Posh Nosh: Food's Class Dilemma

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How much does what you choose to eat come from what social class you were born into, or identify with now? In this episode, Sheila Dillon takes on the often uncomfortable conversation about social class in the UK, British people's obsession with it, and what it's doing to our health via the way we choose to eat.

Sheila is joined at an east London pie and mash shop by the food historian Pen Vogler, whose book "Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain" charts the way these class markers were established and continue to be upheld. She explains how many foods have moved between classes, and why we pedestal imported foods, including fast foods from America.

After a 'posh' Afternoon Tea overlooking St Paul’s Cathedral, Sheila heads to the studio to understand more about the impact of these class markers. How has the food industry used these links to sell more food? and what’s being done to break these connections between food and social class?

Joining her are five guests whose life experiences help illuminate the topic, they are the food campaigner Kathleen Kerridge, TikTok chef Nathan Smith (Grubworks Kitchen), Masterchef judge and food writer William Sitwell, Anna Taylor from The Food Foundation and Dr Maxine Woolhouse, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University specialising in food, class and gender.

So can we ever give these class markers up? Sheila's final visit is to a Community Garden in Hoxton, The Growing Kitchen, where everyone is welcome. Here she meets chairman Tony and member Carmel who share the secrets of their classless community of gardeners and cooks.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Natalie Donovan

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?
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0:19.5	we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.
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0:28.4	podcast.
0:29.4	Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:38.0	Food and class inextricably linked here over the last millennia or so. But why is it still a thing now?
0:45.2	This is the food program and I'm Sheila Dillon. In this edition we've recruited
0:50.1	Penn Vogler, author of Scof, a history of food and class in Britain, and a group of the
0:56.2	thoughtful to do some disentangling of a reality that's still damaging us. I hope it does some disentangling for you.
1:07.0	The next station is Oxstone.
1:11.0	It's uncomfortable talking about it because in this job you get accused of being a middle class chatterer and of course I am middle class now that's inevitable but behind so many of the subjects that we
1:26.6	investigate on the food program there is this class thing it's a real barrier to people eating well and people thinking that that kind of
1:38.8	of food in some way isn't for them.
1:41.5	I find that extraordinary, so it needs understanding.
1:46.3	Welcome to the food program. I'm Sheila Dillon and today in East London on a journey
1:51.6	to understand more about food and social class.
1:57.0	It's very complicated. You know, you'd like to be French or Italian or Spanish and not have to worry about these things where people aspire to eat the same kind of food.
2:06.7	You can't afford the same kind of food, but aspirations are the same.
	...

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