Eat This Podcast
288 episodes - English - Latest episode: 25 days ago - ★★★★★ - 52 ratingsUsing food to explore all manner of topics, from agriculture to zoology. Eat This Podcast tries to go beyond the obvious to see how the food we eat influences and is influenced by history, archaeology, trade, chemistry, economics, geography, evolution, religion — you get the picture. We don’t do recipes, except when we do, or restaurant reviews, ditto. We do offer an eclectic smorgasbord of tasty topics.
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Episodes
Who owns whom in the food industry
April 30, 2018 11:15 - 22 minutes - 18.5 MBThe 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?
April 16, 2018 11:17 - 22 minutes - 18.6 MBTime 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
April 02, 2018 11:00 - 27 minutes - 22.6 MBA 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 Meeker, the hop king, promoted the gemütlichkeit of hop-picking in the old country as the frontispiece to his book; the reality was somewhat different.
A visit to Hummustown
March 19, 2018 11:52 - 17 minutes - 14.2 MBEating 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
March 05, 2018 08:51 - 27 minutes - 22.7 MBEven 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 changed beyond recognition. One of the last people to move grain by water upstream from London shares her experience and the history of moving grain by water.
The Hamlet Fire
February 19, 2018 20:07 - 23 minutes - 19.1 MBThe Imperial Food Products fire wasn't really an accident; circumstances conspired to make it extremely likely If it hadn't happened in Hamlet, it would have happened somewhere else.
From little seeds …
February 05, 2018 11:44 - 18 minutes - 15.7 MBA 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 to a new generation of gardeners.
Bread as it ought to be
January 22, 2018 12:03 - 28 minutes - 23.3 MBJonathan 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 hundred percent of the whole grain. He’s also going beyond wheat, incorporating other cereals such as millet and sorghum in the goodies Seylou is producing.
Little bits of 2017: Part IV
January 08, 2018 11:34 - 6 minutes - 5.23 MBTom Nealon on the plague-stopping power of lemonade.
Little bits of 2017: Part III
January 01, 2018 13:46 - 3 minutes - 2.66 MBJaan Altosaar on his practical approach to food
Little bits of 2017: Part II
December 25, 2017 12:05 - 5 minutes - 5.11 MBRachel Laudan on the rise and fall of white bread
Little bits of 2017: Part I
December 18, 2017 14:46 - 5 minutes - 4.66 MBParke Wilde on SNAP and nutrition
Feeding people is easy
December 04, 2017 12:06 - 31 minutes - 22.1 MBFirst 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
November 20, 2017 11:23 - 22 minutes - 15.9 MBA 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
November 06, 2017 11:53 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBMany of the things you might believe about the history of agriculture in America just aren't true.
Ireland’s apple collection
October 23, 2017 13:09 - 24 minutes - 20 MBApples picked to perfume a room. Undocumented apples and apples with false papers. Foundlings that could give a supermarket apple a run for its money. Others that don't taste too good but are catnip to blackbirds. A heritage orchard in County Clare, Ireland.
Antibiotics and agriculture
October 09, 2017 11:36 - 22 minutes - 17.9 MBAntibiotic resistance is one consequence of feeding animals large amounts of antibiotics -- about three times the amount given to people in the US. Why is it so hard to regulate the use of antibiotics in agriculture, and how else might we tackle the problem?
1000 days of noodle soup
September 11, 2017 11:04 - 24 minutes - 20.1 MBHow an empty kitchen in Boston triggered a breakfast obsession and a new book on noodle soup.
Pushing good coffee
August 30, 2017 11:09 - 29 minutes - 24 MBIf you really want to do good by spending more on your coffee, you need to look beyond Fair Trade and other certification schemes.
It’s putrid, it’s paleo, and it’s good for you
August 14, 2017 10:55 - 25 minutes - 21.2 MBJohn Speth on how food we may consider disgusting is essential for survival in the Arctic, with added disgusting goodness from Paul Rozin.
Back to the future for the wheat of tomorrow
July 31, 2017 11:38 - 20 minutes - 17.1 MBWheat growers are making use of hugely diverse evolutionary populations to give them the seeds they need.
Getting to know the cinta senese on its home turf
July 17, 2017 11:01 - 18 minutes - 15.7 MBA breed of pigs, well known as far back as 1338, almost vanished in the 1960s. Now it's back, and it's delicious.
