The Food Programme

It’s been nearly 50 years since invasive American Signal Crayfish were introduced to the UK, and we still haven’t figured out how to get rid of them. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall joins Sheila Dillon to meet a man who believes the way to control their spread is to get more people eating them — but not everyone’s convinced. These crustaceans are so invasive that ecologists worry encouraging consumption could lead to further spread. Me...

Since the early 2000s, one type of shop has quietly become a regular feature on British high streets: the Polski sklep – or Polish shop.

Known for their smoked sausages, sour pickles, and wide selection of herbal teas, these shops offer more than just food. With Polish people now the largest non-British nationality in the UK, and Polish the next most spoken language after English and Welsh, they also reflect a broader story of migra...

Dan Saladino explores stories of food and 'the elements', the theme of this year's Oxford Food Symposium.

Expect surprising insights on earth, fire, air, water and much more.

For more than forty years the Symposium has celebrated, explored and shared research by scholars, enthusiastic amateurs, writers, and chefs from around the world, all united in the belief that food deserves to be treated as a serious, as well as a joyful, subje...

Sheila Dillon looks into claims that big food companies wield too much influence over government decisions and public health. The episode follows news from the youth-led campaign group BiteBack2030, which says its billboard campaign has been effectively silenced. The group recently organised a mock inquiry in Parliament, involving MPs, to share concerns about how junk food advertising and sponsorship are affecting the health of chi...

The adventures of Barbara and Tom Good in Surbiton brought self-sufficiency to the small screens of the nation. Fifty years on from the airing of that first episode of The Good Life, Leyla Kazim is about to embark on her own sustainable living dream as she seeks to live off the land when she moves from London to Portugal.

So what lessons can she learn from The Goods about food production – whether that’s animal husbandry or grow...

Dan Saladino explores new science that's revealing the complexity hidden within our food.

In New York City he meets the team mapping previously unknown edible compounds in fruits and vegetables, many of which are thought to have health benefits.

Will delving deeper into the 'dark matter' of food make it possible to produce food that's better for both us and the planet? Also in the programme is Franco Fubini, founder of the food busi...

In this episode, social media chef and queen of potatoes, Poppy O'Toole, explores the world of her favourite ingredient, the Potato.

Last year, Poppy appeared on Mastermind, choosing the history of the potato as her specialist subject. Let’s just say… it didn’t quite go to plan. So now, she’s joining the team at The Food Programme to fill in the gaps in her knowledge.

Along the way, she meets historian Professor Rebecca Earle from t...

With the price of olive oil soaring in the shops after drought disrupted production in Spain, Leyla Kazim looks into the English farms planting olive groves in the hope of bottling their own oil. She meets a farmer in Essex who explains that English growing conditions are more suitable than you might think and discovers a producer in Cornwall who has already started pressing his own extra virgin olive oil. So will olive oil fro...

In this episode of 'A Life Through Food', Sheila Dillon meets one of the most provocative scientific minds of the last half-century: Professor Michael Crawford. Now in his 90s, Crawford’s pioneering research into the brain and nutrition has reshaped how we understand the essential role of food—especially Omega-3 fatty acids—in human development and health.

Long before Omega-3 became a buzzword on supermarket shelves, Crawford was un...

The BBC Food & Farming Awards are back for 2025!

Jaega Wise visits River Cottage HQ to meet returning head judge Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. They talk about what Hugh is looking for in this year's awards, what makes the West Country a special place for food and farming and some of the history of River Cottage. She also visits previous winners Westcombe Dairy who not only have been thriving since winning in their award, they ha...

Campaigners are calling for the ingredients of sourdough to be laid out in law. So are there too many loaves on sale that are more sourfaux than sourdough? Leyla Kazim investigates.

This programme features a visit to the Batch event at the Long Table in Stroud to meet baker and author David Wright as well as Chris Young from the Real Bread Campaign. Nutritionist Dr Vanessa Kimbell discusses how sourdough impacts on our gut health...

Leyla Kazim visits York, the UK's 'chocolate city', on the centenary of Joseph Rowntree’s death, to find out how the Quaker entrepreneur pioneered both social reform and iconic chocolate brands like Smarties and Kit Kat.

Today, many independent chocolate makers still call York home, as do some of the word's biggest multinational confectionary makers. Leyla Kazim wanders through York Chocolate Festival to trace the city’s unique choc...

Baroness Floella Benjamin once said “childhood lasts a lifetime” and our experiences of school dinners can shape how we eat for the rest of our lives. In this edition of The Food Programme Sheila Dillon investigates the importance of those early food memories with the help of Dr Heather Ellis from the School Meals Project. The Project says its aim is to produce the first ever comprehensive history of school meals across the dif...

With the Government pledging to overhaul the way food is sourced for public institutions like hospitals, schools, prisons, and army bases, Sheila Dillon explores how these changes could be implemented and why they are deemed essential by many.

Sheila visits St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, Surrey, where chef Raouf Mansour has transformed the canteen for staff and visitors. After bringing the operation in-house post-Covid, the hospit...

Sheila Dillon hears the first exclusive readings from a Tudor ‘pamphlet of cheese’ that details the cheesemaking traditions of the 16th century, and reveals how cheese was seen as a nutrient-rich health food - from digestion aid to wound cleaner. Fast-forward to today, and Sheila visits Yorkshire cheesemongers Andy and Kathy Swinscoe to help recreate one of these historic recipes by hand in their dairy, as they discuss the signific...