Eat Your Way to Power: Food and Politics on the Campaign Trail
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Food can tell us a lot about our politicians, at least that seems to be what we think. We love to see them eat and we obsess about what goes in their mouths. It can be a high-wire act. Do it right to prove that you are just like your voters but do it wrong and you are a slob, a phoney or a weirdo.
In this week’s food programme Sheila Dillon investigates the power of public eating in political campaigning. We talk to Trump’s former communications Director Anthony 'The Mooch' Scaramucci about the president’s love of fast food and why he communicates so well through what he eats. Ed Miliband’s former advisor Ayesha Hazarika tells us why photos of him eating a bacon sandwich had measurable effect on the 2015 General Election. We also talk to James Beard winning photo journalist Gary He about his time with some of the Democratic Candidates taking photos of every single thing they ate.
Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Sam Grist for BBC Audio in Bristol
Transcript
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| 0:44.6 | Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:49.7 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. |
| 0:54.7 | We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:57.3 | We give you some little quick salads that the first lady will make along with the second lady they'll make some |
| 1:04.2 | salads and I said you guys aren't into salads. Donald Trump entertaining a |
| 1:09.2 | South Carolina college football crowd at the White House during a government shutdown |
| 1:14.2 | that closed the presidential kitchens. |
| 1:16.7 | So we actually, we bought a thousand Burger King, All America companies, Burger King, |
| 1:22.3 | Wendy's, and McDonald's. |
| 1:25.0 | We have Big Macs, we have quarter pound and sichies, we have everything that I like that you like. |
| 1:30.3 | And I know no matter what we did, there's nothing you can have that's better than that, right? |
| 1:35.0 | The political leader who's really shown us the power of food as connection and identification. |
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