The Food Programme

What's the future for one of the world's most successful and controversial crops, soya? It has become one of the main ingredients in feed for livestock, so crucial in meat production, and it's a major source of edible oil used in food processing and cooking, but have we become too dependent on the soya bean?This year supplies of soya have tightened and the world price is approaching a record high. Because it's so widely used it has become a powerful trigger for food price inflation. For this reason, the food industry is now looking for alternative sources of protein. The rise of the soya bean in the west has been a relatively recent development. Its history as a food crop in south east Asia goes back 5000 years as an ingredient for traditional foods like tofu, soya sauce, Tempe and soya milk. Then, in the 1930's, technology was developed in the United States that allowed the protein and oil in the soya bean to be extracted on a large scale. From that point on it has become one of the most important and widely used ingredients in our food supply. In the last fifteen years alone, the global soya crop has doubled, most of which can be found in north America, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. If world demand increases where will these new supplies of the soya bean come from? Dan Saladino reports on the latest trends.

Despite a long history of use in coastal areas of the British Isles, and with a well-established role in folklore and traditional medicine - seaweed is not an ingredient currently found in many British kitchen cupboards. The raw ingredient is something of an acquired taste, and knowledge of different seaweeds and their uses is not widespread. However, as Sheila Dillon discovers in this edition of The Food Programme, things are starting to change.In food cultures such Japan's, seaweeds have long been an important and treasured food. Through the work of people such as Prannie Rhatigan, author of Irish Seaweed Kitchen, people are starting to rediscover how to cook and utilise seaweeds and are looking again out to sea.With a rise in scientific interest into the unique compounds within seaweeds, appreciation of its unique flavour properties, and trials of its uses as a food fortificant, Sheila asks if seaweed is a food of the future?Producer: Rich Ward.

Sheila Dillon looks at changes to the UK's egg supply following the EU's ban on battery cages and how the food industry is dealing with shortages and escalating prices. Although there may still be enough eggs on the shelves of our supermarkets, the programme discovers that egg products used in some of our most popular dishes are in ever shorter supply and some may even be replaced with egg substitute produced by the dairy industry. Three different food producers explain how the use eggs on a large scale and the impact the EU changes have made on their access to supplies of whole, liquid and frozen products.Producer: Maggie Ayre.

From barrel ageing beer to sourcing intensely bitter hops, Dan Saladino reports on the latest trends in American brewing that are starting to influence British beer styles.The US "craft beer" scene started to take shape 30 years ago. Prohibition in the 1920s and post-war industrialisation brought an end to one of the world's most diverse brewing cultures.In 1979 President Jimmy Carter made home brewing legal again, and soon after, a network of adventurous brewers started to emerge. Known as craft brewers, they operate on a small scale and use traditional brewing techniques but also place great emphasis on experimentation and innovation.American brewer and editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, Garrett Oliver puts their quest for new flavours down to the US losing its own brewing culture and so being free to explore all others. Now a young generation of brewers in the UK are looking at these new US styles and discovering techniques like barrel aging as well embarking on experiments with new, intensely flavoured, hop varieties.

Since ancient times humans have harnessed the power of microbes to preserve food and enhance its flavours. Rich and complex food cultures have developed that use this power in a process called fermentation - making pickles, breads, wines and much, much more.Sheila Dillon joins Sandor Katz - author and 'fermentation revivalist' - to find out more about the wonders of fermentation as well as our very relationship with these microbes.Producer: Rich Ward.

Sheila Dillon looks at the spiritual and therapeutic value many place on breadmaking. She meets a group of refugees who've experienced torture, all using baking in their recovery.Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Simon Parkes takes a look behind the scenes of Britain's favourite snack, the biscuit and as he discovers major change is underway to some of our most famous food brands.Our most popular biscuits, including the digestive and the Bourbon became firm fixtures of British life in the 19th century. The snacks were produced in their millions in places like Reading and York and exported all over the world. Today, we spend more than 2.5 billion pounds eating our way through an ever increasing range of biscuits.It's a world that's now having to adapt to a number of powerful trends. Firstly, as we're being encouraged to eat more healthy foods, millions of pounds are being invested by manufacturers with the aim of "reformulating" some of the most valuable recipes in the food industry. Secondly, with the rise of global food brands, more and more of these iconic snacks are being bought up by a small number of companies.What does all this mean for a British food institution? Simon Parkes takes a close look at the pleasures and the profits behind the biscuit.Producer: Dan Saladino.

Tim Hayward is not alone in his passion for stock, but there must be few culinary adventurers who take things to the level of his highly developed home routine.Glasses still steamy from several simmering stockpots, Tim sets off on a journey into the world of stock. On his travels he'll share precious stock secrets, learn from the masters, tell tales of nineteenth-century Uruguay and peek behind the doors of stock-cube heaven.Producer: Rich Ward.

There's been a huge growth in the range of 'free from' foods over the last decade. Sheila Dillon asks whether this is due to more people being diagnosed with food allergies, or whether retailers and manufacturers are finding their own ways to grow consumer interest in dairy and gluten free foods.Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Richard Johnson reports from Japan on the impact of the Fukushima disaster on food. How has the threat of contamination changed attitudes to the nation's prized food culture?A year ago, Japan was hit by the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In the days that followed, reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima nuclear power station experienced full meltdown. The fears of catastrophic radioactivite contamination led to a 20 km-radius evacuation around the plant, while engineers risked their lives to stabilise the reactors. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, but that wasn't the end of the story. A longer-term food story started to emerge. A testing regime was introduced to monitor radiation levels in the food supply chain. The World Health Organisation is also carrying out its own tests to ensure that absorption of caesium through food, over decades to come, doesn't become a major threat to public health.But as Richard Johnson discovers, confusion and lack of information in the early weeks of the crisis has led to suspicion and mistrust among large sections of the Japanese population. For this reason, the disaster is likely to not just change Japan's relationship with its politicians, but also its food culture. Producer: Dan Saladino.