The Food Chain

Listener Melanie wrote into The Food Chain to ask us to make a programme about the rising numbers of people who eat alone. She told us she often dines solo and sometimes finds the experience daunting. So today Ruth Alexander hears from Melanie and from other solo diners – some who find peace and joy in a table for one, and others who would much rather not be alone.With the help of Sociologist Professor Eric Klinenberg from New York University, Ruth looks at what’s behind the global rise in single-person households.And she hears how another Food Chain listener, Malvina from California, brought her friends together around the table, over a video call and how Nishi Singh, determined to enjoy a solo dining experience in Delhi, has turned it into a social media phenomenon.(Photo: A woman holds a spoon up to her mouth as she eats from a bowl. She is sitting at a sunlit table next to a window, with large, leafy indoor plants behind her. She has long brown hair and wears a blue, ribbed, jumper and a silver necklace. Credit: Getty Images)If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]: Lexy O'Connor Sound engineer: Andrew Mills

Elite footballers are among the world's most finely tuned athletes. Every meal is carefully planned to fuel training, maximise recovery and prepare for the next match. But it wasn't always this way.In this episode of The Food Chain, Ruth Alexander explores how football's relationship with food has changed, from the days of steak and beef before a game to today's highly personalised nutrition plans.Sports historian Professor Matthew Taylor traces the evolution of football's food culture, explaining why clubs once left players to fend for themselves and how attitudes began to shift.Former Denmark international goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel reflects on how nutrition changed during his own career, and what modern players understand about food that previous generations didn't.Mona Nemmer, former Head of Nutrition at Liverpool FC and a nutritionist with the German national team, explains what elite footballers actually eat before, during and after matches, how meals are tailored to individual players, and why feeding a squad is about far more than calories alone.At major tournaments, those carefully designed nutrition plans have to work on the move. Giulio Caccamo, who was chef for the US Men's National Team at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, takes us behind the scenes of feeding an international squad. From planning menus months in advance to serving players in hotels, training grounds and on flights, he reveals the logistical operation behind every meal, and why food can be as important for morale as it is for performance.From pre-match pasta to post-match burgers, from sports science to supply chains, this episode explores what it really takes to feed footballers at the highest level.(Photo: Erling Haaland looks up as eats a snack. His blonde hair is tied back. Credit: Getty Images)If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]: Izzy Greenfield Sound engineer: Jack Wilfan

With dining out becoming an increasingly expensive luxury, we find out how to order the perfect restaurant meal with top tips from a panel of seasoned pros. The Irish Times food critic, Corinna Hardgrave, veteran server and podcast host Brittany Felton and chef and hospitality advisor James Knight-Pacheco join Ruth Alexander to discuss how to make the most of a well-deserved meal from your hard-earned money. They cover everything from sharing dishes, whether to trust a waiter’s recommendations and if it’s best to stick to what you know – or try something more adventurous when visiting a restaurant with friends or family. We get the inside track from the diner’s table to the wait staff and of course the kitchen. Brittany Felton explains how her 15-year career as a server means she can quickly assess a table’s needs, even to the extent of working out what kind of meal and evening the diners would like to have. Corinna Hardgrave shares advice from her 20-plus years as a professional restaurant critic, including how to stay in control if you experience pushy or impatient wait staff when eating out. And chef James Knight-Pacheco shares his insight on when is the best time to order the special – and when to avoid certain dishes on a menu. Producer: Sam Clack and Niamh McDermott Sound engineer: Hal Haines(Image: Waitress taking the order of a group of friends eating at a restaurant - stock photo. Credit: Getty Images)

Many of us have our own theories about sleep. Perhaps it's avoiding coffee after lunch, drinking chamomile tea before bed, or having a warm glass of milk. But what does the science actually say?In this episode of The Food Chain, Ruth Alexander explores the relationship between food and sleep, asking whether changing what we eat and drink can help us get a better night's rest.Professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research at Columbia University, explains what decades of research have revealed about the links between diet and sleep quality. She discusses why poor sleep can change our food choices, how certain dietary patterns are associated with better sleep, and why scientists are increasingly interested in nutrients such as fibre and tryptophan.Sleep physician Dr Allie Hare, President of the British Sleep Society, brings the perspective of the clinic. She explains the questions patients ask most often, from caffeine and alcohol to herbal remedies and sleep supplements, and discusses some of the biggest misconceptions people have about improving their sleep.Together, they discuss whether there really are "sleep foods", what role meal timing might play, and how social media trends and expensive supplements can distract us from the basics.Along the way, they answer listeners' questions and share practical, evidence-based advice on the changes you can make today to improve your chance of a good night's sleep tonight.If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]: Izzy Greenfield Sound engineer: Hal Haines(Image: A woman with brown hair, holding an orange cushion, yawns while standing next to an open fridge full of food. Credit: Getty Images)

