The Food Books of 2025
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Leyla Kazim takes a look at the best food books and writing from 2025, and chats to food writer Ruby Tandoh about her new book looking at why we eat the way we eat now.
We hear picks from the rest of The Food Programme presenters - Sheila Dillon, Dan Saladino and Jaega Wise; books to get you cooking and books to get you thinking.
Tom Tivnan from The Bookseller discusses the latest bestsellers, and Carla Lalli - cookbook author and former Bon Appétit food director - helps bust some common myths and even lies we see in about recipe books and in online recipes.
Food Books for 2025: * Serving the Public: The Good Food Revolution in Schools, Hospitals and Prisons by Professor Kevin Morgan * Give It a Grow: Simple Projects to Nurture Food, Flowers and Wildlife in Any Outdoor Space by Martha Swales * Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet by Stuart Gillespie * Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from My Palestine by Sami Tamimi * Naturally Vegan: Delicious Recipes from Around the World That Just Happen to Be Plant-based by Julius Fiedler * WINE: Everything You Need to Know by Olly Smith * Winter Wellness: Nourishing Recipes to Keep You Healthy When It’s Cold by Rachel de Thample * Abundance: Eating and Living with the Seasons by Mark Diacono * Kapusta: Vegetable-Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe by Alissa Timoshkina * Indian Kitchens: Treasured Recipes from India’s Diverse Food Culture by Roopa Gulati * All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh * Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria by Ozoz Sokoh
Presented by Leyla Kazim Produced by Natalie Donovan for BBC Audio in Bristol.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia. |
| 0:11.1 | You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat. |
| 0:14.0 | Ho! |
| 0:14.3 | Ho! Ho! No, no, no. |
| 0:17.5 | I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems. |
| 0:20.4 | Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay? |
| 0:23.7 | It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely. |
| 0:26.4 | Give me hip-hip-hop Christmas bangers every day. |
| 0:28.6 | Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of Lapland. |
| 0:30.9 | Get all kinds of Christmassy. |
| 0:32.6 | Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:42.0 | Thank you. Christmas music on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the food program |
| 0:45.5 | and our annual catch-up and discussion about the food books we have loved this year. |
| 0:51.9 | I'm Leila Kazim. |
| 0:53.0 | Coming up. |
| 0:57.6 | It's the most engaging, clearly written, |
| 1:04.6 | jargon-free account of how we got into the current mess. The year of easy, I guess, is the kind of overarching trend. 23 books of the top 50 have words in the title like Easy, No Fuss. |
| 1:11.0 | This book is so witty and full of personality that it is just an absolute joy. |
| 1:18.0 | What I love about her work is that despite knowing everything there is to know about Nigerian food, |
| 1:23.8 | she writes about it with such warmth and approachability and heart. |
| 1:29.0 | More from our panel of book reviewers in just a moment. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.