The Food Programme

Dan Saladino visits shepherd and writer James Rebanks whose farm in Cumbria spans three generations. What does can that history teach us about where food and farming go next? In his latest book English Pastoral: An Inheritance James Rebanks provides an insiders account of the seismic changes to farming from the 1960s to the present day. Farming became brilliantly productive, he argues , but ecolog...

Biscuits aren’t just a classic accompaniment to a cuppa: they’re also somehow an edible comforter - very often providing a link to childhood, to family, to happy memories. And of course, giving that all-important sugary pick-me-up. All of which goes some way towards explaining why, over just one month of lockdown, the UK spent an extra £19 million on biscuits, according to market research firm Kan...

Dan Saladino tells the story of wheat from the domestication of wild grasses in the Neolithic Revolution through to the controversial Green Revolution of the 20th century.

March 2020. Supermarket shelves were bare, restaurants and takeaways were closed, schools and workplaces closed. Perhaps it's no surprise then that all around the world, people started getting creative in the kitchen. But as Leyla Kazim finds in this programme, some cooks took lockdown cooking to a whole new level. Warwickshire cook Dan Fell made headlines for sharing his 'perfect' fried chicken r...

Dan Saladino and his dad Bobo (a former ice-cream man) talk Mr Whippy, 99s and Screwballs. Together Dan and Bobo (who also used to work in restaurants) have explored the wonders of pizza, and looked at the rise of 'Spag Bol,' Now they turn their attention to the history, science and magic of ice-cream on wheels. Featuring John Dickie (author of Delizia and The Craft) and Polly Russell (British Lib...

In 2019, Romy Gill met Randeep Singh, CEO of NishkamSWAT (Sikh Welfare & Awareness Team). 10 years previous, Randeep and his colleagues had a moment of realisation. More than 200 people in their immediate local community were living without a home. They were hidden from normal life, living beneath bridges or in refuse collection rooms. Together, they decided they could do something to help the...

Prime Minister Carolyn Steel joins Sheila Dillon for this special edition of The Food Programme from the year 2030. Sheila discusses the prime minister’s rise to power after Britain saw food shortages and riots in the 2020s and what it is like to now live in Sitopia - a land with food at the centre of everyone’s lives. After meeting the prime minister in the Rose Garden, which is now a bounteous v...

This year has already been a big one for food-related events and announcements - from the impact of Covid-19 and panic buying stripping supermarket shelves, to high-profile campaigns around school holiday hunger, to the government's plan to tackle obesity, to the recent launch of Part One of the National Food Strategy. So what does all this mean for the UK's food future? Sheila Dillon is joined by...

Jaega Wise and Dan Saladino investigate the hidden story of slavery in our food. Between the 17th century and into the 19th, twelve million enslaved Africans were transported to the Caribbean and into the rest of the Americas. Their work transformed industries, including tobacco and cotton, but it was their agricultural labour that made the biggest impact on the world. The modern food system as we...

Many UK cheese makers depend on supplying restaurants and hospitality. They faced ruin when lockdown struck but were saved by consumers buying tonnes of cheese in just a few weeks. In this programme, Sheila Dillon meets those behind the campaign that saved British cheese makers, as well as those who benefited. She finds out why cheese is more than just a delicious treat, and asks 'what now' for th...

Slowly but surely, restaurants are emerging from the coronavirus lockdown, introducing us to a new world of dining out, with added hygiene and distancing measures. But some outlets aren’t able to open safely yet - some may never open again. And although small, independent outlets might seem like the most obvious victims of this crisis, no business is immune to the effects of Covid-19; as we've see...

Slowly, the hospitality industry is easing itself out of lockdown: but the sector has been hard hit - particularly those high-street outlets seen in towns and cities across the country, offering quick lunch options for a legion of office workers who are no longer around... In a sector that was already struggling, with slow business hitting chains such as Jamie's Italian and burger brand Byron, wha...

