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Hello and welcome to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander. This week we're celebrating the programme's 10th anniversary with a pick of some of our favourite moments from the past decade. Fishing to stay alive, chopping onions in remembrance and what's so funny about bolognese?

Just a few of the stories you'll hear in this eclectic mix. Each tells us something about our relationship with food and how it helps us connect with one another. And just to say, we will be talking about the sensitive topic of bereavement. Let's start with the basics. When food is life or death.

In Survival Stories, Fish Bacon for Breakfast, broadcast in 2016, presenter Emily Thomas spoke to Steve Callahan from the United States. I'm probably best known for being dumb enough to lose my boat in the middle of the Atlantic and spending the next two and a half months drifting about 2,000 miles and learning to live like an aquatic caveman.

It happened in 1982 when he was 29. In the aftermath of divorce and business problems, Steve decided to follow a dream, to build a boat to cross the North Atlantic Ocean. He did it. On his return journey, however, eight days from the Canary Islands as he headed towards the Caribbean, something struck the boat and it began to sink.

Steve inflated a life raft and grabbed whatever he could from the cabin, knowing it would likely be weeks before anyone found him. I had a can of peanuts, a can of beans, I think it was a half a cabbage and basically not much else. Crucially, Steve had some solar cell contraptions which distilled seawater into drinking water, but he still needed to eat. The water was filled with Dorado fish and he had a spear gun.

I was really hungry. It was one of the times I actually broke down on the raft when I caught the first fish. I couldn't believe at what state of desperation I had been brought to, and it was a really big day for me to catch that food.

Initially I just ate the flesh of the fish and eventually I'd eat basically the entire contents of fish. Fish liver and fish heart and fish eyes. It interested me at the time how my physiology actually heavily influenced my psychology. By the time I was catching fish, I wasn't eating it because I had to. I was eating it because I really wanted to. And as time went on, I actually got less and less interested in the flesh of the fish and

and more and more interested in the organ meats, the eyes, the little discs between the vertebrae, which were nuggets of fluid, and then fresh fish liver became my dessert. I had this whole fantasy going on of different parts of the fish being different things. You know, I'd cut off all the flesh from the backbone and everything and hang it up, and that would be like my bacon for breakfast. I was luxuriating every time I caught a fish and had...

fresh fish guts. Your only company was the birds and the fish, yet you had to eat them to survive. Was there ever any conflict in your mind there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had huge conflict within me, and I got very attached to the fish. The way I looked at it was they were out there playing, hunting, making love, having a good time, and I was dying. They were clearly my superiors in that domain. When you rely on

the natural environment. You come to honor them in a totally different way. As far as I was concerned, they were spiritual beings. It got more and more difficult for me to want to catch the fish. They became my friends and companions. I spoke to them. I wooed them in certain ways. Not only did they provide me with sustenance and become my friends, but in the end, they did bring my salvation.

Frigate birds would come out and hover over the raft because their chief food is flying fish, which is the chief food of the Dorado. And if they see Dorado around, they know there's a good sign that there are flying fish around. Fishermen came out and they saw these frigate birds hovering in the sky and they knew, oh, that's a good sign that there are bigger fish out there. So they came out to find the fish and they found me in the middle of it.

35 years on, has that experience had a lasting impact on how you eat? There's always in the back of my mind a knowledge and respect for food that I didn't have before. I accept the compromise that it's necessary to eat food and to kill things in order to survive, but I'm very conscious that I'm also taking life.

Steve Callaghan, who was rescued near the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe after 76 days, he'd lost a third of his body weight. He went on to write a book about his experience, Adrift, 76 Days Lost at Sea. There are other experiences which can leave us feeling unmoored and at sea. Raw Grief, an episode broadcast in 2018, which won the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Radio Programme, explored our feelings around eating and loss.

Emily Thomas spoke to Amy, whose father had died a year earlier, leaving her feeling very alone. She'd sought ways to feel closer to him, visiting places he loved, but there were too many people listening to his favourite music. But that seemed banal. And then food gave me the kind of sensory experience I wanted, specifically raw onion.

So he was a massive fan of raw onion. Every meal he had, he'd have a side plate of raw onion. Sometimes we'd cut it up for him if we wanted to spoil him. Otherwise, he did it himself. And he'd sprinkle it on most things. And if I had a friend over and they accepted the offer of onion, he thought they were extremely cool. So I started eating raw onion more out of curiosity to see what he liked about it.

