Why everybody is a foodie now

KERA's Think

KERA

Society & Culture, 071003, Kera, Think, Krysboyd

4.8 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For many, “The Great British Bakeoff” is must-see TV – and watching it has taught us a lot about food. Ruby Tandoh is a journalist who was also a finalist on the show, and she joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how everyone is a “foodie” now, why hard-to-find ingredients are all the rage even in the Average Joe’s kitchen, and how unlimited access to recipes online has made us more discerning. Her book is “All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now.”

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, Ira Flato here from Science Friday. Each episode we give you surprising facts.
0:07.5	There's a whole phenomenon of moths visiting eyes of mammals. Expert insights. It doesn't
0:13.5	take a lot of brain to run a lion, actually. And we tackle the big questions. How is this going to
0:20.3	affect the future?
0:21.8	From space to climate to tech to medicine,
0:24.7	get a new view on the world around you.
0:26.8	That's Science Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. The studio where we record this show happens to be located on the grounds of the state fair of Texas, which is happening as we speak.
0:48.1	Each state fair has its own regional character, and at least at ours, the sort of classic meal to inhale as you walk around is what we in Texas call a corny dog and maybe a cotton candy.
0:58.8	There's a contest every year for new foods and the standouts are often deep fried. Deep fried butter won a prize in 2009.
1:07.2	So it's hard to know what to make of some of this year's newcomers, which sound like things you would find at a hot new chef-driven restaurant in some gourmet capital.
1:16.1	A beeria ramen bowl, crepes topped with brisket, arugula, saracha, and chummy-churi sauce, and a Dubai chocolate confection featuring gold-dusted brown butter and something called pistachio flaws.
1:28.3	Suffice it to say, none of this is designed to be eaten off a stick.
1:33.3	From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.
1:37.3	It seems everybody is a foodie these days, but how did this happen exactly?
1:42.3	How did it come to be that so many regular people
1:45.0	know about and crave and even cook with ingredients that would have been very hard to find in
1:50.0	any grocery store 50 years ago? Ruby Tando looked into this. She's a journalist and author,
1:56.0	and as it happened, she was also a finalist on the Great British Bake Off in 2013.
2:05.6	Her newest book is called All Consuming, Why We Eat, the Way We Eat Now.
2:07.2	Ruby, welcome to think.
2:09.6	Hey, thanks so much for having me.
2:16.4	You note right off the top here that although humans are hardwired to crave certain tastes like sweetness and to be leery of tastes like bitterness.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KERA, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KERA and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.