Eat This Podcast

If you’re lucky enough to live in the right place, you may be able to experience real, fresh, whole milk.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose ... except your life

The first celebrity doctor's fad diet is still going strong today, 300 years later, and it has a lot to answer for.

“It is about migrations: of ingredients, of recipes, of stories — but most importantly of the people who make them.”

Accumulating the genetic diversity of birds around the world in a population of truly cosmopolitan chickens

Once upon a time, government made it possible for people to get a good meal at a reasonable price.

Yields are generally lower than those of unfortified varieties and there’s little evidence it works. Biofortification is a waste of land and money.

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

A chicken has two wings, two legs, two breasts; how does the market cope when all people want is wings?

Patrik Johansson blends ancient knowledge and modern science to craft exquisite butter: hand-made, intensely flavourful and scarce.

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.

One tin of tuna may contain 10 times more mercury than another, and there’s no way to tell them apart.

How farmers in Belgium and the south of France are taking advantage of new a EU regulation to become more sustainable

Mussolini made the trains run on time, but that doesn’t work for hungry infants

Speculators can actually drive prices higher, which was news to me

“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.”

Asking for a doctor’s note when your guest says they are allergic or intolerant is not an option

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.

Organic growers and breeders in Europe are preparing to take advantage of their new freedom to sow biodiversity

How can the simple and vital connection between mother and baby possibly be considered shameful?

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?

The ability to tax wheat moving through choke points gives empires their power, even today.

Wheat was money, when a store was no more than a store of goods to be exchanged for wheat.

Moving wheat from where it grows to where it is eaten shaped the world

Why did the participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries leave no trace of what it was about?

France abolished slavery in 1815 but the practice continued long after that in its west African enclaves

On the slopes of the Palatine Hill, supposedly on the site where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, a new food museum.

New studies make sense of tomato’s transformation from teeny-fruited weed to diversity diva.

A doctor in London chronicles his eating adventures through fact and fiction

What you call a plantain is probably an accident of history

Discussions about food often “bump up against philosophy” according to an actual philosopher, whose book helped me to think more clearly about food.

Giving people cash improves dietary diversity and child growth

Yoghurt is good for you, no doubt about that, although it probably will not confer eternal life.

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.

Farrell Monaco has studied, and brought back to life, the canonical bread of Ancient Rome. Now she brings an ancient bakery back to life.

It may not contain wily aristocrats or superstitious peasants, but the true history of the potato is much more interesting.

Rachel Roddy had no intention of producing an encyclopaedia of pasta. Her book is more informative than that, and more readable.

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

The story of perhaps the greatest transformation in the history of food and how it continues today

"The cups might break, but the images recycle endlessly."

India gained independence in 1947 with nationalist politicians promising food for all and an end to the rapacious imperial administration. What happened next?

Diet for a Large Planet shows how the world is still living with free trade policies from the 19th century

Jess Fanzo takes a close look at what’s wrong with global food systems and how it might be possible to change them.

Green Saffron is a new kind of spice merchant, that cares as much about how its spices are grown as their taste.

Coffee that tastes of light black tea — a good thing — and is able to cope with warmer climates.

Skill and craft over automation, complexity over simplicity, and diversity over monoculture

There’s one group of people that functional foods and superfoods can definitely help: the people who grow them.

There may not be a recipe, but there’s always someone sitting behind your shoulder going tsk, tsk, tsk.

Three billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet even if they wanted to.

These days, population is barely considered as a factor in food security. That doesn’t mean the problem is solved.