The Food Programme

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

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

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

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, The Kitchen Front: How wartime food strategies influenced our eating ethos

Following VE Day, Sheila Dillon considers the legacy of WWII food and farming practices

Following VE Day, Sheila Dillon considers how WWII food and farming practices have influenced our modern diet - and whether there are still lessons we can learn from that time...

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.

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

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