The history of smoking foods stretches back many years, but when did what began purely for preservation become a highly sought-after flavour? In this episode of The Food Chain, Ruth Alexander explores the origins of smoked foods and finds out why their flavours are so appealing to so many people around the world. She visits a smokehouse run by Michael Price in the port city of Lancaster in north-west England, where he explains the techniques used to flavour a variety of fish, as well as some of the more unusual demands he’s received from chefs. We learn about the science behind smoked flavours from Professor Heather Smyth, a flavour chemist and sensory scientist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. And food historian, Professor Ken Albala, walks us through thousands of years of history via a meal prepared using his own home smoker in Stockton, California. We also investigate the impact of EU legislation with the European Food Safety Authority, following a European ban on several smoke flavour additives, and ask what this might mean for the future of smoked foods.If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email [email protected]: Sam Clack and Izzy Greenfield Sound engineers: Jack Wilfan and Hal Haines(Image description: racks of fish fillets inside a smoker)

Music is part of the backdrop to millions of meals every day. But what if it is doing more than simply creating atmosphere?In this episode of The Food Chain, Rumella Dasgupta explores the growing evidence that sound can shape the way we experience food and drink. From scientists studying how the brain combines hearing and taste, to chefs designing dishes around playlists, we ask whether music has become an ingredient in its own right.Chef Gaggan Anand explains why music sits at the centre of his restaurant in Bangkok, where sound, lighting and food are carefully choreographed into a single experience. Cognitive neuroscientist Ophelia Deroy shares research showing how music can influence our perception of sweetness, bitterness and texture, and explains why flavour is far more than what happens on the tongue.We also hear from Ola Sars, founder of the business music platform Soundtrack, whose company helps restaurants, cafés and hotels tailor the music they play. He shares research suggesting that the right soundtrack can influence customer behaviour and even affect sales.But not everyone is convinced. Dan Keeling, co-owner of London's Noble Rot restaurants and a former music industry executive who signed artists including Coldplay and Lily Allen, explains why he has chosen not to play music in his dining rooms at all.From silent restaurants to carefully curated playlists, from neuroscience labs to commercial dining rooms, we explore the increasingly important role sound plays in the way we eat.If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]

Running a restaurant is hard. Long hours, tight margins and constant stress. In this week's programme Rumella Dasgupta travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, to meet Lisa He and her mum Sophie. Lisa has just put her life and acting career on hold, to try and help her mum save the family's restaurant, the China Star. A video she made documenting her attempt has gone viral, with more than fifteen million views. But is a viral video going to be enough to turn a failing business into a success? Lisa's got to fix the sprawling menu, digitise the paper ordering system and cut costs. Lisa and Rumella meet restaurant turnaround expert David Hopkins from the Fifteen Group in Canada, who's on hand to give advice and to explain why restaurants are such difficult businesses to run. Meanwhile the Mand family in Sydney Australia know only too well what Lisa and Sophie are going through. Last year, son Bhav documented his fight to save his dad's failing restaurant. So how's it doing now? And, in such a difficult industry, when is the right time to walk away? Rumella hears from Carleigh Bond, who made the tough decision to close her vegan fast-food restaurant Forked Up in October 2025. Producers: Lexy O'Connor and Beatrice Pickup. Sound Engineer: Andrew Mills Image description: Lisa He and mum Sophie in their restaurant, The China Star. Lisa is looking at mum and smiling. (Credit: BBC)

