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The Food Programme

Food Is Mad - The Update

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4977 Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From the guerilla gardener Ron Finley in South Central LA fighting the law to grow vegetables to the project training children in Brazilian favelas to train as chefs, Dan Saladino has shared some inspiring and life changing food projects shared at the MAD symposium in Copenhagen in 2014. But what's happened since then? He wants to hear what those projects have gone on to achieve.

MAD (the word for food in Danish) was founded by the celebrated chef of the restaurant Noma, Rene Redzepi. In his own words, it's curated by a group of "chefs, waiters, a former banker and an anthropologist". To some it's a festival of ideas, to others it's like listening to a "food mix tape", over two days an audience of 600 chefs, writers and food obsessives hear a series of presentations about cooking, restaurants, food history and activism.

But that was just the start. Ron Finley, a gardener from Los Angeles was prosecuted for growing food in a patch of land in front of his house. He took on the authorities and changed the law. His story has inspired people all over the world. Now his story has been made into an award-winning feature film, showing how other gardeners in South Central LA - gang-members Spicey and Kenya, 9 year old Quimonie and a man just released from a 30 year prison term are changing their lives simply by growing food. Meanwhile FruitaFeia, a Portuguese project to save ugly fruit from going to waste, has 2000 people on their waiting list and is looking to expand while GustoMovida, the Brazilian project training disadvantaged young people is preparing for the Olympics.

Presented by Dan Saladino Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.

0:05.0

Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure.

0:10.0

We hope you enjoy it.

0:22.2

This week we're making a return to a food symposium and on the face of it that could be one of the most unpromising starts to any

0:23.7

addition of the food program I've made. But this event, this symposium is, I

0:28.8

promise, uplifting and thought-provoking. In essence, it's a gathering of chefs, cooks, activists and

0:36.2

writers from all over the world, all doing groundbreaking inspirational work around food, from guerrilla gardening in gang-ridden streets of South Central

0:45.7

LA to giving opportunities to residents of Brazil's favelas by turning them into chefs.

0:52.0

Many of the ideas were new, some were still work in

0:55.1

progress, we wondered what happened next. Well in this program we're going to find

0:59.8

out. But first let's remind ourselves of this extraordinary gathering.

1:05.0

It sounds like a percussionist warming up on the drums,

1:11.0

but it's actually a cook, a sober master and in front of him a

1:15.5

dough made from buckwheat flour and the rhythmic sound is a thin wooden roller.

1:21.0

The dough suddenly becomes long delicate spaghetti-like noodles which are then cooked.

1:28.0

This is real craft. But what might seem strange is that this cook is being watched in silence by

1:36.3

600 people inside a circus tent and in a moment a professor of history from Yale

1:41.7

is about to walk on and talk about ancient Greek

1:44.8

celebrity chefs. This is mad, which actually means food in Danish, an annual event held in Copenhagen with some music

1:57.6

but mostly ideas and stories about food and it was started by celebrated chef Rennie Razzepi.

2:05.0

The whole thing is set up by a group of chefs, a group of waiters, one former banker and an anthropologist.

2:12.0

And of course we have no training in setting up stuff like this,

...

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