Eat This Podcast
Episodes
Oh, poop
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is our excrement simply a waste product, to be dumped out of sight and out of mind? Or is it a valuable resource that we squander at our peril?
How the Brits became a nation of tea drinkers
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Persuading people to drink tea from the subcontinent more or less created the modern propaganda machine
Where did the chicken cross the road?
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The DNA of chickens, sheep and cattle tells slightly different stories about their domestication
A Blissful Feast
01 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Her aunt’s gnocchi were enough to set Teresa Lust on a long and roundabout journey to learn more about Italian and Italian food.
Whole grain labels sow confusion
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We know what whole grain means. Whole grain food? Not so much.
Coffee leaf rust is bad news
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Coffee leaf rust is bad, but at least in the short term it may not be the threat you think it is
Carême at home in New Zealand
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Food for settlers in New Zealand used to be mutton, mutton, mutton and potatoes or potatoes. Not any more.
How the chilli pepper conquered China
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Chilli peppers took a few years to reach China after their initial encounter with Westerners, but rapidly became a very hot item.
It’s coffee, but not as we know it
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Sierra Leone, a hunt for long lost species of coffee succeeds
Alexis Soyer
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A brief look at the life of one of the first celebrity chefs
Questions of Taste
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Are there any universals about more complex kinds of gustatory taste? And how do we learn to talk about taste?
You are what you drink
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Walpole — like all great politicians — understood how to use his tipple to send a signal
Disputations about taste
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I know taste is entirely subjective. But I’m also willing to think about good taste and bad taste and even to use that as part of a value judgement....
The Man Who Tried to Feed the World
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Norman Borlaug gave birth to the Green Revolution, with little thought for the unintended consequences of his work.
Russian Food: Old and New
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beyond the North Wind, the true heart of Russian Food
The book of the Book of Tasty and Healthy Food
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A young Russian woman blogs her way through the only cookbook her grandmother knew -- and gets her own book out of it
Orange-fleshed sweet potato to feed hidden hunger
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A food people don't like, and don't even know they need, turns their lives around
Another cup of coffee culture
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It took more than a hundred years, but eventually the United States too developed a recognisable coffee culture.
Coffee culture in Italy and England
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Espresso is the canonical coffee of Italy, even though the original espresso was something entirely different. How did espresso happen? And what happe...
Why a spurtle makes a superior porridge stirrer
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With a bag of porridge oats in my baggage, I set off for Georgetown University and a date with science
Cow sharing in the European Alps
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike car sharing, when you buy a share in a cow, you are not free to drive her wherever you want. So what do you get?
Pasta Grannies
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Vicky Bennison set out to record Italian grannies making pasta and along the way created terrifically watchable videos
Cashews, the World Bank, and Mozambique
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mozambique used to be the world's largest supplier of cashew nuts. Then along came the World Bank, to help.
How capuchin monkeys learn about food
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Capuchin monkeys are resourceful and smart, which helps them to select a good diet from all the potential food around them.
Fifty ways to cook a carrot
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You can't judge a book by its cover. 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot is not really about carrots.
Porridge
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How did porridge go from a fine breakfast food, albeit one that's easily abused, to the stuff of foodie dreams?
Radish redux
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"All the intrigue of a murder mystery and all the painstaking, arduous pursuit of an archeological dig." For a radish.
When in Rome
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alfredo sauce, made famous in the 1920s, dates back to at least 1390. That, and other surprises of food in the Eternal City.
A sweet sour story
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A downturn in the house-building business set Maurice Gilbert at Ballyhoura Artisan Food Park on the road to award-winning apple juices.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, or
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ignorance, paranoia and greed have damaged the olives of the Salento almost beyond recognition.
Housekeeping
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We all deserve a break from time to time.
Eating Alone
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Some people hate eating alone, others love it, but we all have to do it at times.
Celebrating Passover and Easter
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From the first last supper to the resurrection roll.
A historian of bread on the history of bread
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
William Rubel doesn't think there is good bread or bad bread, but he knows what he likes.
Prehistoric food globalisation
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The first farmers and their crops moved much further, much earlier, than previously thought. As they did so they grew the confidence, the resources an...
