The Food Chain

Are you hungry? How often do you stop to think about why that is and what sort of foods you are hungry for?

In this programme Ruth Alexander explores the science of appetite – what causes us to feel hungry and full and why our appetites differ from one person to the next.

Geneticist Professor Giles Yeo at the University of Cambridge in the UK explains how much of our appetite is informed by our genes and how much by our environment. Registered public health nutritionist Federica Amati, author of 'The Appetite Reset', explains what happens in our gut to help us feel full, not just immediately but for hours after eating. Amber Alhadeff, neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, US says that GLP-1 weight-loss medications are changing what we know about appetite.

And Ruth meets Darren Ratcliffe at his home in Manchester, UK. Darren shares how GLP-1 medications affected his appetite, and what happened when he stopped taking them.

If you'd like to contact the programme you can email [email protected].

Produced by Beatrice Pickup and Lexy O'Connor.

(Image: Darren Ratcliffe is standing in his kitchen. He is wearing a green t-shirt and holding a plate of food that contains a baked potato with tuna and sweetcorn and a salad. Credit: BBC).

Weight-loss medication, or GLP-1s as they are also known, are designed to suppress your appetite - so how do you make every mouthful count?

Ruth Alexander looks into what happens to the body on these drugs and what it feels like to take them. She learns why it's vital to change your diet to minimise side effects like nausea and constipation and to avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Plus why what you eat before you start taking the medicines also matters, and how to give yourself the best chance of coming off them without regaining all of your weight.

Ruth Alexander talks to UK based medical scientist Federica Amati, author of The Appetite Reset and US dietician Whitney Black who takes the drugs herself and specialises in supporting patients on GLP-1s. Whitney shares her real-life experience alongside Michelle Herum from Denmark, a busy mum of four who's been taking Wegovy for three years.

Produced by Lexy O'Connor and Beatrice Pickup.

Sound Engineers: Hal Haines.

Image: Two donuts, one pink and one brown are balanced on a small plate in the foreground. A woman's hands are visible, holding an apple in one hand and holding up her other hand to reject the donuts. (Credit: Getty)

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Imagine not recognising the food in the shops, markets and restaurants around you. Moving to a new country to live and work can come with some culture shocks and food can be a big part of that.

Ruth Alexander speaks to people who have lived in different countries. Listener Jen Ballantyne in the UK has taught in Japan, Tanzania, Azerbaijan and Brunei. Chinese Canadian chef Kelvin Cheung has lived in Belgium and India and today has a restaurant called Jun's in Dubai. Miwa Kishi is a Japanese cookery teacher living with her family in The Netherlands. We also hear from listener Juanita Ruiz a Colombian chef living and working in a small ski town in British Columbia, Canada.

(Photo: a man wearing a blue shirt pushing a supermarket trolley and looking at the shelves of food in a confused manner. Credit: Getty Images)

If you'd like to contact the programme you can email [email protected]

Producer: Beatrice Pickup and Rumella Dasgupta

Is it more expensive to eat healthily?

You might think the answer is simple: Yes of course, if you buy fruits, vegetables, beans and pulses and cook from scratch.

But is it that easy?

With the help of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, Ruth Alexander finds out where in the world a healthy basket of food costs the most, and why globally, billions of people are priced out of a nutritious and varied diet.

She hears from Frances in Nigeria, struggling to afford healthy basics for her family, and from Aurora in the US state of Arizona, who is out of work and has lost the food benefit known as SNAP. She's being supported by the charity St Vincent de Paul.

And even if you can afford healthy food, is it readily available within easy distance of where you live? Hear from the team running the mobile fruit and veg bus known as The Queen of Greens, tackling so called "food deserts" in Liverpool, North-West England.

Plus your questions answered: How to eat well on any budget, with dietician Grace Derocha.

Produced by Lexy O'Connor, Niamh McDermott and Beatrice Pickup

Sound Engineer: Hal Haines

Image: A woman with brown hair and glasses leans glumly on the handle of a supermarket trolley, contemplating the store's display of fruits and vegetables. (Credit: Getty)

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Ever wondered what the chef is eating? Snacking on the finest produce or surviving on thin air and caffeine?

In this episode Ruth Alexander speaks to three chefs about how they get through the day, and the importance of the ‘family’ or staff meal.

She’s joined by Juliette Feller, a Swiss chef working in London, Marisha Shukla a pastry chef in Bengaluru India, and Sam Grainger, an exec chef and restaurateur in Manchester in England.

You can contact the programme by emailing [email protected].

