The Future of Cheese
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan Saladino finds out what the future holds for cheese, including the role of raw milk. It's a story of microbes, mystery, discord and symphony.
Dan is joined by Bronwen Percival, cheese buyer for Neal's Yard Dairy and contributor to the new Oxford Companion to Cheese. Also featuring John Gynther from Arla Unika, cheesemakers Jonny and Dulcie Crickmore, food writer Patrick McGuigan, researcher Dr Mélanie Roffet-Salque from the University of Bristol, and epidemiologist Professor Tim Spector.
Presenter: Dan Saladino Producer: Rich Ward.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This week fresh insights into one of the world's oldest most complex and pleasure-giving foods. |
| 0:09.0 | Along the way we'll be exploring moon-like textures, encountering trillions of strange creatures and |
| 0:16.4 | hearing tragic tales of extinction. |
| 0:19.4 | But like all good stories, we should start at the beginning. The very beginning. My name is |
| 0:25.0 | Melanie Rofais Alk and I'm working at the University of Bristol. |
| 0:28.9 | Melanie has a specialism I didn't even realize existed. |
| 0:34.0 | She studies a rare kind of fat. |
| 0:36.7 | Fats preserved in ceramic vessels in prehistory. |
| 0:41.3 | And in 2012, her attention was focused on fragments of ceramic |
| 0:46.2 | vessels that would hold a clue to our deep food history. Fragments unearthed |
| 0:51.4 | by archaeologists in Poland in the 1970s. |
| 0:55.0 | They found lots of pottery, cooking pots, some balls as well, lots of animal bones. |
| 1:02.0 | And a small number of objects whose true purpose wasn't at all |
| 1:07.7 | clear. Pieces of pottery with holes in which were very surprising. |
| 1:13.0 | What was known was that many of these fragments were 7,000 years old. |
| 1:18.0 | And this is one, for example. |
| 1:20.0 | They're a bit filled with soil, but... |
| 1:22.0 | May I hold it? Yeah, of course. Goodness me. They're a bit filled with soy but. |
| 1:22.6 | May I hold it? |
| 1:23.6 | Yeah, of course. |
| 1:24.6 | Goodness me. |
| 1:25.6 | This is... |
... |
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.