stories of Roots and Roads

Jaega Wise meets chef and broadcaster Matt Tebbutt at home in South Wales, to discuss his "Life Through Food". Matt has been presenting Saturday Kitchen Life on BBC One for almost a decade, but before he was a TV Presenter he worked as a chef - first in professional kitchens in London (he was in fact sacked by Marco Pierre White) and later ran his own gastropub in south Wales. It was his cooking there at The Foxhunter - which he ran with his wife Lisa - that first got him noticed by the media, and an appearance on the second ever series of the Great British Menu. 

To discover what life is like on set for Matt, Jaega also pays a visit to the studios of Saturday Kitchen Live as they are rehearsing, to see how the live cooking show is put together week after week. She meets the team in the backstage "engine room" - the test kitchen - and discovers what they mean when they talk about "heroes", and finds out what happens at 11.30am after the cameras get turned off. 

Plus she chats to wine expert Olly Smith about Matt's career and the friendship they've developed while working in food tv. 

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Natalie Donovan

A Life Through Food: Matt Tebbutt

Francesco Fiore is a chef and Catering Manager at Milton Keynes University Hospital, and over the last few years has made some remarkable changes to the food experience for patients and staff. Awarded the title of “Caterer of the Year” in 2025 by the Hospital Caterers Association, Frank as he's affectionately known by his team, has transformed the quality and variety of the food, reducing waste and inspired colleagues around the hospital to collaborate and come up with new ideas.

Sheila Dillon follows Frank for a day as he goes about his job as catering manager to see the changes in action, and find out more about his passion for food.

Produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol.

A Day in the Life of a Hospital Chef

Sheila Dillon discusses the rise of eating disorders among young women as part of Radio 4’s “About the Girls” series, which is hearing from teens across the UK about life in 2026.

As the number of young girls suffering from eating disorders increases in the UK, Sheila Dillon hosts a discussion about what's causing the rise, and what can be done to improve treatment outcomes.

Details of help and support with eating disorders are available at BBC Action Line

Produced by Natalie Donovan for BBC Audio in Bristol

About the Girls

Generation Z, young adults aged roughly 18 to 30, are coming of age in a world defined by uncertainty. With difficult job and housing markets many are experiencing prolonged adolescence, often living with parents far longer than previous generations. At the same time, they are the first true digital natives: a generation growing up with the internet as a central part of their lives.

In this programme, Jaega Wise explores how these seismic social and economic shifts are reshaping the way young people eat and think about food. She speaks with author Chloe Combi about the cultural forces that are driving Gen Z’s evolving food identities. She also meets Sumayah Kazi, the youngest-ever Bake Off contestant, to talk about how social media is effecting how young people cook and eat. BBC reporter Emse Winterbotham lives at in her family home in London. She finds out more about the practicalities of living and eating with your mum and dad when you are an adult. Jaega also travels to Stourbridge to meet Will Griffin and his dad steve to talk more about how the generations are sharing the kitchen.

Presenter: Jaega Wise
Producer: Sam Grist

Generation Z

Dan Saladino follows up the debate on if the eel should be off the menu.

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Consider the Eel: Part 2

Much focus goes on food growing and selling, but is the missing link in increasing the UK's food self sufficiency actually food processing? 

It might be all about Ultra Processed Foods in the news, but there is another, much older, side to food processing that plays an integral role in getting food from fields to our plates.

Beans, peas, oats, veg and barley can all be produced in the UK in abundance, but producers often have to transport their crops for miles to reach basic processing facilities like cleaning, sorting, de-hulling or grading. The UK’s processing factories are part of a globalised food supply chain, importing vast volumes of grains and pulses from overseas as ingredients in our food. But it wasn’t always the case, as we hear from a Sheffield historian who has uncovered the city’s link with pea canning and the female pea pioneer who transformed the processing industry. 

From the farmer making oat milk in his own barn, to the UK’s last remaining processing facility for peas and beans, Sheila Dillon lifts the lid on this hidden part of the supply chain, and finds an industry at a crossroads.

Produced by Nina Pullman.

Is Food Processing the ‘Missing Middle’?

Should we be taking water more seriously? The emergence of the water sommelier would suggest so. Jaega Wise visits a Cheshire restaurant that now offers its own water menu as well as a Peak District pub with a water bar and a borehole to draw its own spring water. She talks to the co-founder of the Fine Waters Academy Michael Mascha who believes that water should be appreciated as a product with its own terroir and hears from Dr Natalie Lamb, a water industry expert who has been trained to appreciate the virtues of tap water. Whether hard or soft, still or sparkling - the Food Programme takes a closer look at the liquid we all too often take for granted.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Robin Markwell

Programme contains a clip of the Only Fools And Horses Episode "Mother Nature's Son", written by John Sullivan, first broadcast on BBC TV on 25th December, 1992

Posh Water

Leyla Kazim reports from cork country in Portugal - where up to 10,000 of hectares of cork oak trees are being lost every year, despite laws protecting them from being cut down. Climate change is putting new stresses on the ancient forests, and as the cork industry worries that falling wine consumption could shrink global demand, Leyla asks why Portugal became the world’s biggest producer of cork in the first place, and what it will take to keep them thriving. She meets farmers using regenerative methods of working the land to protect the montado, and plantations where thousands of new trees are being planted.

Presented by Leyla Kazim
Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Natalie Donovan

What’s Next for Portugal’s Ancient Export: Cork?

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 increases in sales in the pandemic. As well as being a shelf stable and practical food, did our war nostalgia play a part in our renewed interest? Jaega talks to historian Dr Kelly Spring about how SPAM, gifted to Britain during the Second World War by the American’s, was initially received.

She also talks to Dr Duane Mellor from Aston University about the science and nutrition of tinned meat.

Archive of Stan Suffling and Walter Price is from the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive.

Presenter: Jaega Wise
Produced in Bristol by Sam Grist

SPAM: food + war + memory in a can

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