And partly to eat it on his behalf. So you can't eat it, so I'm going to eat it for you. Did you like it? No, but it's such an overpowering taste. And I guess, to be honest, I wanted to feel overcome by some sort of sensory experience. And is it something you do regularly now?

Yes, I promise I didn't do it today because I knew we'd be in a confined space. But something you do every day or every week? Three or four times a week. And are there any other foods that you've tried to feel closer to your dad? He's a big fan of scones and I really hate scones. But sometimes I force myself to eat them, again, just to see what he liked about them and to indulge him.

So is this kind of a ritual for you, eating these specific foods, something that you do very privately and quietly, or is it something that you share with other people? It's extremely private, yeah. No one knows I do it. Until now? Until now. Hello, world. Do you think when you stop doing it, it will be because you've stopped grieving, because that process is over? I imagine, yeah.

What do you think your dad would have made of this, of you sitting there eating raw onion with your food? He would love it. The last thing my dad said to me was, should we go out to eat? So I think he would love it. Amy talking to Emily Thomas. In 2020, many of us were feeling alone as the global coronavirus pandemic suddenly cut us off from friends and family.

In the episode My Quarantine Kitchen, broadcast in April of that year, presenter Greer Jackson talked to people about how mealtimes were helping them reconnect with their loved ones and themselves. Here's Golrok Nefisi, an artist living in the centre of Iran's capital, Tehran. In a normal day you hear cars more than anything else and then you hear horns and brakes and motorbikes and people are shouting sometimes.

During the quarantine time, it was quite silent, heavy silence. I could hear birds singing and I could also hear the sounds of spoons and forks from the other windows which are close to my balcony with the heavy smell of food, of course.

In the beginning, I think the first week was just joyful because everything was cancelled. So you had a feeling like a child that school is cancelled so you can stay at home. But of course, you had lots of stress and anxiety at the same time because...

Iran was one of the first countries that was confronting with everything. So news were really horrifying. And I had the feeling that we are the only one in the world after China. But then I saw my friends are sending recipes. They record their voices. And it was also like a love message for me because I...

It was a beautiful request and also it was a reaction to panic and anxiety because the kitchen became a place that you could feel relaxed because you were doing something with your hand and you could concentrate on something essential. Was the kitchen like that for you before? Was it a place where you felt very calm and relaxed? It wasn't a relaxing place.

I remember I used to enjoy a lot to cook for my friends, but it was more like party time. It wasn't a basic need. It wasn't meditating or healing. Now cooking is an act of healing. Gorok also found herself enjoying a sense of solidarity with those living close by. It's often that your neighbours say,

On the other side of Iran, not in Tehran, they bring food for you if they cook sweets or for some religious events, they bring a bit of food to you. But in Tehran, you don't see it always or it's not really common. But my neighbors brought sweets for me. And I remember when I was a child, my mom used to put another food or sweet in the same plate to bring back the plate.

So I did it like I remembered and I was like, yeah, I know the answer. I also have to do something. So I baked cake.

And I put it in the same plate. Really, so you've now got a food relationship with your neighbours. Yeah, exactly. She also criticised my cake and I appreciated it. She was like, yeah, it was good, but it was a bit dry. And I first vowed so close, you know, we don't need to say, oh, thank you very much. We are so stuck together that we can't even criticise each other. Golrok Nefisi in Tehran.

Food often becomes an intense focus in times of crisis. In 2021, we brought together two people from opposite sides of the world's deadliest ever conflict to share their memories of wartime food.

Ingeborg Schreib-Wivorski was a young girl living in Berlin when World War II broke out. Beryl Kingston was in London and remembers food rationing being introduced in 1940 when she was nine years old. We had to register with grocers for all our groceries that were rationed and with a butcher for the meat. And we couldn't go anywhere else other than that butcher and grocer.

to buy food because they got the food to match our ration books. The ration book was actually all labelled so that you had butter, ration, margarine, sugar, tea. They chopped a little coupon out and gave you the tea and then you had a series of points...

that you could use five points or ten or whatever it was to buy tinned food, like tinned salmon or anything there was. Ingeborg, what was the situation in Berlin in the early years of the war? As much as I remember was that we had enough to eat until 1943, 1944. And then it started with rationalising things

At the end of the war, then it really started to become very hard. And especially in the winter of 46, 47, we had a lot of hunger. And many people died of hunger in Berlin. Yeah, we had these carts too, but that wasn't enough to have. So we had to sell glasses or...

furs or carpets to have money to buy. For example, we had to change then our piano for 100 pounds of potatoes. You exchanged your piano for a few bags of potatoes? Yes. Or my mother sold her crystal glasses to buy...