A brief survey of the food of Corfu
July 03, 2017 11:00 - 20 minutes - 17 MBSigns of the Venetian occupation are everywhere, as are the imprints of French and British rule. But there are also unique aspects to food and culture on Corfu.
Changing Global Diets: the website
April 24, 2017 11:40 - 17 minutes - 14.2 MBA picture is worth way more than 1000 words when it reveals food trends over the past 50 years for more than 150 countries.
Australia: where healthier diets are cheaper …
April 10, 2017 11:15 - 22 minutes - 18.4 MBAustralians devote almost 60 cents of every dollar they spend on food to unhealthy stuff. They could eat better for less money, but "affordable luxuries" get in the way.
Mistaken about mayonnaise — and many other foods
March 27, 2017 11:19 - 23 minutes - 19.3 MBAlternative food facts tramp across the landscape the hordes of the undead. Tom Nealon's new book Food Fights & Culture Wars aims to lay some of them to rest.
A computer learns about ingredients and recipes
March 13, 2017 12:27 - 13 minutes - 11.1 MBPerhaps you’ve heard about IBM’s giant Watson computer, which dispenses ingredient advice and novel recipes. Jaan Altosaar, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, is working on a recipe recommendation engine that anyone can use.
How much does a nutritious diet cost?
February 27, 2017 12:43 - 24 minutes - 19.4 MBYou can eat a perfectly nutritious diet for a lot less money than the US government says you need. But would you want to?
Food and status
February 13, 2017 12:43 - 19 minutes - 16.6 MBFood has always been a marker of social status, only today no elite eater worth their pink Himalayan salt would be seen dead with a slice of fluffy white bread, once the envy of the lower orders.
In praise of meat, milk and eggs
February 01, 2017 20:12 - 24 minutes - 20.3 MBGiving up on animals as a source of food is a luxury that many people cannot afford. For poor people in developing countries, a bit of animal source food can greatly improve their health and wellbeing.
India’s bread landscape and my plans here
January 16, 2017 12:26 - 8 minutes - 7.27 MBI recommend a podcast and share some plans for Eat This Podcast in 2017.
Long live the Carolina African Runner
January 09, 2017 15:41 - 7 minutes - 6.08 MBIs the Carolina Runner No.4 peanut "the first peanut cultivated in North America" and does it matter anyway?
A deep dive into cucurbit names
December 31, 2016 10:09 - 4 minutes - 3.95 MBContinuing the short season of bits and pieces that didn't quite fit in the year's episodes by getting to grips with the origin of "gherkin" and other names we give cucurbits.
The Great Epping Sausage Scandal
December 26, 2016 12:13 - 10 minutes - 8.49 MBStarting a short season of bits and pieces that didn't quite fit in the year's episodes with a look at the Great Epping Sausage Scandal.
We need to talk about diets
December 13, 2016 14:33 - 18 minutes - 15.1 MBBad diet is now the number one risk factor for disease. Is the world going to tackle the problem?
The Culinary Breeding Network
November 28, 2016 12:07 - 18 minutes - 15.2 MBIf you going to breed vegetables for flavour -- perish the thought -- you need someone to help you decide what's good. Enter the Culinary Breeding Network.
Foie gras
November 14, 2016 12:05 - 22 minutes - 18.7 MBFoie gras offers a fascinating insight into the role of politics in food — which happens to be the subtitle of a new book by Michaela DeSoucey, a sociologist who got caught up in foie gras just before the topic exploded all over the food scene in Chicago.
Wine and cheese
October 31, 2016 12:49 - 16 minutes - 13.7 MBA new technique for asking how one taste affects another confirms a recent change of opinion. White wine is often a better choice than red to accompany cheese.
English sausages
October 17, 2016 12:31 - 22 minutes - 18.7 MBWho knows what evil lurks beneath the wrinkled skin of an "economy" English sausage? And what delights won for the Cumberland and the Newmarket their coveted status of Protected Geographical Indication? Jan Davison, that's who. She wrote the book on English sausages and is the guest in this latest episode.
