The Food Programme

Sheila Dillon explores a food story behind the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. In 1861 Italians came together as one nation, but does food reveal a different story? Sheila travels to Sicily where she hears how the island's powerful food culture is seen as evidence by some of disappointment with the creation of a nation state. She meets food historian Mary Taylor Simeti who explains how m...

Natural Wine is the latest buzz in the wine world but what is it? Sheila Dillon discusses and samples this chemical and additive-free "new" wine that was in fact quaffed by the Ancient Romans. Producer: Dilly Barlow.

In France there is no shame in shopping in Picard. The specialist frozen food chain commands 18% of the french frozen market by selling quality frozen food to meet the needs of a time poor, food loving bourgeoisie. Simon Parkes explores today's frozen food market, and asks if our own frozen sector could follow their lead? Natalie Berg, Global Research Director of Planet Retail looks at current tre...

Food writer Tim Hayward goes in search of British charcuterie - the preserved meat that we tend to think of as Contintental. He finds that making it is thriving and closer to its origins in the home than he had expected. He meets a couple whose hobby smoking meats has turned into a career; a shopkeeper, a publican and a restaurateur who cure hams and salamis on the premises for customers, and a pi...

Simon Parkes reports from Japan on new ideas being developed for the future of the nation's food supplies. Producer: Dan Saladino.

Sheila Dillon investigates the role malt plays in our drinks and diet. Malt has been around for millennia and is a natural ingredient in many but many people won't realise how ubiquitous it is. As well as being the foundation of beer and whisky, its flavour and richness makes it a favourite for uses in bakery, breakfast cereals and confectionary as well as being an important export for the country...

Food and the coalition. How does the government intend to change the way Britain eats? Sheila Dillon interviews Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. Producer: Dan Saladino.

Filtered, homogenised, standardised, raw, full fat, low fat - what is milk? Sheila Dillon teases out this seemingly simple question with Professor Peter Atkins, author of Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law, who charts the changing stuff that we call milk. Today's milk reflects today's interests, charted by Mintel in their most recent intelligence report on milk and cream,...

Sheila Dillon explores the past present and future of cooking and food preparation in the school curriculum. She learns how it was introduced in the 1800s to educate girls for domestic service and is now part of the design and technology syllabus. Sheila looks at two approaches to food education in a primary and a secondary school and hears from interested parties the reasons for making cooking co...

Sheila Dillon investigates some of the food stories behind Ireland's economic collapse and asks what role food will play in deciding the Republic's future?

Sheila Dillon investigates the appeal of shellfish - bivalves and molluscs - from the point of view of taste and sustainability and asks why we don't eat them more in Britain. She finds out what has happened to the marine environment in Lyme Bay since a scallop dredging ban was introduced in part of it and about the implications of a proposed mussel farm there. She discovers why whelk fishing is a...

Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett prepares a hearty winter's meal for Sheila Dillon using ingredients from the Best Producer category of the 2010 BBC Food and Farming Awards. On the menu was pumpkin soup, spiced up with a spoonful of chutney from finalists The Tracklements Company, and served with a rather superior cheese on toast made with ciabatta from winner and artisan baker Alex Gooch and...

Sheila Dillon, with the help of some famous food lovers (including Giorgio Locatelli, Cyrus Todiwala, Fuchsia Dunlop and Bee Wilson) hears about their favourite kitchen gadgets. From a 300 year clockwork roasting spit to a 21st century thermal blender, what are the must-have qualities of these kitchen necessities? And how do you choose from the ever increasing plethora of expensive all-singing-all...

Sheila Dillon traces the legacy of Elizabeth David's more scholarly work and reviews food writing in 2010 with blogger and critic Tim Hayward, photographer Jason Lowe and publisher Anne Dolamore. We hear from Elizabeth David's literary Executor Jill Norman about the shift in her work from recipe-driven writing in her early career to the later, more academic books and debate who has taken on her le...

Panettone and chocolate logs - Sheila Dillon embraces two of the cakes replacing our "traditional" Christmas cakes on our Christmas tables, and ponders what what we mean by traditional when it comes to Christmas cakes. Panettone is a traditional Italian Christmas cake. John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College London and author of "Delizia! A History of the Italians and their...

The Danish chef Rene Redzepi of Noma, the "World's Best Restaurant", forages for food in Lapland and London. He's become one of the most influential chefs in the world because of his use of wild ingredients, foraged from the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. With dishes that revive lost food traditions, that use unfamiliar ingredients like mosses, lichen, spruces as...

Sheila Dillon explores the varieties of venison - wild and farmed - we can now find in butchers and supermarkets in the UK. She joins a stalker in Berkshire and talks to the biggest game dealer in the country. Producer Dilly Barlow.

From Caribbean to Thai and Vietnamese - Simon Parkes looks at the latest trends in British street food and takeaway meals. And we hear from some of the finalists in the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards. Producer: Elaine Lester.

A distiller, a brewer and a cider maker - but who will be the first winner of the Food and Farming Awards Best Drinks Producer Award? Oz Clarke joins Sheila Dillon in Birmingham's NEC to reveal all. Food writer and critic Charles Campion and restaurateur and writer Mark Hix were the judges for this category and talk Sheila through the finalists. In this first year of the Best Drinks Producer categ...

Sheila Dillon looks at new ideas for using food to save the British pub. With 40 pubs a week closing down and food sales starting to equal those of drinks, the role of food in the future of the public house has never been more important. Sheila Dillon explores how one pub has come up with a groundbreaking solution to keeping business thriving. Producer: Dave Battcock.

Over the past few months Supermarket price wars have halved the cost of one of Britain's best loved fruits - the banana. Even though retailers say they aren't passing cuts down to growers Sheila Dillon asks, whether our appetite for cheap fruit is having an impact on workers at the other end of the supply chain. We travel to Ecuador, one of the world's leading banana exporters, to explore the reac...

Sheila Dillon hears from some of the world's disappearing food tribes and finds out why efforts are underway to preserve indigenous food cultures in north America, Scandinavia and in Scotland's Highlands and Islands. She travels to Turin for Terra Madre, the biannual gathering of food communities, farmers, fishermen and cooks organised by the international Slow Food movement. Among the 6000 delega...

In these hard economic times does a Private Members Bill introducing new standards for the food sourced by public bodies stand a chance of becoming law? Simon Parkes visits Nottinghamshire, where some hospital meals and all school dinners are procured this way, to look at what such a change might mean in practice. The Nottingham City Hospital has been sourcing sustainably for 7 years, buying its m...

What food do students have access to, what do they eat? Sheila Dillon investigates the catering provided for students across the country in these financially straightened times. She talks to industry expert Chris Druce about the big catering companies and their expansion into higher education. She visits a food co-op at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Dan Saladino visits Plymouth Unive...

Sheila Dillon hears from the people attempting to revolutionise the sandwich. We're now seeing the rise of food businesses specialising in just one type of sandwich using authentic recipes from around the world. The food entrepreneurs are making everything from the Vietnamese Bahn Mi through to the Argentinean Lomito, all are sandwiches which rely on the makers finding authentic bread to match the...