Eat This Podcast

Picky eaters seem to be biologically determined, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are not born, they are made, with the best of intentions.

Using microbes to ferment food is probably the oldest technique to make fresh food last longer, taste better and be better for us.

There have been all sorts of explanations for why tomatoes took so long to be accepted in England, most of them calling on superstition and stupidity. The truth is more down to earth.

Sweden offers some lessons on meals better for the health of pupils and the planet

The hipster barista and the Chinese-owned bar both shed light on the changing nature of Italian coffee culture.

Abderrahim Ouarghidi was born and raised in Morocco, but until the day he and his wife Bronwen Powell found them during fieldwork, he had never seen collard greens there.

“Food has long served as an instrument of statecraft. Yet agricultural economics typically ... neglects security externalities.”

A six-year journey to learn about, document and share artisanal cheese-making around the world.

Old-fashioned oils rely on up-to-date equipment and the skill of the miller

Today, a bigger problem than fraud is transportation and storage.

“You are more likely to find the raw ingredients for a better future for the food system at the Waffle House than you are at your local farmers’ market.”

The freedom Italian prisoners enjoy around food came as a shock

This is a way also to say “I’m a subject” in a place that tries to transform me into an object. I’m a subject. As a subject, I want to eat what I want today.

Poor people need money and they know what to spend it on

In 2005, Luisa Weiss launched The Wednesday Chef, an early food blog. Today she has three books to her credit and continues to write about food.

Selection had nothing to do with transforming grass into wheat, or any other aspect of domestication.

Anti-communists sent food and medical assistance. Communist sympathisers sent tractors. And both countries had much to learn from the other.

The after-hours dish that conquered Ireland and the Irish everywhere.

In the end we can never know what people in the past tasted in their food, but a new method aims to come closer.

A new book shares more information about salt and ways to use it than you can imagine

“You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.”

“There was no treatment for pellagra, aside from an improved diet, and ... we can’t improve the peasants’ diet. That’s not our job. We’re doctors.”

I didn’t realise, when I booked a brief holiday in the Po Delta, that I would be staying at the heart of the Italian quinoa supply chain

Tara Schmidt, lead dietitian for the Mayo Clinic Diet, shares her thoughts on diet, diets and dietary advice

In the past few decades Puglia has improved its food, wine and olive oil almost beyond recognition

For much of the world, food has never been as abundant or as inexpensive as it is now, but at what cost?

Size and market concentration lock farmers onto a technological treadmill that does nobody any good, excpet for the giant corporations and their shareholders

A new book looks beyond the hype to chronicle the effect of an unsustainable boom on the entire quinoa trade in Peru

“The more that the pig comes to signify Jewish identity, the more it comes to signify Christian identity, and vice versa.”

“What kind of food system do we want for the future? What kind of questions should we be asking? Whose questions matter? What kind of questions matter and what kind of expertise is considered relevant to the question of what the future of food should be like?”

“On the eve of a quarter day, the time is liminal, so there’s kind of a thinning of the space between the real world and the other world.”

Gilda; how Rita Hayworth might have inspired the original anchovy-on-a-toothpick

“In a way, the multinational food industry is providing solutions for women.”

What foods do poor people buy when they have a bit more money? What you might expect, but not as much of it as you might expect.

“Is it because of high prices? Is it because of low incomes? Or is it because ... you can’t see, taste, or smell the nutritional composition of food?”

”You know, anchovies are in our blood. My family’s been eating them for 500 years.” Er, no. Not really.

To some, they’re stinky little fish in a tin can. To others, they’re a deep hit of umami delight that honour the work of women.

”Insect farming mostly adds an inefficient and expensive layer to the food system we already have.”

The diease that has already killed 11 million olive trees in the south of Puglia might be a blessing in disguise

Louise Gray’s new book dives deep into the trade-offs that accompany every food choice we make, where nothing is as simple as it seems.

Why are some people tap-water hesitant and what do we expect water to taste like anyway?

“I thought, okay, I’m eating meat, but am I supposed to be eating meat? Would I ever kill an animal myself? Would I ever butcher an animal?”

Throughout history, people repurposed food leftovers and surplus and animal byproducts, challenging the modern perception of them as waste.

In the end, the meaning of chametz rests on history and tradition, and new traditions are possible.

God’s original instructions for Passover did not include one of the crucial items on the Seder plate.

Ordinarily, evading food rationing in times of war is considered a crime. There are times when it must be accepted as a necessity.

The European Union has failed to implement one of the most effective public health interventions, one that the United Kingdom is now able to contemplate.

Pizza Hut says it invented the stuffed crust pizza. A judge agreed. But Anthony Mongiello has US patent 4,661,361, no matter what the law says.

In many respects the diets of farmers and hunter-gatherers were more alike than different

Commercial baby food was perhaps the original industrial food product, with all that that entails