Sliced Bread

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Sliced Bread Presents: Low and No Alcohol Beer

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Low and No Alcohol Beer

BBC Radio 4 - Sliced Bread, Low and No Alcohol Beer

Are no or low-alcohol beers better for you than a regular pint?

Are no and low-alcohol beers the best thing since sliced bread - or marketing BS?

Sales of alcohol-free beer in the UK have more than tripled in the past five years, and you'll find more types of no and low-alcohol beer on sale in your local supermarket.  

But what does 'alcohol-free' really mean? And are these drinks always better for your health? 

Various listeners got in touch with us about this one, so we enlisted the help of two experts to answer their questions. 

Laura Willoughby knows a lot about no/low alcohol beer as co-founder of Club Soda which says it exists "to help people drink more mindfully and live well”. 

Kerry Torrens is a registered nutritionist who has been working in the food and drink sector for two decades. 

Once again this series we’re testing and investigating your suggested wonder-products,  so f you’ve seen an ad, trend or fad, and wonder if there’s any evidence to back up a claim, drop us an email to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send us a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807.

PRESENTER: Greg Foot
PRODUCER: Jon Douglas

Sliced Bread Presents

BBC Radio 4

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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