Food on a Pension
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Dillon investigates the food lives of people surviving on the basic state pension.
To fully understand the experience of living on a small income and feeling the limitations of older age, food writer Andrew Webb volunteered to spend a week living as his 80 year old self.
Kitted out in a suit that replicates some of the physical challenges of someone twice his age Andrew shopped, cooked, ate and dined for a week as a pensioner.
His right knee was stiff, he was felt unbalanced by weights placed on his ankle and his eyesight was restricted by a pair of glasses replicating a loss of vision. He was also given a pair of gloves that reduce skin sensitivity and created the effects of arthritis in his hands. Ear plugs made him partially deaf. Dressed like this he heads off on a mission to the shops, and on to cook a meal.
With an ageing population, an increase in food prices and cuts to local council services, The Food Programme investigates what our food future might look, feel and taste like.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
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| 0:39.7 | Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program. |
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| 0:59.7 | okay so you're essentially sending me what 40 years into the future? |
| 1:04.0 | Yeah well certainly between 30 to 40 years. |
| 1:08.0 | The food program doesn't have a time machine but in this edition we're sending food writer Andrew Webb |
| 1:15.2 | on a mission into the future, his food future, perhaps your food future. |
| 1:20.3 | You'll find emotionally it's a very powerful experience an overwhelming sense of feeling |
| 1:26.0 | quite introvert and isolated. |
| 1:29.7 | Kitted out in a suit that simulates the limitations of his older self, Andrew's about to step into an |
| 1:35.8 | unfamiliar and uncertain world. He's in his late 30s, but for the purposes of this program he he spent a week as a man in his 80s. |
| 1:47.0 | We've now arrived at a supermarket to do a bit of shopping. |
| 1:51.0 | But I have to say I'm quite enjoying having the stick. You can see why |
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