The Food Programme

Autumn is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness – when the air is perfumed with bonfire smoke, sweet crisp apples are weighing down orchard branches, and root vegetables are plump and ready for picking beneath the soil. It’s a time of year when a whole new palette of British produce is ripe and ready to turn into pies, pickles, chutneys, cakes, jams and stews: hearty comfort food to warm and...

Dan Saladino uses the story the tomato to examine the impact of the new Brexit on food.

As many UK schools break for half term, chef Romy Gill and Sheila Dillon focus on our national problem with holiday hunger. Earlier this year, a UN special rapporteur found poverty in the UK to be "systematic" and "tragic". The Work and Pensions Committee published a separate report suggesting that while poverty rates are much higher in households where no-one works, almost one in 10 households wi...

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. Today he is a phenomenon. He's built a social media brand with millions of followers, nay disciples, on Instagram and YouTube who come for the quick healthy recipes and online fitness workouts. Yet, Joe tel...

Dan Saladino explores the taste and temptations of sourness, from our evolution to the way we cook and eat. A story of puckering pickles, science, fermentation and edible ants. It's only in recent times that we have understood how and why we experience the sensation of sourness. The leader in the field is EMILY LIMAN, Professor of Biological Sciences at University of Southern California in the USA...

In the second part of The Food Programme's focus on additives, Sheila Dillon takes a closer look the myths and realities around these extra ingredients and their roles in our everyday diets - through addressing questions and comments from listeners. She's joined by a panel of food aficionados as well as an audience of industry professionals and interested listeners, at the BBC's New Broadcasting H...

From Vitamin C and fruit-flavoured sherbet, to the chemicals adding flavour to ultra-processed foods - Sheila Dillon delves into the world of food additives, to learn about the impact E Numbers have had on modern diets. Sheila meets with food scientist and entertainer Stefan Gates, for some entertaining and surprising E Number experiments in his lab-kitchen... She also hears more about the backgro...

Mauritius recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence from the UK – and since that day in the 1960s, tens of thousands of islanders have made the UK their home; bringing with them a unique, diversely influenced cuisine that seems to enthral eaters from the first bite. For those with Mauritian heritage, food - and the very act of coming together to eat with friends and family - is an a...

We might like the occasional 99 in the rain in the UK, but not for us the piled high gelato cones of Italy, the tubs of sweet American sundaes, nor the eiscafes of Germany and Austria. Right? Yasmin Khan is on a mission to prove you wrong. In this programme Yasmin (Ice cream fanatic) uncovers the UK’s rich but lesser known ice cream culture, taking a trip down memory lane to visit people making ic...

Dan Saladino reports from the Taste The World stage of the world music festival Womad. In 2006 a director of the festival Annie Menter had the idea of asking musicians if they could tell food stories from their home country and cook a dish linked to their food culture. More than a decade on it's become a format that used at Womad events all over the world, providing fascinating and delicious insig...

On the anniversary of TV series 'The Naked Chef', Jamie Oliver talks to Sheila Dillon about two controversial decades dominating food on our TV screens and online, our home cooking, and dining out. In a two-part programme, Jamie describes being propelled into the limelight as 'The Naked Chef'. The charismatic young line chef given an unexpected TV pilot. His decision not to aim for Michelin stars,...

On the anniversary of TV series 'The Naked Chef', Jamie Oliver talks to Sheila Dillon about two controversial decades dominating food on our TV screens and online, our home cooking, and dining out. In a two-part programme, Jamie, arguably the UK’s most successful food entrepreneur, reveals where it all went wrong with ill-fated restaurant chain 'Jamie's Italian’; the restaurants were supposed to d...

Food has been larking about in comedy since Charlie Chaplin first slipped on a banana skin and made bread rolls dance: but somewhere along the way, it's evolved from the slapstick sidekick to a much more significant comic entertainer... From the disastrous duck at Fawlty Towers, to Fleabag’s calamitous catering efforts – via wry dinner ladies, caravan fry-ups, comedic fried chicken shops and dark...