We need to talk about meat
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Meat exercises the imagination in a way no other food can match. Some people have always wanted to ban carnivory. For others it is an essential fuel. ...
Better baking through chemistry
18 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fake news. A Senate bought and paid for. Newspapers printing press releases verbatim. And all more than 100 years ago.
Moxie Bread, Louisville, CO
04 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Insights into building and running a very successful small bakery, plus the "super colloidal suspension of fat and sugar" that is a specialty of the h...
Food and diversity in Laos
21 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The staggering agricultural biodiversity that is such an important aspect of Lao food is on display at a new website.
Facts about Champagne: Part 2
31 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There's nothing new about persuading influencers to quaff your brand of bubbly
Facts about Champagne: Part 1
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
From the all-seeing Dom Pérignon to the young bucks of London’s high society, champagne’s true history is absolutely intoxicating.
Good things from Nürnberg
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What makes the lebkuchen from Nürnberg so special?
Is that a pickle …
26 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jan Davison has written Pickles: A Global History, the perfect accompaniment to her previous book, English Sausages.
What a bunch of turkeys
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Spaghetti Carbonara Day, read by the author. (I didn’t steal it; I set it free.)
Just that which is deserved
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is dessert a pointless overindulgence, or perhaps the most interesting and creative part of a good meal out? I know what I think.
A communal oven in Christchurch, New Zealand
29 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A communal oven helps a community to bake bread and rebuild after two massive earthquakes.
Food, power, pubs and politics in Ireland
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The law that protects pubs from the perceived challenge of restaurants was passed by a Parliament full of publicans
Making sense of modern recipes
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Unless you already know what you're doing, modern cook-books may be a recipe for disaster.
Food in prison
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"Food is essentially the sentence," says Clair Woods-Brown.
Winding Down
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What more is there to say? Plenty, of course, but not this time. This is the final episode of this run of Our Daily Bread.
A Perennial Dream
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"If your life's work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough." Wes Jackson
It’s a Hard Grain
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The qualities that make durum wheat so attractive for pasta have nothing to do with the size of the semolina particles from which it is made.
Anything but Grim
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"I began to dream of a binding machine. I dreamed of it at night and I dreamed of it during the day."
Bread and Political Circuses
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes people want bread more than they want democracy. Some governments can't deliver either.
Wheats and Measures
26 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Eight wheat seeds of silver gets you 5 pounds 10 ounces of bread.
Tradition!
25 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nathan Myhrvold is right: "The best bread the world has ever had is being made today.”
Slow, but Exceedingly Fine
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bakers who grind their own grain are all utterly in love with the flour they get. I'm jealous.
Brown v. White
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you are eating reasonably well, it probably doesn't matter which you choose. You can get great white bread, and you can get awful brown bread.
Sourdough by Any Name
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It needn't actually taste sour. In fact, except in a few countries, it need not even make use of a natural leaven.
Breaking Bread
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
All hail Adolf Ignaz Mautner von Markhof. And also Pope Leo IX, Michael Cerularius the Patriarch and assorted wise rabbis and scholars.
Back to Basics
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There's a fundamental tension between the time it takes to make a loaf of bread and the value of the final product.
The Bread that Ate the World
19 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps there's more to flour fermentation than the bubbles that lighten the loaf.
Allied forever
18 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A small bakery in Toronto, Canada, became a behemoth that bestrides global bread and beyond. Phew!
Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
St Anthony Falls powered the sawmills that created the financial capital that laid the foundations for General Mills.
Water and Power
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A large slave-driven mill could grind seven kilograms of flour an hour. A watermill multiplied that twenty times or more.
Risen
15 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ferragosto and the Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary; connected, perhaps, by a sheaf of wheat.
The daily grind
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bashing wheat with a hammer will not give you flour. What you need is a shearing force, which you get by grinding the grain between two stones.
Bread from the Dead
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How Delwen Samuel, an archaeologist, replicated the bread of Egyptian workers of 3000 years ago. This is the episode that should have been called Bake...
