The Food Programme

Sheila Dillon unveils the list of this year's BBC Food & Farming Awards finalists.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

If your experience of sake has been limited to simply 'a hot cup of alcohol after a meal' like Sheila Dillon it's time to listen without prejudice. With thousands of breweries each producing dozens of varieties there is more range than most of us understand. After a slump in sales in Japan young people are now returning to sake and in the UK interest is growing rapidly with top restaurants listing more choices, plans for specialist bars and more people in the drinks trade now qualifying in sake expertise. But how do you know where to start? A lack of Japanese can make bottles hard to understand and when do you drink it hot or cold? What food can you pair them with? How do you avoid the really bad ones? Sake samurai and sommelier Natsuki Kikuya explains how different varieties should be drunk and how the novice can gain confidence . She's joined by passionate sake convert, drinks writer Anna Greenhous and Techno DJ Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman fell so in love with sake he's now taking it to a new generation of young clubbers around the world. Meanwhile the race is on between 2 breweries to produce the first sake in the UK. Will it be Scotland's Arran brewery or the Japanese Dojima brewery which is investing in a multi-million pound operation in Cambridgeshire?Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Dan Saladino explores the fierce debate over how 1.2bn people will be fed in the future.

In her new book, First Bite - How We Learn To Eat, Bee Wilson takes a deep and reflective look at how food choices and habits are shaped, and how they can be changed.Sheila Dillon is joined by Bee Wilson and special guests to discuss the book's surprising findings, and how to make positive changes where positive change is needed.Sheila and Bee are joined by Rosie Boycott, who advises the Mayor of London on food and is Chair of the London Food Board, as well as father and son Geoff and Anthony Whitington who star in the just-released film Fixing Dad, which documents Geoff's struggles with type 2 diabetes and his two sons' efforts to help him.Dan Saladino tells the story of Professor Pekka Puska, who as a young public health doctor in the 1970s spearheaded the North Karelia Project in Finland, which in the context of a population with the highest rates of death from heart disease in the world, aimed to improve the way that a whole region ate.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Ultra-marathon champ and vegan Scott Jurek tells Dan Saladino how to eat and run 100 miles. Fermented food and Paleo diets are also put to the test in Food and Running Part 2.

Dan Saladino meets the people working to improve the food future of Newcastle.

Welcome to Cardiff, Croeso i Caerdydd. The capital of Wales and the fastest growing urban population in the UK. For centuries, people have come to the city to live from Wales, and from far beyond the country's borders, attracted by the prospect of a life between the sea and the hills. It's a city with, at once an international community and a strong Welsh identity.In this programme Sheila Dillon travels to Wales to find out what this has to bare on the city's food scene. She hears how modern redevelopment is pulling in big restaurant chains, whilst small scale food businesses come up with imaginative ideas to stay in the game. She discovers a part of the city which still reflects the mass immigration into Cardiff docks of the 19th century. Food businesses which are evolving as today's migrants take the helm. She tries a truly home-grown brew, made with crowd grown hops by Cardiffians, and she gets a taste of the city's most revered pastry encased creation. This is a city where food means more than it might first appear.

When the Food Programme went to Leeds to cover its growing food and drink scene many areas of the city had recently been flooded. At the time community groups, including Muslims and Sikhs, were taking part in a food operation to feed those forced out of their homes - meeting the fundamental need for food while showing the strength of the community. Dan Saladino explores the city - which has historic links to supermarket chains, wealth from the textiles industry and 'Leeds Dripping Riots'. The last 2 years have seen a thriving independent food and drink movement, with innovators starting projects which are changing the face of Leeds but also inspiring others around the world. Adam Smith was working in Australia when he became aware and angered at the scale of edible food being wasted. After being told if he wanted to change the world he needed to change his home town he returned to Leeds, setting up a cafe which intercepted food being thrown away from shops, markets, projects and allotments to 'feed bellies not bins'. The pay as you feel model of the Real Junk Food Project has been replicated across Leeds and around the world with 126 cafes and more in the making. Yet Adam is far from content. At Trinity Kitchen, a radical new model for a shopping mall food court which has drawn attention from others as far flung as Sweden and China. A 6 week rotation of new traders is no mean feat - with road closures and cranes hoisting food trucks into place. Dan also meets Northern Monk in Grub and Grog - brewing quirky ales to match a changing, mainly vegan menu while Northern Bloc ice creams are keeping things close to home with flavours like Yorkshire Parkin and Black Treacle but with their eyes on expansion into the London market.

Sheila Dillon reveals this year's team of judges, and launches the 2016 BBC Food and Farming Awards. Sheila will be catching up with some of last year's winners and nominees and explaining how you can send in your all-important nominations.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

How important is diet to running performance? It's a question Food Programme listener and runner Nicole Marais wanted answers too and so she emailed the programme's production team. This programme explains what happened next....When Dan Saladino went to meet (and run with) Nicole she explained she had tried lots of different diets, from one based on meat, to a vegetarian diet and onto veganism. She was keen to hear the experience of other runners and athletes and how they eat to run.Dan hears from Kevin Currell, Head of Performance Nutrition at the English Institute of Sport, to find out about the dietary advice given to Britain's elite athletes. Adharanand Finn, author of 'Running with the Kenyans', shares his insights into running, racing and eating in Iten, the town where many of the world's most successful distance runners live and train. Kenyan runners eat a lot of ugali, a carbohydrate rich porridge made of maize flour and water.Elsewhere however, others are arguing that a low-carb, high-fat diet will help runners reach peak performance. Author of Born to Run and Natural Born Heroes, Christopher McDougall, profiles diets based on this principle, that fuelled long runs by resistance fighters during the Second World War and early Iron Man events in the 1980's. It's a controversial approach and many believe it's just the latest food fad to be picked up by people in the running world.The programme also features Scott Jurek who eats a carbohydrate rich, vegan diet. It's enabled him to dominate runs like Badwater, a 135 mile race through America's Death Valley.Will these athletes and running writers give listener Nicole Marais the information she needs to break her own record in this year's London Marathon? Listen, find out and perhaps go on a run afterwards.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino. Researcher: Camellia Sinclair.