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The Food Programme

@bbcfoodprog

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Investigating every aspect of the food we eat. BBC Radio 4 Fri 11.00 & Sat 22.15. On-demand at all times, online, @bbcsounds & podcast #bbcfoodawards

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Just what makes a perfect Sunday Roast? @jimfamished sets out to better understand why this national institution of a meal (with all the trimmings and lashings of gravy) continues to thrive.

Jimi talks about the role of nostalgia with Sam Gregory, the landlord of @thebanktavern in Bristol where a year’s worth of Sunday Roast reservations got snapped up in just 11 minutes this year. Chef Sally Abe @littlechefsally explains why she has just added the Sunday Roast to the menu at her London restaurant Teal while food historian @dranniegray talks about the dish’s origins. Grant Fitzner from the @officefornationalistatistics prices up how the cost of a home-cooked roast dinner has changed in recent years.

Jimi visits the self-styled ‘Home of the Roast’, the @tobycarvery and learns about “The Deck” and just how much can be squeezed on to a single plate. He also catches up with a couple of podcasting Roast Detectives, @emerthescreamer and @esthertwonames to learn some of their own carvery vocab. Another slice of the “active joint” anyone?

Jimi gets cooking with the Queen of Yorkshire Puddings Elaine Lemm aka @foodwriting and learns just what goes into making a perfect pud, and producer @markwellrobin stops by the @yorkroastco to meet the father and son team behind the Yorkie Pud wrap – the classic roast dinner in street food form.

Catch the Food Programme’s Sunday Roast special on @bbcradio4 and @bbcsounds.

What goes on your plate? by @bbcfoodprog

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5 days ago

Eve Blair heads to #Kilkeel to meet one of BBC Radio Ulster ‘Food Hero’ finalists in this year’s BBC Food & Farming Awards 2026 in Belfast⁣
#YPAM #FoodHero #Food #Farming #bbcfoodawards by @bbcfoodprog

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10 days ago

Who thinks food has become too expensive? 💸

We asked the audience at Abergavenny Food Festival that question when we recorded a special live edition of The Food Programme on the cost of food this weekend.

The response wasn't quite what we were expecting....

Joining @dillonthought on the panel was Food Prog presenter @dan.saladino, food policy expert @vickihird and Simon Wright who's long been writing and working in hospitality and food, and has recently been appointed to develop a National Food Strategy for Wales.

We also heard from @biteback2030 youth campaigner Timi, who told us he's noticed that many of the cheapest, less healthy foods seemed to have stayed affordable, while fresh and healthier options feel increasingly out of reach.

So why has food gone up in price so much? Who is benefiting from the current system? Are we paying too much for food, or in some cases not enough? And what would a fairer, more sustainable food economy look like?

Listen at 11am today (Friday) on @bbcradio4 or anytime on @bbcsounds

#foodprices #costoffood by @bbcfoodprog

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19 days ago

The finalists for the #bbcfoodawards 2026 have been announced! Go to the awards website to see the shortlist. On today’s Food Programme @dillonthought and @paulacooks meet the Best Food Producers @broightergoldrapeseedoil @dunflashaddercroft @fresh_flour by @bbcfoodprog

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Each year, food writers, historians, chefs, scientists, academics, amateur scholars, botanists, archaeologists and philosophers … ‘anyone else with more than just an interest in food’ gather from all over the world, to attend the annual @oxfordfoodsymposium

It was founded in the belief that food was such an important subject it deserved greater attention, more in depth research, serious thought and discussion.

Its history goes back to 1979 (the same year as @bbcfoodprog which was founded on a similar mission).

Each year the symposium has a different theme, on which symposiasts present papers and tell stories. These have ranged from food and power to seeds, fermentation to celebration.

The year’s was ‘Poverty Food’

I was there to record for @bbcfoodprog and the stories included:

The connection between breadfruit, the slave trade and the Caribbean, told by @RussellFielding.

