Love on a Plate

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From warming aphrodisiacs in the early modern period, to date-night oysters and champagne or a loving dish of hot macaroni cheese, sharing food has always been a way for people to connect, and in some cases it can make us feel loved or even in the mood for romance..

In this programme, Jaega Wise seeks to uncover some of the reasons why this connection between food and love exists, and asks whether it's what's on the plate that is doing something inside us, or if it's all placebo, and it’s the act and ritual around eating (the setting, the conversation etc..) that can give us these feelings of love.

Featuring aphrodisiac and absinthe pairing at The Last Tuesday Society (east London) with historian Dr Jennifer Evans (University of Hertfordshire); romantic dining at London Shell Co; chef José Pizarro and partner Peter Meades; food writers Clare Finney and Skye McAlpine; experimental psychologist Prof Charles Spence plus research from The Good Housekeeping Institute on the relatively modern Valentine's day institution of dine-in meals for two.

Presented by Jaega Wise Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Natalie Donovan

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
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
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0:19.8	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
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0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:39.7	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:44.5	It has been said that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach,
0:51.6	but let me just be clear. It's not just men. Food is at the heart of everything, right?
0:59.0	With Valentine's Day coming up and all the marketing that's inevitably popped up everywhere, I found myself wondering, why is food so integral to so many of our relationships?
1:11.0	Whether it's sitting down for a Sunday lunch, sharing a bag of crisps at the beach, or
1:16.1	gazing into each other's eyes over a candle-lit dinner. Food is there. I'm Jel-Wise and this is the food program for BBC Radio 4.
1:27.0	In this episode I hope to understand more about why and how food has this capacity to connect and the importance it has in our
1:36.0	relationships. Can it really deepen feelings, help reconcile and strengthen relationships.
1:41.4	But I'm starting this expiration of food and love with of course aphrodisiacs
1:47.0	because they are the ultimate in love-making foods.
1:51.0	I've come to a quirky East London cocktail bar that's not too far from my home.
1:56.0	I've seen they're putting on an evening of Absinthe and Aphrodisiacs in honor of St Valentine,
2:02.0	with an added dash of black magic.
	...

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