Butter, for example, or to buy carrots, wild turnips. Beryl, looking back now from a time when there's plentiful food, what were some of the worst things you were eating, even if you were grateful for it at the time? Oh, acorns. Acorns? Yes. From the tree? From the oak tree? Yes, oh yes. After the meal...

I was always hungry even after I'd had my midday meal because it was small. The meat we had was a little tiny slice, I mean razor thin, and although we had plenty of dehydrated potato, which we called pom, and overcooked cabbage, which was very wet and watery, and occasionally baked beans...

The meal actually didn't satisfy. And I used to sit out in the school grounds and pick the acorns off and put them in, chew them. And that gave me something else to eat. Peculiar. And you eat that? We had that for coffee. Did you? You were having... The acorns instead of real coffee in Germany. So you were drinking acorns? Yes.

Yes, I got coffee. What effect has this extraordinary experience of food limitations and hardship...

had on you subsequently in later life? I mean, are there food habits you have which you can trace back to these times of rationing? We cannot throw away food until today, until my old ages. And many of my colleagues know the same. We cannot throw away any food. We buy as much as we just need to have. We are very careful with food.

Beryl, is that the same for you? Yes, very much. I wouldn't waste food ever because it's like a sin. Yeah, yeah. I can't throw food away. Yeah, yeah, that's all. Yeah. Yes, that's it. That's exactly how you feel. You think, oh, I can't waste this. I'll turn this into something else. I'll make a soup.

or something like that. Beryl Kingston and Ingeborg Schreib-Wiviorski. You can hear more of their experiences by searching for the episode How Rationing Changed Me. You're listening to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in.

so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It's Ian's Ryan Seacrest here. People always say it's good to unwind, but that's easier said than done. The exception, Chumpa Casino. They actually make it easier done than said, or at least the same. Chumpa Casino is an online social casino with hundreds of casino-style games like slots and blackjack.

I'm Ruth Alexander, and this week we're celebrating our 10th anniversary with some of our favorite moments over the decade, which each reveal something about our relationship with food.

Hello. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'm Ruth.

In the winter of 2022, I was welcomed out of an icy cold northern England evening and into the warm, homely kitchen of Brian and Julie Lamb, who live near Blackburn, with, since May of that year, Maria Dmitriyanka and her children. Maria, Kristina, aged 13, and Artem, aged 7, had come from Ukraine, leaving behind their home, their business, and the rest of their family. They told me how the first meal they'd all shared together had been an icebreaker.

Pasta bake made with a bolognese sauce. I remember this. Why are you laughing? What's so funny about pasta bake? Because Artem wouldn't stop eating it. He just kept eating it and going... Gesturing for more. Yes, more, more. And then when he'd had three helpings, he held up his hand like, stop. Because he couldn't talk, he didn't know a language, so he just with hands...

It was delicious. You were all hungry? Yeah, it was a big journey. Oh, it was nice. Food, has it proven a way to get to know one another? Are you cooking for one another, sharing British dishes, Ukrainian dishes? Everything, don't we? The other week, Julie made a traditional roast beef and all the trimmings, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, all the vegetables.

So this lot... This lot. I mean, our lovely guests. The Yorkshire pudding with salad. With salad? That's novel. Cucumber and tomatoes. Yeah. For the uninitiated, what you'd generally do with a Yorkshire pudding is, oh, you'd have gravy on it, some meat inside it perhaps, but, yeah, it's a warm batter. Oh, they did that? LAUGHTER

They have salad with every meal. Yeah. So we've got some fusion food going on here. You like cucumber and tomato with every meal? Yeah, usually. Julie and Brian were also getting to try Ukrainian foods thanks to Maria and the family she'd had to leave behind in Ukraine. Your parents sent over their own honey?

Oh, yeah. Which was lovely. Yeah, my dad has a few houses with beehives. Beehives. Beehives, yeah. So he does hunting. So when we had a parcel from Ukraine with small things...