Food tours are becoming one of the fastest-growing parts of the travel industry, with tourists increasingly choosing to explore cities and cultures through what they eat.In this episode, Ruth Alexander explores the global rise of guided food experiences and the people building businesses around them.In Manchester, food tour guide Julia Fairburn takes Ruth through some of the city’s best-known food spots, explaining how successful tours combine local history, storytelling and carefully paced eating experiences designed to leave visitors with lasting memories.Eric Wolf, founder and executive director of the World Food Travel Association in Valencia, Spain, explains how food tourism has expanded worldwide into a multi-billion-dollar industry, as travellers increasingly seek authentic and immersive culinary experiences.We also hear from Judith von Prockel, who began creating holidays centred around food experiences more than two decades ago, long before culinary tourism became mainstream. She reflects on how attitudes towards food travel have changed and why people are increasingly planning trips around what they want to eat.And in Malaysia, Pauline Lee from Simply Enak describes the work involved in creating memorable food tours in a growing and increasingly competitive market, where guides must balance logistics, hospitality and cultural storytelling alongside the food itself.From hidden local gems to global tourism trends, we explore why food tours have become big business — and what travellers are really looking for when they book them.If you’d like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]: Izzy Greenfield Sound engineer: Andy Mills Picture: Simple Enak

Making cocktails isn't just about flair - bottles spinning through the air as the bartender puts on a show. It's about precision, perfectionism and people skills.Ruth Alexander meets three world-class bartenders to hear stories about their most glamorous customers, the dangerous ones, and what it takes to make the perfect drink. Hear about the highs and lows; from the glamour of working on a movie set to the what happens when customers turn nasty. What's it like to make this challenging job your career?Plus of course: how to make the perfect martini! (The answer might surprise you!)Producers: Lexy O'Connor and Izzy Greenfield Sound Engineer: Andrew MillsImage description:

Meal prepping is supposed to save us time, money and stress. It is a huge trend on social media, but how can we make it work in our own real, messy lives? Ruth Alexander meets Hannah, a busy working mum who wants help to make meal times easier, quicker and more varied. Could batch cooking be the answer? On hand to offer advice and inspiration are Jess Rice from the US website Budget Bytes and Kevin Curry, who has around two million followers across his Fit Men Cook social media accounts. And if you have ever wondered whether those leftovers are safe to eat, or how long you should leave hot food cooling on the kitchen counter before you freeze it, there is advice from Natalie Stanton, who trains chefs in food safety. If you would like to get in touch with The Food Chain team, please email [email protected]: Lexy O'ConnorSound engineer: Hal Haines (Image: A food container with chicken and vegetables being opened by a woman's hands. Credit: Getty Images)

Potatoes are having a moment.Once dismissed as dull, stodgy or even unhealthy, they’re now back, appearing on restaurant menus, in food magazines and across social media feeds.But the story of the potato goes back much further.In this episode, Ruth Alexander traces the journey of one of the world’s most familiar foods. From its origins millions of years ago to its place in today’s global food system.AJ Shehata, senior sous chef at Fallow restaurant in London explains why the potato forces chefs to get creative.At the Natural History Museum, botanist Sandy Knapp explains how the potato may have been born from a chance encounter between two wild plants in the Andes, an event that made it possible for potatoes to grow underground and spread across new environments.We explore how the potato became a global food. Potatoes USA president Blair Richardson explains how demand continues to grow worldwide, and how the industry is working to reshape the potato’s image.We ask whether the potato’s reputation is deserved. Nutrition scientist Candida Rebello shares research suggesting potatoes may be far more beneficial, and more misunderstood, than many people think.And at the International Potato Center in Peru, scientist Julian Soto works with farmers to conserve thousands of native potato varieties. In the Andes, potatoes are not just a crop, they are part of culture, identity and family life.From ancient origins to modern revival, this is the story of how the potato conquered the world, fell out of favour, and is now being rediscovered, just as new challenges begin to emerge.If you’d like to get in touch with the programme, please email: [email protected]: Izzy Greenfield Sound engineer: Hal Haines Picture: Getty

Ever wondered how anyone gets a job writing about food? Ruth Alexander talks to Melissa Clark, recipe columnist and newsletter host for the New York Times; Laura Rowe food journalist and former content director of Olive and Delicious magazines in London, and Malin Turunen of MatMalin in Stockholm, formerly editor of Swedish food magazine, Allt om Mat.They discuss their first jobs, how their work shapes our tastes and why they think columns about cake matter more than you might think.If you would like to get in touch with The Food Chain team, please email [email protected]: Izzy Greenfield and Lexy O'ConnorSound engineer: Hal Haines(Photo: Woman writes in a notebook next to an open laptop and vegetables on a kitchen counter top. Credit: Getty Images)

