4 December 2023: A New Story for Maize Domestication ... A close look at more than 1000 varieties of maize solves a mystery about how the crop evolved from its wild relatives.
All past episodes
This is just the podcast episodes.
13 November 2023: Honey and Adulteration ... Why is honey the world’s third most-adulterated food? Because adulteration delivers profits.
30 October 2023: Fat, Sugar, Salt ... Before he uncovered “Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result,” David Johns had already dug into reports on salt and sugar.
16 October 2023: Jewish Food in Rome ... The Jewish Community of Rome arrived before the Christian Era and has never left. Its cuisine was created by hardship and ingenuity.
2 October 2023: Small Dairy ... If you’re lucky enough to live in the right place, you may be able to experience real, fresh, whole milk.
18 September 2023: Food Riots in England ... When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose … except your life
4 September 2023: Milk is not a Superfood ... The first celebrity doctor’s fad diet is still going strong today, 300 years later, and it has a lot to answer for.
5 June 2023: Pomegranates & Artichokes ... “It is about migrations: of ingredients, of recipes, of stories — but most importantly of the people who make them.”
22 May 2023: Why Did the Artist Cross the Chicken? ... Accumulating the genetic diversity of birds around the world in a population of truly cosmopolitan chickens
8 May 2023: Feeding the People in Wartime Britain ... Once upon a time, government made it possible for people to get a good meal at a reasonable price.
24 April 2023: What is Wrong with Biofortification ... Yields are generally lower than those of unfortified varieties and there’s little evidence it works. Biofortification is a waste of land and money.
10 April 2023: Making Mr Song’s Cheese ... The standard story is that ethnic Chinese don’t eat cheese or drink milk because they are lactose intolerant. They do, but it’s complicated
27 March 2023: What Price Chicken Wings? ... A chicken has two wings, two legs, two breasts; how does the market cope when all people want is wings?
13 March 2023: Patrik Johansson, the Butter Viking ... Patrik Johansson blends ancient knowledge and modern science to craft exquisite butter: hand-made, intensely flavourful and scarce.
6 February 2023: Food Security in Egypt ... The price of subsidised bread in Egypt has not changed in decades, though the bread shrunk. That remains a huge challenge to security, for the government and the people.
23 January 2023: Fully Tested Tuna ... One tin of tuna may contain 10 times more mercury than another, and there’s no way to tell them apart.
9 January 2023: Biodiversity at Liberty ... How farmers in Belgium and the south of France are taking advantage of new a EU regulation to become more sustainable
24 December 2022: Feed Your Baby Like a Fascist ... Mussolini made the trains run on time, but that doesn’t work for hungry infants
12 December 2022: Some thoughts on markets and such ... Speculators can actually drive prices higher, which was news to me
28 November 2022: A Restaurant’s Reckoning ... “The corollary to white innocence is white passivity, the feeling that what one’s ancestors did was so messed up that it couldn’t possibly make a difference where one eats a barbecue sandwich.”
14 November 2022: How to be a good host and a good guest ... Asking for a doctor’s note when your guest says they are allergic or intolerant is not an option
31 October 2022: Feeding children well ... There’s a huge difference between neophobia and picky eating, just as there is between food and nutrition. How best to undertake the tricky business of helping children to eat well.
17 October 2022: In search of tomato gold ... Organic growers and breeders in Europe are preparing to take advantage of their new freedom to sow biodiversity
3 October 2022: Mothers and Milk ... How can the simple and vital connection between mother and baby possibly be considered shameful?
20 September 2022: Fad diets ... The average American starts in on a fad diet four times a year. A quarter give up after two weeks. What are they hoping for?
4 July 2022: Empire and grain ... The ability to tax wheat moving through choke points gives empires their power, even today.
27 June 2022: Grain and finance ... Wheat was money, when a store was no more than a store of goods to be exchanged for wheat.
20 June 2022: Grain and transport ... Moving wheat from where it grows to where it is eaten shaped the world
13 June 2022: Persephone’s secret ... Why did the participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries leave no trace of what it was about?
16 May 2022: Peanuts, Senegal and Slavery ... France abolished slavery in 1815 but the practice continued long after that in its west African enclaves
2 May 2022: Garum: Rome’s new library and museum of food ... On the slopes of the Palatine Hill, supposedly on the site where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, a new food museum.
18 April 2022: Tomatoes: domestication and diversity ... New studies make sense of tomato’s transformation from teeny-fruited weed to diversity diva.
4 April 2022: Aaron Vallance — 1dish4theroad ... A doctor in London chronicles his eating adventures through fact and fiction
14 March 2022: Yes, we have no plantains ... What you call a plantain is probably an accident of history
21 February 2022: Food Philosophy ... Discussions about food often “bump up against philosophy” according to an actual philosopher, whose book helped me to think more clearly about food.