One silver lining of lockdown is that it has brought talk of mental health, particularly depression, into the general conversation. And what is becoming increasingly evident is the role that food has in warding off depression and anxiety. Professor Felice Jacka is the leading expert in the link between mental health and nutrition and is the president of the International Society for Nutritional Ps...

Last month, footballer Marcus Rashford wrote an open letter to MPs calling for them to continue funding free schools meals during the summer holidays. He called for support to a petition started by teenage campaigner Christina Adane, and within hours, the Government responded. All children eligible for free school meals in term time in England would benefit from the ‘Covid summer food fund’. Scotl...

The Black Farmer thinks we’re at another #MeToo moment in world history following the death of George Floyd and the protests and discussions about racism it has sparked. For presenter Jaega Wise, it’s the first time in her life she has experienced race being talked about so frankly across society. She talks to three people who have been at the forefront of the conversation: Melissa Thompson who ru...

As part of the BBC's Rethink series Dan Saladino asks how we can create a better food future for all in a post-Covid world. Among a cast of experts and activists offering their visions of the future are Microbiome expert and geneticist Professor Tim Spector focuses on diet, nutrition and the lessons learnt during the pandemic. Community cook Dee Woods addresses concerns over poverty and how disadv...

Remember March? Before the UK lockdown. Remember desolate supermarket shelves? Toilet rolls, eggs, flour nowhere to be found? Where did you turn? Chances are you may have hit the jackpot in your local corner shop. Sales in corner shops and independent grocers were up by 63 per cent in the three months to May according to industry analysts Kantar. For many small grocery shops, business has never be...

Dan Saladino meets some of the people who turned to seeds and grew food in the lockdown. As well as supermarket panic buying, seed sellers also saw huge spikes in sales. Seed producer David Price describes how, as lockdown approached, orders from customers increased by around 600 per cent. The impact Covid-19 has on food supplies explains some of this. Many farmers who supplied restaurants had to...

Leyla Kazim meets Bend it like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, OBE to hear how she uses food to bring her films to life and hears from Nathalie Morris of the British Film Institute about how breakfasts and arguments over butter tell the story in Phantom Thread. With all this food on screen, inevitably we’re left wanting to eat it. Leyla discovers the people painstakingly recreating recipes like...

Dan Saladino looks at the legal and illegal global trade in wild meat. After links have been made between the Covid-19 pandemic and wild animal populations, there have been calls for a complete ban on the hunting, trade and consumption of wild animals. As Dan explains, this would be a mistake and could even lead to greater risks to human health and livelihoods. Most food cultures still feature wil...

Alcoholic drinks are not just big business in Britain - they are an essentially social business. Whether it's hitting your local with colleagues after work, raising a reception toast to newly-weds or selecting a favourite bottle to accompany dinner at a special restaurant, those traditional opportunities to buy and sell alcohol have been all but wiped out under lockdown. As Jaega Wise discovers, p...

When Joe Wicks, the personal trainer, started making Instagram videos in his kitchen in 2014, he couldn't have imagined he'd become author of the second biggest selling UK cookbook of all time. He built a social media brand with millions of followers, nay disciples, on Instagram and YouTube who came for the quick healthy recipes and online fitness workouts. And then, just as he was about to embark...

Making do, digging for victory, the hedgerow harvest, the garden front: food and farming was front and centre during the Second World War, with hearty phrases like these encouraging the population to pull together and do their bit for the national diet. Now, 75 years after Victory in Europe was declared, we’re hearing similar language in political speeches and across the media, as we “wage war” ag...

Leyla Kazim finds the independent spirit of Sheffield’s self-employed ‘little mesters’, who once combined to power the city’s steel industry, is now being channelled into new models for how food and drink can shape the future of cities. To guide her through the city’s story, artist Pete McKee and musician Richard Hawley tell Leyla what food was like in Sheffield when they were growing up, what’s c...

Hear an extended version of the interview with artist Pete McKee and musician Richard Hawley from the programme Sheffield: A Story of a City Through It's Food. Picture: Meat 'N' Tater by Pete McKee