Whiskynomics
October 03, 2016 12:29 - 20 minutes - 16.8 MBDid you know that malt whisky owes its existence in the marketplace to the stock market crash of 1973-74? Neither did I, so when one of the people I interviewed for the craft distilling episode a few weeks back made that claim, I wanted to know more. Unfortunately, if you just plug "scotch whisky economic history" into an online search engine, you don't find anything of real interest, at least not in the first few thousand hits.
A far from dismal scientist
September 19, 2016 14:24 - 28 minutes - 23 MBSpeculators are responsible for food price spikes? Food price spikes are responsible for riots in the streets? First-world hipsters are responsible for hungry quinoa farmers in Peru? Seeking answers to basic questions.
When is a zucchini not a zucchini?
September 05, 2016 11:25 - 17 minutes - 14.3 MBA story of exploration, aristocracy and promiscuity, all in the service of better food. What more could you want?
Small-scale spirits
August 22, 2016 17:49 - 29 minutes - 24.1 MBPerhaps the most astonishing thing about craft distilleries is how fast they're spreading, at least where they're allowed. British Columbia has gone from 5 to 50 in about three years. The USA now has more than 1000 registered small distilleries, almost a third of which are so-called "seed to sip" farm distillery operations. The British Isles too have seen a mushrooming of small distilleries. This episode is just a taste of things to come.
A visit to Elkstone Farm in Colorado
August 08, 2016 11:21 - 24 minutes - 20 MBIt’s all very well trying to eat local in a place like Rome or San Francisco, where the climate is relatively benign all year round and you can grow a great deal of produce without too much difficulty. But what do you do when you are at an altitude of more than 2000 metres with a growing season that is usually less than three months long? You do what you can, which in the case of Elkstone Farm, near Steamboat Springs in Colorado, means building four greenhouses, one of which is capable of rip...
Xylella is here and it could be dangerous
July 25, 2016 17:15 - 20 minutes - 17.2 MBClimate change and global trade combine to make it ever more likely that new pests and diseases will threaten food supplies. A classic example is playing out now in Puglia, the region that includes the heel of Italy's boot. The disease is caused by a bacterium -- Xylella fastidiosa -- that clogs the xylem vessels that carry water up from the roots. No water means leaves shrivel and scorch and eventually the host plant can die. In 2013, Xylella was found for the first time in Europe, in olive ...
How the Irish created the great wines of Bordeaux (and elsewhere)
July 11, 2016 19:29 - 26 minutes - 21.9 MBYou can thank the Irish Wine Geese for many of the Grand Crus of France.
Back to the mountains of Pamir
June 27, 2016 12:27 - 27 minutes - 22.1 MBIn 2007, Frederik van Oudenhoven travelled to the Pamir mountains in Central Asia to document what remained of the region’s rich agricultural biodiversity. Almost 100 years before, the great Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov became convinced that this was where “the original evolution of many cultivated plants took place.” Soft club wheat, with its short ears, rye, barley, oil plants, grain legumes like chickpeas and lentils, melons and many fruits and vegetables; all showed the kind of divers...
Sweetness and light
June 13, 2016 19:53 - 25 minutes - 24 MBBefore I read Christopher Emsden’s book Sweetness and Light: Why the demonization of sugar does not make sense I had no idea that the statistical correlation of air pollution and the epidemic of “diabesity” was stronger than the correlation with sugar. Or that among the indigenous people of Canada, those who still spoke their tribal language have far lower incidence of type 2 diabetes and obesity than those who have mostly lost their language. Does that let sugar off the hook as a dietary d...
The True Father of the First Green Revolution
May 30, 2016 08:30 - 20 minutes - 16.4 MBToday’s show is something of a departure; I’m talking about someone who is crucial to global food security and yet who is almost unknown. It’s true, as Jean-Henri Fabre, the French naturalist wrote, that “History ... knows the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.” Most people are blissfully unaware of the men and women who created the plant varieties that keep us fed. I say as much at the beginning of the show, when I guess that perhaps one in a hundred peopl...
A brief history of Irish butter
May 16, 2016 13:32 - 18 minutes - 14.8 MBThe Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, features on some lists of the world’s quirky etc. food museums but not others. It ought to be on all of them. This is a seriously interesting museum for anyone who likes butter, and in my book, that means just about everyone. (I refuse absolutely to say anything about the impact – if any – of butter on health, not least because there’s nothing certain one can say.) It sits next to the grand Butter Exchange, built when the Cork Butter Market sat like a colos...