The award-winning star of Netflix series 'Salt, Fat, Acid Heat' and author of the best-selling cookbook of the same name tells us about her life through five of her most memorable dishes. The Iranian-American writer and cook has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in the last few years, but has struggled to come to terms with that success and says she still feels like an impostor and outsider. She very nearly took a completely different career path - she tells Emily Thomas that her dream was always to be a poet until a magical experience at a fine-dining restaurant changed everything. Even now, though, she doesn't aspire to run a restaurant or establish a culinary empire - she doesn't like the person she becomes when put in charge of a team of chefs. This episode was recorded at The Cookery School at Little Portland Street and was first broadcast on 30 May 2019. (Picture: Samin Nosrat. Credit: BBC)

In the second of two James Beard Award-winning episodes on food and grief, Emily Thomas explores the food experiences of the widowed.In parts of the world where widowhood is seen as a source of shame, widows might be excluded from mealtimes, forbidden from eating nourishing food, and even forced to take part in degrading eating rituals. And even in some of the world's most developed countries, where widowhood elicits sympathy rather than suspicion, the bereaved are still more likely to suffer nutritional deprivation than those who are still married.No matter where we are in the world, when we’re grieving, we need the nourishment and comfort that food can provide more than ever. But losing the person we eat with most can make mealtimes hard to face, and this can devastate our physical and mental well-being. We hear from widowers and widows about how they managed to find joy in food again.(Photo: Single chair at an empty table. Credit: Getty Images).

Emily Thomas explores how food can help us navigate through the darkest of times - the days, weeks, and even years following the death of someone we loved. In times of loss, should we use food to remember the dead or to reconnect with them? A neurologist explains the science behind grief and appetite, and people who've been recently bereaved talk about the foods and eating rituals that have helped them through it.This programme won the James Beard Award for Best Radio Show in 2019. It was first broadcast in September 2018.(Photo: A raw onion. Credit: Getty Images)

We sit down with one of R&B’s most eccentric and compelling artists, Kelis. Over the past 20 years she has produced era-defining hits like Milkshake, Caught Out There and Trick Me, and sold millions of records. So why did she decide to step away from the mic and into the chef's whites at the Cordon Bleu academy? Kelis tells Emily Thomas all about her passion for food and her latest plans to open a farm-to-table restaurant. We hear how she has struggled to make the culinary world take her seriously, and why she thinks it’s ‘all about the sauce’.This programme was first broadcast on the 24th May 2018.(Photo: Kelis. Credit: James Watkins/BBC)

The Food Chain listens back to My Life in Five Dishes with the renowned Egyptian cookery writer Claudia Roden - originally broadcast in January 2018. Claudia has been credited with revolutionising western attitudes to Middle Eastern and Jewish food. She tells Emily Thomas about her journey from a comfortable childhood in Cairo to exile in 1950s Britain. She explains how a longing for home led her to painstakingly collect recipes from across the Middle East, and how she turned them into classic cookbooks that have inspired generations of chefs. Find out what she makes of today's culinary scene, and the best way to get honey off a spoon.(Photo: Claudia Roden. Credit: Jamie Lau)

The Food Chain listens back to My Life in Five Dishes with chef and broadcaster Gordon Ramsay, originally broadcast in January 2018. Gordon is world-famous, but as he tells Emily Thomas, people no longer want to talk about his food. The celebrity has becomes known as much for his TV programmes displaying his fiery temper and explosive outbursts, as for his culinary skills. In this interview, the focus is firmly back on the food, as Gordon describes the five most unforgettable meals he’s ever eaten, and how they have shaped him as a chef – from his mother’s macaroni and cheese on a council estate in the West Midlands, to smuggled cheese soufflés at Le Gavroche.Gordon's dishes are: Mum's Mac and Cheese with smoked bacon; soufflé Suissesse at Le Gavroche; braised pigs' trotters with cabbage at Casa Del Pescatore near Verona; rum baba at Le Louis XV; and his own chickpea curry.(Photo: Gordon Ramsay. Credit: Laura Palmer/BBC)

Join us for five unforgettable dishes from one extraordinary life as the food writer and actress Madhur Jaffrey reveals some rather surprising mealtimes - from a swimming lesson with a watermelon, to a dinner disaster with jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie.The food writer and award-winning actress has written more than 15 cookbooks, many of them bestsellers, and has been credited with changing the way people outside India think about the country’s food. She joins Emily Thomas to talk about the meals that have shaped her remarkable career.This episode was first broadcast on 17 October 2017. (Photo: Madhur Jaffrey. Credit: Manny Carabel/WireImage via Getty Images)