The inside story
12 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
That kernel of wheat isn't actually a seed or a berry, at least not to a botanist. The rest of us can call it what we like.
It’s not natural
11 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Synthetic wheat; it isn't natural, but it is a very good thing.
Dwarf wheat: On the shoulders of a giant
10 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Credit where credit's due: The Father of the Green Revolution had an unacknowledged father himself.
Red Fife
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today's Red Fife would not qualify as an official Canadian Western Red Spring Wheat, but that doesn't matter. People want Red Fife because it is Red F...
Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"In order to improve cultivated plants it is necessary to have the 'building material' required ... And to use their most valuable qualities for hybri...
Bake like an Egyptian
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In all probability, the original source of Kamut was a market stall or a small farmer in Egypt, where it had survived as an obscure grain grown by pea...
Hulled wheats
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Farro is not spelt. It isn't einkorn or emmer either. Farro "is an Italian ethnobotanical concept".
At last: agriculture
05 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Very quick or slightly slower, in just a few hundred years, domesticated wheat spreads all over the Fertile Crescent.
What exactly is wheat?
04 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How, and when, did modern wheat arise from its the wild ancestors?
Crumbs; the oldest bread
03 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe you heard about the oldest crumbs of burnt toast in the world. But have you stopped to wonder how the archaeologists found those crumbs?
Boil in the Bag
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It's a trick scouts and survivalists know: you don't need a heat-proof container to boil water.
The Abundance of Nature
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Gathering enough wheat to eat probably wasn't all that difficult.
Our Daily Bread 00
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It's magic, I know. First a pretty ordinary grass becomes the main source of sustenance for most of the people alive on Earth. Then they learn how to ...
Food as Power
28 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1946 Geoffrey Pyke, an eminently sane scientist, put forward the idea of using what little coal there was to refine sugar rather than feeding it to...
Food safety and industry concentration
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do farmers' markets and concentrated food industries that depend on long food chains stack up when it comes to food-borne illness? Truth is, nobod...
Who owns whom in the food industry
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The number of firms that own the food brands you see is much smaller than you think. That's not good for consumers or suppliers.
Whatever happened to British veal?
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Time was when veal calves were kept in the dark. These days, it may be the shoppers who have helped to solve the problem of surplus male dairy calves.
Hoptopia
02 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A hop crop flop in Europe made the fortunes of growers in the Pacific north west of America, none more so than in Oregon's Willamette valley. Ezra Mee...
A visit to Hummustown
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Eating is a political act, as Wendell Berry reminded us. Which is why I was very happy to sample the food on offer by Syrian refugees in Hummustown.
Barges and bread
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Even before the Romans, grain arrived in what was to become London by water, and it continues to do so today, although the mechanics of the trade have...
The Hamlet Fire
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Imperial Food Products fire wasn't really an accident; circumstances conspired to make it extremely likely If it hadn't happened in Hamlet, it wou...
From little seeds …
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A second visit to Scariff in County Clare, Ireland, to hear from the people working hard to save Ireland's vegetable heritage and make seeds available...
Bread as it ought to be
22 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Bethony is one of the leading artisanal bakers in America, but he goes further than most, milling his own flour and baking everything with a ...
Little bits of 2017: Part IV
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Nealon on the plague-stopping power of lemonade.
Little bits of 2017: Part III
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jaan Altosaar on his practical approach to food
Little bits of 2017: Part II
25 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Laudan on the rise and fall of white bread
Little bits of 2017: Part I
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Parke Wilde on SNAP and nutrition
Feeding people is easy
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
First let's decide what kind of food supply system we want, then use that to bring about a renaissance in real farming.
A cheese place
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A trip to the Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork and one of the pioneer cheesemakers there, Jeffa Gill.
Rethinking the folk history of American agriculture
06 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the things you might believe about the history of agriculture in America just aren't true.
Ireland’s apple collection
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Apples picked to perfume a room. Undocumented apples and apples with false papers. Foundlings that could give a supermarket apple a run for its money....
Antibiotics and agriculture
09 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Antibiotic resistance is one consequence of feeding animals large amounts of antibiotics -- about three times the amount given to people in the US. Wh...