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The Food Programme

The Secret Formula

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2015

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe, many parents in the UK feed their babies formula milk. But what's actually in it?

Sheila Dillon discovers why it's an industry steeped in science and secrecy as well as controversy.

Journalist Ella McSweeney reports from a lab to explain how its made and why formula is at the heart of Ireland's ambition to become a powerful global food player.

Producer: Ruth Sanderson.

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.

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.

0:15.0

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:20.0

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

0:28.3

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

Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.

0:45.8

For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit

0:49.4

W.W.

0:50.3

dot BBC dot co-

0:52.6

UK slash radio four and now enjoy the podcast

0:58.0

See this has got palm oil organic lactose skim skim milk, rapeseed, sunflower, prebiotic fibers, emulsifier is

1:08.0

soylessothin, calcium carbonate, potassium citrate, sodium citrate,

1:12.0

vitamin mix etc etc

1:15.4

biotin this week a food that's now popular all around the world

1:19.3

consumed by millions every day and one we haven't looked at for a while on the food

1:24.2

program. As you just heard it's complex stuff and one you very rarely get to see

1:30.0

being made. So we're looking through a window from the corridor and they're wearing

1:34.6

hair nets and white body suits. We can see it's like NASA HQ here isn't it? The food

...

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