The oldest known cookbook featuring recipes for people in poverty (from 14th century Persia), told by @nader_mehravari

Why poverty is an ingredient that’s baked in to the entire food system, by @julianbaggini

The story of Umbria’s cake on a tile’, the arrival of maize in Europe and the rise of the vampire myth by ZacharyNowack

Cooking demos & Pudding Evangelism in early 20th St Pancras, from Sue Davies.

And what to eat during a nuclear winter!!! Care of Anders Sandberg and Len Fisher.

Please do try and listen, I think it’s a surprising, fascinating and important collection of stories.

Thanks and best wishes
Dan

This year’s artwork for the symposium was created by @priya.mani.design by @bbcfoodprog

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Just what did the Normans do for our diet? Apart from the words for cider, beef, pork and veal. Oh and apart from bringing in new cider apple varieties and cider-making techniques. Oh and as well as re-introducing rabbits and teaching us ways with soft cheeses! And much more besides…

Food historian @dranniegray investigated this for the Food Programme as part of Thursday's themed Norman day on @bbcradio4 to tie in with the Bayeux Tapestry going on display in London. She spoke with curator @millie_horton_insch from @britishmuseum on the feasting scenes in the Tapestry as well as Professor Ben Jervis from the @uniofleicester on what the archaeology of the time reveals – he ran a study analysing the fats on cooking pots from the period.

We looked specifically at the impact on the three Norman “c”s of cheese, cider and coneys (well, rabbits). Huge thanks to Emilie Gouye from @terre.dauge.tourisme for linking us up with so many lovely producers like…

🧀 @davidraguet of La Degusterie in Pont L’Eveque as well as Fromagerie Martin with Caroline Martin

🍎 Cider and calvados makers @calvadoschristiandrouin and @domaineflaguerie as well as James Crowden on the history of the drink

🐇and we tracked down the rabbits in East Anglia’s Thetford Forest with heritage consultant Anne Mason who told us about the warren lodges that still exist today from Norman rabbit-farming.
Great fun to make.

📻 Produced by @markwellrobin. Catch it again on @bbcsounds by @bbcfoodprog

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In 2015 on @bbcfoodprog we made a series based around our food heroes. A great friend of the programme (and brilliant broadcaster) @ellamcs chose the farmer, writer and campaigner Wendell Berry. It resulted in an edition that explored his life, work, poetry and one of the central questions he explored throughout his life, when it comes to people and the ecological health of our land… what is the acceptable price to pay for producing food?

As @michael.pollan says in the programme “he has a way of looking at things that will help you connect the dots between what’s happening on your plate and what’s happening on farms, and how much is at stake, ethically and morally, in the way we handle the soil and the way we handle our meals”.

Wendell Berry has died at the age of 92. The questions he asked and the values he championed are more important than ever. I highly recommend this programme as an opportunity to reflect on his passing, and also to delve into a body of work that will live on and continue to make an impact on generations to come.

#wendellberry by @bbcfoodprog

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What does it actually take to feed 10,000 schoolchildren every day? 🍽️🍎🥕

For our latest @bbcfoodprog, @jaegawise spends a day with Andrew Cowan, Catering Manager at Bury Council, whose team serves around 10,000 meals every day across more than 50 schools.

Changing what children eat means changing a whole food system behind the scenes. @burycouncil is doing things a little differently....and are seeing major results.

They even have the @soilassociation's top accolade...

🎧 A Day in the Life of a School Catering Manager on @bbcradio4 and @bbcsounds

Produced by @natdonovan

#TheFoodProgramme #SchoolFood #BBCSounds #FoodEducation #SchoolMeals by @bbcfoodprog

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2 months ago

“One day we will eat with a knife and fork.”

As they were growing up, it’s a phrase Ify Adenuga repeated to her children, including the grime artists @skepta and JME. The saying would later inspire the title of Skepta’s 2026 album Fork & Knife, which he has described as being rooted in the immigrant mindset, aspiration and the belief that hard work might one day deliver a better life.

