The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

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Sliced Bread Presents: Kombucha

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Kombucha

Sliced Bread

BBC Radio 4 - Sliced Bread, Kombucha

Greg Foot and guests put Kombucha drinks through the evidence mill

Does kombucha boost your immune system? Greg Foot is joined by Blur’s Alex James and experts to put this fermented wonder drink to the test.

Does kombucha boost your immune system? It's the wonder drink becoming popular as an alternative to alcohol, but is kombucha, which some claim can improve your gut health, really all it’s cracked up to be? 

To discuss the science behind these popular health trends, presenter Greg Foot is joined by Blur bassist turned cheese maker Alex James, Dr Bridgette Wilson, a research dietitian from King’s College London and Sophie Medlin, a lecturer and researcher in nutrition and dietetics, also from King’s College London. 

Together they’ll explore the evidence and decide whether these products really are the best thing since sliced bread or just marketing BS.

This episode was first broadcast in February 2019.

Presenter: Greg Foot
Prodcuer: Marijke Peters

Sliced Bread Presents

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast.

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast. Sean Farrington examines the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much.

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up... Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers.    

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt?  

Some of the world's most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world's most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? 

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? 

The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand's fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions.  

From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. 

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in February. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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