Dan Saladino tells the story Esiah Levy who shared seeds and changed lives. It all started with a squash. Soon after he started to grow his own food he cut open a particularly delicious variety and discovered hundreds of seeds inside. He felt compelled to share them with people so they could enjoy the same experience. So began a mission to encourage anyone who would listen, where ever they lived,...

Rain or shine, the British barbecue is a summer tradition: and we want to help your al fresco feasts go with a bang! Sheila Dillon calls on Genevieve Taylor - a food writer, food stylist and presenter with an affinity for the outdoors that’s led to books including How to Eat Outside, The Ultimate Wood Fired Oven Cookbook and most recently Charred: a guide to vegetarian grilling and barbecue. She's...

We asked you to tell us stories of meals you remember your grandmothers making. Now Sheila Dillon asks why these dishes - whether delicious or otherwise - stick with us into adulthood. Food writer Alissa Timoshkina shares her Grandparents Siberian recipes which provide the essence for her book 'Salt & Time: Recipes from a Russian Kitchen'. Blogger Ann Storr reminisces about her grannie's high...

Dan Saladino takes part in a gruelling nutrition study to work out what to eat. Founded by Professor Tim Spector "Predict" is one of the biggest food and diet studies ever devised. A technological revolution means it is now possible to monitor large groups of people as they eat food. With this accumulation of 'big data' and the use of Artificial Intelligence it's also becoming increasingly possibl...

Dan Saladino embarks on an epic quest into a world of food-filled computer games, to find out how and why foraging, cooking and eating have become such important components of the genre. Food has taken on a major role in many modern games - not only in terms of beautiful, Instagram-worthy designs bringing dishes to life on screen, but also food-related quests and story-lines - and even game-based...

Netflix chef and author of 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat', Samin Nosrat says anyone can learn to cook delicious food. Samin shares a life of food memories with Sheila Dillon. Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury

Magnus Nilsson takes Dan Saladino on a Nordic baking tour. For a nearly a decade Magnus, who is one of the world's most celebrated chefs, travelled through the region (which includes Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and the Faroe Islands) and reached an important and controversial conclusion. He argues that the Nordics has the most diverse and the deepest baking culture in the world today...

The winners of the BBC Food & Farming Awards 19 are revealed at a ceremony in Bristol. In part two, Jamie Oliver reveals the winner of the inaugral Pat Llewellyn New Talent award. Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury

The winners of the BBC Food & Farming Awards 2019 are revealed at a glittering ceremony in Bristol. In the first course of the 2019 awards story, Sheila Dillon is joined by food industry experts including Angela Hartnett, Matt Tebbutt, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Andi Oliver - to celebrate the cooks, shop keepers, farmers, producers, entrepreneurs and food pioneers who make up this year's...

With days to go before we learn who the winners are of the 2019 BBC Food & Farming Awards Dan Saladino looks at the remaining food and drink ideas on this year's shortlist. Drinks writer Alice Lascelles guides us through the drinks makers; an experimental brewer from Leeds, a distiller based on the east coast of Scotland and a cider and perry producer from Herefordshire. Genevieve Taylor descr...

As Ramadan 2019 draws to a close, many British Muslim reach the culmination of a month of fasting during daylight hours. But that doesn't mean that food is forgotten. On the contrary... In this programme, food writer Yasmin Khan celebrates the social, cultural and culinary rituals of Ramadan, the most holy month in the Islamic calendar. She speaks to comedian Tez Ilyas about celebrations with fami...

Genevieve Taylor sets out to meet a few of this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards finalists, and hear how learning about food has changed their lives for the better. The first stop is Liberty Kitchen - a finalist in the Best Street Food or Takeaway category. This social enterprise operates at Pentonville Prison, where inmates produce a diverse range of 'street balls', including classic Italian me...