The Food Programme

When the Food Programme went to Leeds to cover its growing food and drink scene many areas of the city had recently been flooded. At the time community groups, including Muslims and Sikhs, were taking part in a food operation to feed those forced out of their homes - meeting the fundamental need for food while showing the strength of the community. Dan Saladino explores the city - which has histor...

Sheila Dillon reveals this year's team of judges, and launches the 2016 BBC Food and Farming Awards. Sheila will be catching up with some of last year's winners and nominees and explaining how you can send in your all-important nominations. Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

How important is diet to running performance? It's a question Food Programme listener and runner Nicole Marais wanted answers too and so she emailed the programme's production team. This programme explains what happened next.... When Dan Saladino went to meet (and run with) Nicole she explained she had tried lots of different diets, from one based on meat, to a vegetarian diet and onto veganism. S...

Food writer, chef, restaurateur, philosopher...? Since 'Ottolenghi: the cookbook' was published in 2008, Yotam Ottolenghi has become one of the UK's most followed voices on food and cooking. Nearly eight years later, Ottolenghi's cookbooks total five, the last written in collaboration with head chef at his London Soho restaurant NOPI, Ramael Scully. The restaurant is one of five in the capital, wh...

For some, trifle is an essential part of Christmas - a star centrepiece at the dinner table. For others its a reminder of 70s food hell - soggy sponge, jelly, hundreds and thousands dissolving into custard and cream and possibly crowned with glace cherries. Tim Hayward argues pretty much every food writer of the last 50 years has pronounced on trifle in a massively doctrinaire fashion. He wants to...

As she readies herself for an imminent move back to her native New Zealand after three decades in the UK, Juliet Harbutt, cheese educator and campaigner, shares her life in food with Sheila Dillon. Born and raised in Auckland, an experience with some French cheeses in Paris changed everything for Juliet, who decided there and then that cheese would be her life's focus. She sold her deli-restaurant...

If you were to create a museum telling the story of food and drink what would you say or put on display? What about interactivity - tastes and smells? Is it about flavour and experience or the process of creating the ingredients from the farmers to gastronomes? Sheila Dillon steps inside London's new British Museum of Food (BMoF) created by 'jellymongers' Bompas and Parr to see what their creative...

Sheila Dillon and guests reflect on a year of cookery and food books. Sheila is joined in the studio by Bee Wilson, historian and food writer who's about to publish First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, journalist and food writer Alex Renton, and Features Editor at trade magazine The Bookseller, Tom Tivnan. Tim Hayward meets chef Magnus Nilsson - who has just completed a nearly 800-page work called The...

Nearly every major city in the world has one- a district where Chinese immigrants have settled to live, work and eat. This week Dan Saladino takes you on a tour of Chinatowns around the world. From one of the oldest, in Manila, to one of the newest, in Johannesburg, Chinatowns create a global trail of economic and culinary influence. And the food that they serve reflects not only the tastes of hom...

Scotch eggs may conjure memories of Summer picnics, school dinners or even Alan Partridge but the humble bar snack has been elevated to a culinary canvas on which chefs can make their own mark and feature on the menus of some of the UK's top restaurants. Food writer Joe Warwick invites you to the madness and mayhem of the Scotch Egg Challenge at which chefs and retailers compete with traditional a...

Trish Deseine may not be a household name in the UK. But in France, the home of gastronomy, her 12 cookbooks, all written in French, have sold hundreds and thousands of copies, and influenced a generation of chefs, food writers and home cooks. She has won international awards and in 2009, was named one of the 40 most influential women in France by French Vogue magazine. But don't let a surname dec...

For many of us, a disappointing experience with an unripe or tasteless pear has coloured our opinion of what was once thought of as a superior fruit: "gold to the apple's silver". Sheila Dillon travels to Kent to meet Dr Joan Morgan, who is just publishing 'The Book of Pears - The Definitive History and Guide to over 500 Varieties', the product of years of research into and fascination with this f...

