Five years on from the first Covid lockdown Dan Saladino asks if our food supply can withstand more shock to the system? Is there resilience to face another pandemic or even war?

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Bradford is this year’s UK City of Culture - but what does food have to do with it? Sheila Dillon visits the city to meet market traders, chefs and restaurateurs to find out how its industrial past has influenced the thriving food culture of today.

She visits Bradford’s St James wholesale market to discover how the Asian restaurant trade has been integral to the market’s survival, before eating breakfast at The Sweet Centre, which serves the same Kashmiri breakfast speciality as it did for millworkers in the 60s. Two food projects are harnessing the vibrant multicultural nature of Bradford as part of its City of Culture celebrations. The Bradford Selection, orchestrated by artists Sonia Sandhu and Harry Jelley, tells the stories of Bradford communities through a series of biscuits. Meet My Mothers is a recipe book project representing the diverse food cultures in Bradford, as participant coordinator Aamta Waheed tells Sheila at the Women Zone community centre.

Renowned Yorkshire food historian Peter Brears meets Sheila for a tea and some traditional pork ‘savoury duck’ to talk about pre-industrial food of the Bradford district. Meanwhile, on BBC One, Harry Virdee is the eponymous detective star of thriller series Virdee, written by Bradford native A.A.Dhand. Sheila speaks to the bestselling author to find out how he wrote specific south Asian food and drink traditions into the series and his own childhood food memories of growing up in the city.

How important is the city’s food history, economics and culture to its hopes for regeneration? Shanaz Gulzar, creative director of Bradford 2025, summarises the city’s belief in food as social cohesion and the confidence that the city feels after winning the title.

Presenter: Sheila Dillon

Sheila Dillon joins diners eating together in Manchester and Copenhagen, and hears why some think we should be making more time in the UK for eating communally.

During World War II, British Restaurants provided nutritious, affordable meals across the UK. Endorsed by Winston Churchill, they ensured good food was accessible to all. Now, some believe this model should return.

Professor Bryce Evans from Liverpool Hope University explains why reviving communal dining could help tackle today’s cost-of-living crisis. In Manchester, we hear from "The Manc Kitchen" - a pilot inspired by MP Ian Byrne’s "Scouse Kitchen" and his "Right to Food" campaign. Similar initiatives are emerging across the UK.

Sheila Dillon travels to Copenhagen, "the capital of communal dining," to see how the Danes have embraced eating together. She visits Absalon, a repurposed church where 200 people dine each night, and Grønne Eng (Green Meadows), a co-housing community where 190 residents cook and share meals communally four times a week. Even in workplaces, communal dining is the norm—Sheila eats with a team of architects at a long table.

Food writer Heidi Svømmekjær explains how Denmark’s long, dark winters have shaped this culture, making shared meals a way to foster warmth and connection.

With food insecurity and loneliness on the rise, Sheila asks if communal restaurants be a solution?

Presented by Sheila Dillon

Two of the country's largest wholesale markets are on the brink of closure. The City of London Corporation has decided to shut the historic meat market at Smithfield and the fish market at Billingsgate, bringing to an end centuries of food history. Sheila Dillon is given a tour of Smithfield market by the historian Matthew Green who describes how Smithfield features in the work of Charles Dickens and was once described as the "kitchen of the universe" by the writer Ned Ward in 1702.

The programme hears from the Smithfield traders who work through the night butchering and selling meat to restaurants and shops across London, the South East of England and beyond.

There has been considerable opposition to the closure of the markets. More than 37,000 people have signed a petition asking the City of London Corporation to keep the markets where they are including Alicia Weston who we meet at Ridley Road street market in East London. Here fishmongers are concerned about where they will source their supplies if Billingsgate closes. The City of London Corporation chairman Chris Hayward responds.

Finally, the author of Hungry City Carolyn Steel and Professor Tim Lang from City University reflect on the importance of wholesale markets in strengthening food supply chains as well as their contribution to the social and cultural fabric of a place.

Presented by Sheila Dillon

It's a term used by the smallest farmers and the world's biggest food businesses. But what does 'regenerative agriculture' mean?

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Sheila Dillon revisits the idea of our grannies’ cooking and how it shapes us, hearing from listeners who sent in their own stories. Why does learning to cook from your granny seem to be such a powerful experience? What about those grannies who leapt at the chance technology offered to escape the endless cycle of cooking from scratch? And – for those of us who feel we’re relying too much on processed food - can we find a granny substitute to help us put down the takeaway menu and pick up a peeler?