7 February 2022: Unconditional cash to improve nutrition ... Giving people cash improves dietary diversity and child growth
24 January 2022: Ten thousand years of yoghurt ... Yoghurt is good for you, no doubt about that, although it probably will not confer eternal life.
20 December 2021: High Art ... As an artist, looking down on Google Earth, Mishka Henner saw things that made him wonder — and that have the power to make all of us think, a bit.
6 December 2021: A visit to an ancient Roman bakery ... Farrell Monaco has studied, and brought back to life, the canonical bread of Ancient Rome. Now she brings an ancient bakery back to life.
15 November 2021: The true history of the potato in Europe ... It may not contain wily aristocrats or superstitious peasants, but the true history of the potato is much more interesting.
25 October 2021: Rachel Roddy: An A–Z of Pasta ... Rachel Roddy had no intention of producing an encyclopaedia of pasta. Her book is more informative than that, and more readable.
11 October 2021: Midnight’s chicken: Indian food evolution ... A dish that is today an icon of Indian food dates back only to 1947, using an ingredient that became widespread only in the 1920s
27 September 2021: Sushi ... The story of perhaps the greatest transformation in the history of food and how it continues today
13 September 2021: Italian coffee: a temporary triangle ... “The cups might break, but the images recycle endlessly.”
21 June 2021: Food in post-independence India ... India gained independence in 1947 with nationalist politicians promising food for all and an end to the rapacious imperial administration. What happened next?
7 June 2021: The original global food system ... Diet for a Large Planet shows how the world is still living with free trade policies from the 19th century
24 May 2021: Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? ... Jess Fanzo takes a close look at what’s wrong with global food systems and how it might be possible to change them.
10 May 2021: A very modern spice merchant ... Green Saffron is a new kind of spice merchant, that cares as much about how its spices are grown as their taste.
26 April 2021: Coffea stenophylla tastes terrific ... Coffee that tastes of light black tea — a good thing — and is able to cope with warmer climates.
12 April 2021: The Great Re-Think: What is agriculture for, really? ... Skill and craft over automation, complexity over simplicity, and diversity over monoculture
29 March 2021: What is the value of functional foods? ... There’s one group of people that functional foods and superfoods can definitely help: the people who grow them.
15 March 2021: Naomi Duguid: Exploring the World through Food ... There may not be a recipe, but there’s always someone sitting behind your shoulder going tsk, tsk, tsk.
1 March 2021: The cost is too damn high ... Three billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet even if they wanted to.
15 February 2021: Still ticking ... These days, population is barely considered as a factor in food security. That doesn’t mean the problem is solved.
1 February 2021: The quest to conserve rare breeds ... Using land that could be used to feed people to feed animals is a terrible waste, but for today’s modern breeds it is absolutely essential.
18 January 2021: The International Year of Fruits and Vegetables ... Emojipedia understands: 🍅 is both a fruit and a vegetable
14 December 2020: Oh, poop ... Is our excrement simply a waste product, to be dumped out of sight and out of mind? Or is it a valuable resource that we squander at our peril?
30 November 2020: How the Brits became a nation of tea drinkers ... Persuading people to drink tea from the subcontinent more or less created the modern propaganda machine
16 November 2020: Where did the chicken cross the road? ... The DNA of chickens, sheep and cattle tells slightly different stories about their domestication
1 November 2020: A Blissful Feast ... Her aunt’s gnocchi were enough to set Teresa Lust on a long and roundabout journey to learn more about Italian and Italian food.
19 October 2020: Whole grain labels sow confusion ... We know what whole grain means. Whole grain food? Not so much.
5 October 2020: Coffee leaf rust is bad news ... Coffee leaf rust is bad, but at least in the short term it may not be the threat you think it is
21 September 2020: Carême at home in New Zealand ... Food for settlers in New Zealand used to be mutton, mutton, mutton and potatoes or potatoes. Not any more.
7 September 2020: How the chilli pepper conquered China ... Chilli peppers took a few years to reach China after their initial encounter with Westerners, but rapidly became a very hot item.
29 June 2020: It’s coffee, but not as we know it ... In Sierra Leone, a hunt for long lost species of coffee succeeds
15 June 2020: Alexis Soyer ... A brief look at the life of one of the first celebrity chefs
1 June 2020: Questions of Taste ... Are there any universals about more complex kinds of gustatory taste? And how do we learn to talk about taste?
