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There is nothing closer to the heart and to the stomach to all of us.

This is an enormous subject.

It's a dominating cultural subject.

And yet, where are the museums and the scholarly interests?

Will, in fact, coming along.

At first, there was a degree of resistance,

just as there has been in universities and history departments, but now suddenly the history of food is the new

sex and just about every other PhD student is being asked to do a thesis on some aspect of food. They would never have done that

ten years ago. How do you really engage people in the all-encompassing story of food?

We're standing inside one of the pots in Chocophonica and in front of us is a bowl of chocolate and we want to find

out how people feel that the taste is affected by the sound.

There's a long history of specialist food museums all over the world,

a prune museum near Argen in France, one extolling the joys of Kimchi in Korea, mustard

museums in Wisconsin as well as Norwich, and at least seven dedicated to the potato in different parts of the globe.

But in today's food program, we're looking at three museums with bigger scale ambitions.

Two of them dedicated food museums, both newly opened.

The British Museum of Food, Beemoff, is in a 19th century building across from London's

Southern Cathedral just around the corner from

Borough Market. I found it via a pavement sign that doesn't reveal much but is

...