Label This!

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sheila Dillon investigates the world of food and drink labelling; what has to go on, what doesn't, how we got here - and where things might be going.

A complex legislative framework has built up over many years in the UK - Sheila looks at the shape of today's labelling regulations, seeks to demystify some of the terms, and asks where things might mislead or confuse. On her journey Sheila goes down a rabbit hole, reveals some labelling surprises - and makes use of a time machine.

Her guide is Vitti Allender, who teaches food law at Cardiff Metropolitan University. The programme also features author and professor of religion Alan Levinovitz, Sue Davies who advises on food for the consumer rights organisation Which?, professor of food safety at Queen's University Belfast Chris Elliott who wrote a high-profile report on the UK's horsemeat scandal, Investigations Manager at the Advertising Standards Authority Jessica Tye, and wine importer and writer Doug Wregg.

The podcast and Monday broadcast of this edition also features Dan Charles, food and agriculture correspondent for NPR, on the controversy around the labelling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the USA.

The podcast is an extended version of this programme.

Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You don't need us to tell you there's a general election coming.
0:04.7	So what does it mean for you?
0:06.7	Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points, the ones that you want to know more about.
0:12.4	With our book of contacts, we talk directly to the people you want to hear from.
0:16.8	And with help from some of the best BBC journalists,
0:19.5	we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.
0:23.4	Join me, Laura Kunsberg, Adam Fleming, Chris Mason,
0:26.6	and Patty O'Connell for our daily podcasts.
0:29.4	Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. This is the BBC.
0:35.0	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:42.0	Welcome to our world, cooking to culture, politics to
0:46.4	pleasure. We hope you enjoy it. Here on the food program for decades now we've
0:51.4	been digging for the stories behind the food we eat
0:54.2	ranging through politics pleasure pain even sometimes poetry things are nearly
1:00.0	always not what they first seem.
1:03.0	Perhaps the most prosaic and down-to-earth manifestation of our relationship with food is the label.
1:10.0	The words and pictures on a packet, box, wrapper, bag and bottle are meant to tell us what we need to know.
1:17.0	But they also convey things a manufacturer wants to tell us, the sales pitch, a mix of a story that tells us a lot more than we imagine.
1:26.0	I mean, food labels are really, really political and reflect societal judgments and perceptions of risk and danger and what's good and what's important.
1:35.4	I think labels are fascinating in that way.
1:38.9	Labels are, it turns out, a big story and also a battleground. From what has to go on them to what doesn't.
1:48.0	The labels may not tell you so, but there are a lot of additives and manipulations in an everyday bottle of wine.
	...

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