In this edition of The Food Programme, @jimfamished takes that phrase as a starting point to explore how the way we eat shapes ideas of identity, belonging and culture. From the arrival of the fork in Europe to the Nigerian tradition of eating with your hands, and from Cantonese chopstick culture to the formal rituals of the British dinner table, he uncovers surprising stories about the many different ways in which we consume our food.

Part social history, part personal journey, this is a story about the rules we inherit, the traditions we hold on to, and what something as simple as a knife, fork, pair of chopsticks or even our own hands can reveal about who we are. by @bbcfoodprog

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@bbcfoodprog & @dan.saladino featured us whilst we were @womadfestival this year 🤓

You can still pre-order the book now before its release this year, thanks for continuing to support Grans lifetime of work 🔗👵

#book #womad #bbc #grandma #house taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @bbcfoodprog

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In my latest edition of @bbcfoodprog you can hear music and food stories from the brilliant artists who performed at this year's @womadfestival Taste the World stage, curated by @anniementer

They sing, play, dance.... AND cook a dish from home.

The musicians come from different parts of the world and so it adds up to a unique global tour of food, music history and culture.

You'll hear music, and discover dishes from the Andes in Peru, Haiti, Ukraine, South Africa, Punjab and South Korea.

Watching this all unfold made me want to know more about how different crops and ingredients moved around the world, making it possible for the dishes cooked on stage to exist, from maize porridge in Africa to a spam and seaweed combo in Korea... the use of plantain in Haiti and the dominance of wheat in parts of India....

To help tell that story, joining me in the programme is one of the world's leading archaeobotanists @dorian.q.fuller who has travelled the world excavating sites to unravel the deep history of our food and the author of the excellent book National Dish, the amazing Anya @vonbremzen

I hope it's everything we aim to achieve: educate, inform and entertain....

You can listen on @bbcsounds and @bbcradio4 from August 14th - and on other platforms later.

Film by thesourceimage.com
Music by Wesli

#food #music #foodhistory by @bbcfoodprog

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This is a room in a shop run by a woman who calls herself an ‘amateur’ affineur—still learning, she says, after 30+ years of a cheese focussed career that began by accident. ‘Affineurs / affinage… so unBritish it seems. Maturing cheese to its peak form, its height, to the best of what it’s meant to be. In this edition of @bbcfoodprog at the Affineur of the Year competition ( can you believe it?!) we see what deep skill, imagination, dedication, sheer steady graft can create. Each competitor begins with a young, simple, immature cheese—& then over months creates new tastes, textures, flavours. The ‘new’ cheeses are then judged …basically on deliciousness. The winners this year were @thecourtyarddairy …turning a cheddar into a cheese that tasted of the mountains while still, somehow, being a cheddar. Magic!

Patricia Michelson… in the pics, was one of the judges & a few days after the competition we interviewed her in her little cheese palace in Highbury, N London @lafromagerieuk to find out what being an affineur for a living means—how it works when you’re not in the business of creating a new cheese ( as in the Competition) but concentrating on bringing out the best in farmhouse & other craft cheeses from all over the UK & Europe. And when that goes along, as it does for Patricia and everyone in the @academyofcheese, with a fight focussed on keeping great cheese traditions alive, standing up to the powers that would have us all eating standardised, sterile, plastic wrapped wedges.

Enlarge the picture of Patricia holding the ‘globalisation’ cartoon she commissioned to see the way the world is going—unless we stand up for what’s rich, diverse, pleasurable, good for our health & a product of the natural world. BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS 😇😇😇😇

@quickescheese @lafromagerieuk @wedge_mag @patrickmcguigan1 @thecourtyarddairy @academyofcheese @cheese_academy @fenfarmdairy @nealsyarddairy @markwellrobin @cropwellbishopcreamery by @bbcfoodprog

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