The Kitchen Front: How wartime food strategies influenced our eating ethos

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Making do, digging for victory, the hedgerow harvest, the garden front: food and farming was front and centre during the Second World War, with hearty phrases like these encouraging the population to pull together and do their bit for the national diet.

Now, 75 years after Victory in Europe was declared, we’re hearing similar language in political speeches and across the media, as we “wage war” against coronavirus, in a country under lockdown.

The rhetoric might be extreme – but as Sheila Dillon discovers, there are lessons to be learnt from the wartime eating ethos; particularly in this current climate of store-cupboard cooking, making do and reducing food waste.

In fact, the war years marked a period when British diets and health actually improved. They also paved the way for agriculture’s Green Revolution, the expansion of processed and industrially produced edibles, and the drive towards cheap and plentiful food for all.

As the UK marks a VE Day anniversary like no other, Sheila Dillon hears how the food legacy of WWII has influenced our modern diets - and considers what lessons we could still learn from the wartime eating ethos.

Presented by Sheila Dillon; produced in Bristol by Lucy Taylor.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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.
0:08.6	It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.
0:15.3	What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism
0:19.8	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
0:28.4	you might not even have thought you were interested in.
0:30.2	Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,
0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:39.7	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:44.6	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:49.7	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it.
0:57.0	Noisy rooks.
1:00.0	Okay, so we've got to pick some apple blossom because I'm making apple blossom fritters.
1:05.6	Weird.
1:07.6	Well that's what I thought 25 years ago when I was recording it when Derek Cooper was
1:15.2	presenting the program and it was the 50th anniversary I was the producer and it was a
1:19.7	chef called Sonia Kidney in the Kotzwolds who made them for him and my memory is that they were quite good.
1:27.0	Anyway, I'm going to try.
1:28.0	So, should we pick a couple of little bunches off this tree. I don't know what kind of apple it is, but...
1:35.8	And we're going to eat these things?
1:37.8	They're going to dip them in batter and fry them. And I think probably they were fried in lard.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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.