Guests include:

We'd like to thank all of the listeners who wrote in to us following the broadcast of the programme "Nan the Wiser", but we'd like to say a special thanks to Matthew, Lynn, Mary, Tony, Marie, Peter, Rob and Giselle.

Presented by Sheila Dillon

Archive from Birmingham's Food and Drink Oral Histories Project:

It's 2025, and the same old questions are still being asked about food and health—how do we get people eating better, reduce obesity, improve health, and ease pressure on the NHS? Despite decades of policies and campaigns, the challenge remains. In this episode, Sheila Dillon is joined in the studio by three people whose work is dedicated to finding answers: Dr Dolly Van Tulleken, a visiting researcher at Cambridge University's MRC Epidemiology Unit, who has examined UK government obesity policy, documenting its repeated failures and interviewed several leaders about what can be learned from them; Anna Taylor, head of the Food Foundation, whose organisation has been researching the impact of poor diets, particularly on those living in poverty; and Ben Reynolds, formerly of Sustain, where he played a key role in some of the most successful food campaigns and is now working on food and farming policy across Europe as Executive Director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

Also featured are Henry Dimbleby, author of The National Food Strategy; Welsh food historian Carwyn Graves; and two Food Ambassadors for The Food Foundation Dominic Watters and Magda Rechnio.

Together, they discuss what’s gone wrong, what’s worked, and, as the new government announces plans for a fresh food strategy, what must be put in place to ensure it delivers real change.

Presented by Sheila Dillon

What's behind the rise and rise of low alcohol and alcohol free drinks? The sector grew by a quarter last year alone, fuelled by our changing relationship with alcohol. More than fifteen million people are thought to have considered taking part in Dry January this year and younger drinkers in particular are turning away from alcohol and embracing alcohol-free versions of beer, wine and spirits or entirely new drinks coming onto the market.

In this programme Jaega Wise considers the changes in the drinks industry. She eavesdrops on an alcohol-free workshop with the mindful drinking movement Club Soda and speaks to its founder Laura Willoughby. She hears from the alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint and the market research company Kam on our changing drinking patterns, including the trend for zebra-striping - alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

Then Jaega visits Bristol to find out how breweries are using different techniques to make alcohol-free beer that is far superior to the much-derided watery and flavourless versions of old. The Bristol Beer Factory tells her that their alcohol-free brand now makes up a fifth of sales. At Wiper & True nearby, they reckon within five years around half of all their beers will be alcohol-free.

The movement towards "low and no" drinks means there is now a World Alcohol Free Awards as their co-founder Chrissie Parkinson explains and Dash Lilley from the Three Spirit brand talks about how some drinks makers are looking to very different ingredients from the plant world to create original flavours.

Presented by Jaega Wise

Want to lose weight? How much can you achieve through exercise? Dan Saladino investigates with the help of Mike Keen, a chef and Arctic explorer.

Mike has had numerous adventures in Greenland, including kayaking thousands of miles, and sometimes doing nothing at all. What happened to his weight on this trips has left him puzzled.

They enlist the help three experts, Chris Van Tulleken, author of Ultra Processed People; Nigel Smith of the UK Sports Institute and Andrew Jenkinson, surgeon and author of Why We Eat too Much and How to Eat.

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Emulsifiers are among the most common food additives found in ultra-processed foods (UPFs), a much-discussed category of foods commonly defined as those made using manufactured ingredients. They are often packaged and have a long shelf life. Research examining the impact of diets high in UPFs suggests higher rates of obesity and diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

However, discussions about labeling these foods as "ultra-processed" have also sparked debates about whether their negative effects are primarily due to their high fat, sugar, and salt content, or whether they stem from the effects of processing itself, particularly the additives they contain.

In this episode, Jaega Wise explores one of the most commonly used additives in UPFs—emulsifiers. She investigates how they work, what they do, their history, associated health concerns, and their potential future developments.

Featuring: Nicola Lando and Ross Brown from the online specialty cooking supplies company Sous Chef; Tim Spector, professor of epidemiology at King’s College London and co-founder of the personalized health app Zoe; food historian Annie Gray; John Ruff, Chief Science Advisor at the Institute of Food Technologists; Professor Barry Smith at the University of London’s Centre for the Study of the Senses; Professor Anwesha Sarkar, an expert in colloids and surfaces at Leeds University’s School of Food Science and Nutrition; and Dr. Benoit Chassaing, a research director at The Institut Pasteur in Paris, who studies microbiota and the health impacts of certain emulsifiers.

Presented by Jaega Wise