11 May 2020: You are what you drink ... Robert Walpole — like all great politicians — understood how to use his tipple to send a signal
27 April 2020: Disputations about taste ... I know taste is entirely subjective. But I’m also willing to think about good taste and bad taste and even to use that as part of a value judgement. How about you?
13 April 2020: The Man Who Tried to Feed the World ... Norman Borlaug gave birth to the Green Revolution, with little thought for the unintended consequences of his work.
30 March 2020: Russian Food: Old and New ... Beyond the North Wind, the true heart of Russian Food
16 March 2020: The book of the Book of Tasty and Healthy Food ... A young Russian woman blogs her way through the only cookbook her grandmother knew — and gets her own book out of it
2 March 2020: Orange-fleshed sweet potato to feed hidden hunger ... A food people don’t like, and don’t even know they need, turns their lives around
17 February 2020: Another cup of coffee culture ... It took more than a hundred years, but eventually the United States too developed a recognisable coffee culture.
3 February 2020: Coffee culture in Italy and England ... Espresso is the canonical coffee of Italy, even though the original espresso was something entirely different. How did espresso happen? And what happened when it got to England?
20 January 2020: Why a spurtle makes a superior porridge stirrer ... With a bag of porridge oats in my baggage, I set off for Georgetown University and a date with science
23 December 2019: Cow sharing in the European Alps ... Unlike car sharing, when you buy a share in a cow, you are not free to drive her wherever you want. So what do you get?
9 December 2019: Pasta Grannies ... Vicky Bennison set out to record Italian grannies making pasta and along the way created terrifically watchable videos
25 November 2019: Cashews, the World Bank, and Mozambique ... Mozambique used to be the world’s largest supplier of cashew nuts. Then along came the World Bank, to help.
11 November 2019: How capuchin monkeys learn about food ... Capuchin monkeys are resourceful and smart, which helps them to select a good diet from all the potential food around them.
21 October 2019: Fifty ways to cook a carrot ... You can’t judge a book by its cover. 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot is not really about carrots.
7 October 2019: Porridge ... How did porridge go from a fine breakfast food, albeit one that’s easily abused, to the stuff of foodie dreams?
23 September 2019: Radish redux ... “All the intrigue of a murder mystery and all the painstaking, arduous pursuit of an archeological dig.” For a radish.
9 September 2019: When in Rome ... Alfredo sauce, made famous in the 1920s, dates back to at least 1390. That, and other surprises of food in the Eternal City.
26 August 2019: A sweet sour story ... A downturn in the house-building business set Maurice Gilbert at Ballyhoura Artisan Food Park on the road to award-winning apple juices.
12 August 2019: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, or ... Ignorance, paranoia and greed have damaged the olives of the Salento almost beyond recognition.
13 May 2019: Housekeeping ... We all deserve a break from time to time.
29 April 2019: Eating Alone ... Some people hate eating alone, others love it, but we all have to do it at times.
15 April 2019: Celebrating Passover and Easter ... From the first last supper to the resurrection roll.
1 April 2019: A historian of bread on the history of bread ... William Rubel doesn’t think there is good bread or bad bread, but he knows what he likes.
18 March 2019: Prehistoric food globalisation ... The first farmers and their crops moved much further, much earlier, than previously thought. As they did so they grew the confidence, the resources and the knowledge to move up into the mountains and down into the river basins.
4 March 2019: We need to talk about meat ... Meat exercises the imagination in a way no other food can match. Some people have always wanted to ban carnivory. For others it is an essential fuel. And now, meat is central to nutrition, sustainability, health and capitalism. What does meat mean?
18 February 2019: Better baking through chemistry ... Fake news. A Senate bought and paid for. Newspapers printing press releases verbatim. And all more than 100 years ago.
4 February 2019: Moxie Bread, Louisville, CO ... Insights into building and running a very successful small bakery, plus the “super colloidal suspension of fat and sugar” that is a specialty of the house.
21 January 2019: Food and diversity in Laos ... The staggering agricultural biodiversity that is such an important aspect of Lao food is on display at a new website.
31 December 2018: Facts about Champagne: Part 2 ... There’s nothing new about persuading influencers to quaff your brand of bubbly
24 December 2018: Facts about Champagne: Part 1 ... From the all-seeing Dom Pérignon to the young bucks of London’s high society, champagne’s true history is absolutely intoxicating.
10 December 2018: Good things from Nürnberg ... What makes the lebkuchen from Nürnberg so special?
26 November 2018: Is that a pickle … ... Jan Davison has written Pickles: A Global History, the perfect accompaniment to her previous book, English Sausages.
21 November 2018: What a bunch of turkeys ... Spaghetti Carbonara Day, read by the author. (I didn’t steal it; I set it free.)