The Food We Eat

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2012

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are going through an unprecedented change in how we eat. Developing countries are moving away from traditional diets, and all over the world new types of foodstuffs are edging out foods that have been consumed for centuries. Is this a change for the better, what is driving this change, and how well do we understand what the implications are?

Two influential thinkers - Michael Pollan in the USA and Joanna Blythman in Britain - have written books that, at a time when food choices and dietary advice seem ever more complicated, offer a cry for simplicity.

The most populous nation on the planet - China - is undergoing its own rapid transition. Could the glamour of the western diet really threaten such an ancient and unique food culture?

Sheila talks to Michael, Joanna and the food writer and expert on Chinese food, Fuchsia Dunlop, about the food that we eat.

Producer: Rich Ward.

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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0:39.7	Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.
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0:57.4	in all food cultures and over thousands of years a certain ceremony and ritual has grown up around the whole business of eating.
1:08.0	This is no accident. The act of eating is about much more than filling the stomach.
1:15.0	As a civilization, we're engaged in a big and still very new experiment
1:20.0	with eating in a different way.
1:22.0	Everything has changed so very quickly in China.
1:24.0	We're talking really about the last 10 or 20 years
1:27.5	that you suddenly have fast food, packaged foods
1:31.0	and all these emerging problems associated with the Western diet.
1:35.0	The way we eat, at least in the West, has changed more over the last 60 years
	...

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