(Image: from left to right, Juliette Feller wearing a pinstripe blazer, Marisha Shukla wearing a white shirt and Sam Grainger wearing a blue denim apron. Credit: Fin Nichols, Victoire Terrade, Sam Grainger)

Do you have a local cafe, restaurant or bar that you go to all the time? Maybe the staff recognise you or know you by name, perhaps you even get special treatment.

In this programme Rumella Dasgupta finds out why people like to return to the same place, and the commercial value to a business of having regular customers.

You can contact the programme by emailing [email protected].

Produced by Izzy Greenfield.

(Image: a man sat at a bar chatting to a barman who is wearing an apron and cleaning a glass. Credit: Getty Images)

Moving out of the family home can be a big first step at whatever age you do it. Paying bills, budgeting, shopping, and importantly cooking for yourself.

In this programme Rumella Dasgupta asks what dishes you should be able to cook when you leave home for the first time.

Rumella meets chef and food writer Claire Thomson and her daughter Grace Williamson in their kitchen in Bristol, England. Claire's latest cookbook, 'Dear Grace: Recipes from Your Mother for the Next Chapter in Life', was written when Grace left home for university a year ago.

At Salford Youth Zone, a youth centre in the North of England, Rumella talks to teenagers about how confident they feel in the kitchen.

Shahpar Salim in Bangladesh talks about the challenges of leaving home for a new country when she came to the UK for her studies.

Food writer and editor Yeonjoo Jung explains why young people often live at home throughout their twenties in South Korea.

And mothers in the United States tell us how mealtimes changed once faced with the so-called 'empty nest'.

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Produced by Beatrice Pickup.

(Image: a young woman standing in a green open doorway holding a suitcase and looking hopeful. Credit: Getty Images)

What can food reveal about the people who came before us? From ancient meals and family recipes to the chemical traces left behind in bones and teeth, food offers remarkable clues about how people lived, travelled and survived.

In this episode, Ruth Alexander explores how historians, archaeologists and old cookbooks are helping us piece together the story of our past.

Historian Professor Peter Scholliers explains how something as ordinary as the changing price of food can reveal shifts in society, politics and everyday life. In India, author and historian Tarana Khan takes us inside a remarkable collection of two-hundred-year-old cookbooks from Rampur, uncovering forgotten recipes that reveal changing tastes, cultures and identities. And in Scotland, archaeologist Dr Sam Leggett explains how scientific analysis of ancient bones and teeth can reconstruct diets, migrations and even challenge long-held assumptions about the lives of people in the past.

They explore how food can reveal trade routes, social class, cultural exchange, climate change, migration and the choices people made around the dinner table centuries ago.

From old recipe books to archaeological discoveries, we discover how food helps us understand not only where we've come from, but how our relationship with food continues to shape the world today.

If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]

Producer: Beatrice Pickup

Have you ever asked yourself: should I do Keto? Is white rice good for me? Am I eating too many carbohydrates? If so, then this episode of The Food Chain is for you. Carbohydrate-rich foods are everywhere and they’re delicious. But are they good for us? Carbs have a reputation for spiking our blood sugar and making us fat. But is that reputation deserved?

Ruth Alexander talks to Javier Gonzalez, Professor of Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Bath in England and US-based dietitian Julie Stefanski from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics to find out whether we’ve been approaching carbohydrates all wrong.

Plus: are there some populations who need to think more carefully about carbs than others? Dr Nelum Dharmapriya thinks so. She’s an Australian family doctor with a special interest in metabolic health in South Asian populations. She advises her patients to make some tweaks to the traditional South Asian carbohydrate-rich diet and says it can be done without losing heritage and identity.

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Produced by Lexy O'Connor and Beatrice Pickup.

(Image: A woman stares over her sunglasses as she slurps pasta from a fork in a sunlit garden.Credit: Getty images/BBC)

When should you eat your evening meal? Is it really better to eat earlier, or does it depend on when you go to bed? And if you do have to eat late, is there anything you can do to reduce the impact on your health?

In this episode of The Food Chain, Ruth Alexander explores what science says about the timing of dinner. From our internal body clocks to the food on our plates, we examine how the evening meal affects our metabolism, digestion and overall health, and separate the evidence from the myths.

Circadian rhythm researcher Dr Emily Manoogian, from the Salk Institute in California, explains what happens inside the body as the day progresses, why eating close to bedtime can affect the way we process food, and whether biology cares more about the clock or our own sleep schedule.

Nutrition scientist Professor Sarah Berry from King's College London shares practical advice on what a healthy evening meal should look like.

Around the world, however, people eat dinner at vastly different times. Food historian Professor Jeffrey Pilcher from the University of Toronto explains why meal times vary so much between cultures, how work, family life and history have shaped the evening meal, and why there has never been one universal way to organise dinner.

If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]

Producer: Izzy Greenfield