When was the last time you drank a simple glass of milk? Perhaps you view it more as an ingredient for cooking or to splash in your tea rather than a product of beauty with its own strengths and qualities? When the retailers slashed milk prices to lure in customers, treating it as a loss leader may have made the consumer also view it as a commodity and devalue it too. Is it simply the 'white stuff...

As a race, we humans owe a fair amount to the chicken. Throughout time it has been a religious deity, a medicine source as well as being a food. It's travelled the world alongside explorers, inspired scientific revelations and of course been the nub of the world's most famous joke. Today, chicken is the second biggest supply of meat protein in the world, and it's on the rise. More than four times...

Dan Saladino hunts down that flavour we call 'bitter', and asks if bitterness is disappearing from our food and drink - and why this matters. Bitter tastes are found all over the planet; wild leaves, fruits, vegetables and more. Bitterness is also charged with cultural and culinary meaning. It can be revered, sought after - but it is also a sign of toxicity, and is, it seems, increasingly being sh...

The continuing conflict in Syria has caused millions of people to flee the country. Images of men, women and children living in camps, walking vast distances and even risking perilous journeys by boat or stowed away on trucks have been shown around the world. Life in many regions for those who remain is also in turmoil. While seeking safety, many also face a challenge to survive. Dan Saladino asks...

This is a race against time. Earlier this year The Food Programme set out to record stories of foods around the world facing extinction, a project that has provided dramatic accounts from the depths of Anatolian caves to the heights of Indonesian rainforest canopies. In this episode Jamie Oliver, Thomasina Miers and chef Paula McIntyre talk about the tastes, flavours and ingredients which are faci...

Jam. Think sticky apricot and saccharine strawberry? Think again. Our British love affair with jam goes back to the sweet-toothed 17th century. But now our interest seems to be waning. Shop sales of jam are down amid concerns over the amount of sugar we consume. And anyway, who has time for preserving pans and pretty pots? But there is another way. In fact there are many. In this programme, 'queen...

Dan Saladino finds out how farms confiscated from Sicily's mafia are providing food and wine, helping to fight crime and providing a future for a new generation on the island. The project, a not for profit farming operation called "Libera Terra" (which translates as "Free Land"), was made possible by an Italian member of Parliament killed by the mafia in 1982, Pio La Torre. He was a Sicilian and c...

Wendell Berry has been described as 'An American Hero' but his work and teaching have inspired and influenced leaders, writers and campaigners around the world. Ella McSweeney had no hesitation in choosing him as her 'Food Hero' and travels to meet him at his farm in Kentucky. She explains why his work affected her so profoundly, even thousands of miles away in Ireland. As a leading and respected...

Dan Saladino retraces his Sicilian food roots and goes in search of a great expert on the island's cuisine, Mary Taylor Simeti. She left America in the early 1960's and has now lived in Sicily for 50 years. Sicily has one of the oldest, continuous, food cultures in western Europe. Invasions, conquests and Mediterranean trade led to influences being exerted by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Sp...

In the second of a special series of food heroes, Sheila Dillon meets one of the most influential writers on international hunger and social justice in recent times. Susan George published her first book 'How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger' almost 40 years ago. It was a book that, at the time, offered a radically different perspective on famine in the developing world. In 1...

Tim Hayward meets the man who changed the whole way he approached food. Someone who inspired Tim, and many others, to look at food and the techniques of cooking in a completely new way. A surprising food figure perhaps, he is a best-selling author, writer of "The IPCRESS File", creator of Harry Palmer (played by Michael Caine). He is also an illustrator, and pioneering food writer. He rarely gives...

Staying sober on a night out can be a limiting experience with the soft drinks choice on offer in many places. But with an increasing number of 16-24 year olds staying teetotal, demand is increasing for more interesting, varied and healthier choices. Dan Saladino explores the traditional, quirky and novel drinks putting some fizz back into the market. Reports say a resistance to heavy sugar and ar...

Scotland has a problem with food. For all the salmon, whisky and summer berries celebrated in this year of Scottish Food & Drink, the Government says its spending billions fighting an obesity crisis, and when it comes to groceries, the supermarket is king. But for the last five years, a small community run bakery on the Scottish borders has been quietly gaining momentum, aiming to change the w...