They put a jar of honey from home. To me, that meant so much, you know. They're in such a situation, and yet they sent that over to us. They sent a food parcel. Brian, Julie and Maria, whose parents have since been able to join them in England.

The significance of providing family food with love was a theme in Africa's Forgotten Foods, an episode broadcast in 2023, which explored how indigenous dishes were becoming hard to source and prepare as more people moved to cities and away from their extended families. Here's reporter Michael Koloke getting a lesson in how to make the traditional maize dish in Zenga from his auntie Naomi in Nairobi, Kenya.

Okay, and you've been cooking for me for years. So I told you today it's me to do the work. So what do I need to do to make these pieces of meat smaller? I'll give you a mortar. You pour this inside. Then I'll give you a pestle. Basically hit it. You hit it. Yeah, I can see the work is lining up here for me. Here goes. And I remember I used to do this when I was a little one. There you go.

So now I am pounding this maize. It takes quite a bit of energy. Okay, my auntie is taking over here. I think she seems to think I'm not making much progress. Hey, auntie, you're doing it so well. Hey. So, Nzenga is ready now. You want me to taste first? Auntie, as you know, in our culture, I'm not supposed to eat before you. Okay, let me taste. Okay. All right. Let's do it.

All right, Auntie, so you taste your cooking. I should say I contributed a bit. And tell me what you think. It's sweet. Okay, Auntie says it's sweet. Okay, so let me taste mine. It kind of brings interesting memories to me because it's something I last tasted many years ago. Auntie, why do you think people are not making Nzenga today?

that much anymore? I think it has been taken over by rice and other food varieties. I think that when I was growing up, I remember that it wasn't that easy to get rice as it is now. It was quite expensive and very few families would afford it. It was one of those foods that you just didn't eat every day. So instead, people used to make Nzenga. Yes. I think even the millers

So when you actually even go to buy the maize to make the Nzenga, the millers say we don't have it? So I better finish the food here as well and not leave anything on the plate.

There's that look you used to give us back in the day when we did not finish our food. You know, that look that said, you better finish that food on the plate, Michael. You know it, Auntie. You know that, remember that? I don't remember. So you used to do it. You were aware. If I do it now, I will still give it to you. Okay. You have to go north me. Michael Kaloki and his Auntie Naomi in Kenya.

As well as strengthening family bonds and passing culinary culture down the generations, food can help forge the firmest of friendships. Antonio! Yeah? Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here! This is TV chef Gennaro Contaldo with the late restaurateur Antonio Carluccio foraging for mushrooms in their native Italy for the BBC TV series Two Greedy Italians, made by Fresh One Productions in 2011. Collect them!

Bring some to me. Antonio, there's so many. Now you are a donkey, you can carry them. They'd both spent their culinary careers in the UK. When they met, they formed an instant bond, as Gennaro told us in the episode Food Double Acts, broadcast in April this year. There was something which attracted us so much. He was the father figure to me.

Our relationship, I was extremely close. You became like his right-hand man. That's what he kept saying. I always said, no, no, right hand, left hand. Do you want my leg? I said, no. Because everything he was doing, I was doing it.

You made a television series together, didn't you, in 2011 and 2012. It looks like you're covering your face with your hands, but it looked like you were having enormous fun together. It was so much fun. At some time, we don't know what we were doing. LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

Two friends on holiday. It was a joy. It is a joy, incredible, joyful. We couldn't wait to leave England and to go in Italy and discover, and at the same time we were discovering new things. We really went for it. And then, very sadly, in 2017, Antonio died. It made headline news. How would you describe the loss you felt personally? I can't remember that moment.

For a fraction of seconds, so many memories went through. A flash of a memory of 20, 35 years that went one after the other. I dropped everything. I left everything straight to see Antonio. It was bad. I missed him. Oh, God, I missed him. He was more than a friend. He was more than a friend.

You've also had a successful partnership with the chef Jamie Oliver. Would you say that things you learnt from Antonio passed through you onto Jamie? Yes, many things passed me to Jamie. Jamie is like a son. Of course, I have many children. I love them all and I love them eagerly. I take Jamie as my own. What's it been like watching your protégé, Jamie's career, take off?

I love it. Do you know what? I look at him and everything he's doing, I just feel that that's me. Yes, yes, do, do, do, do, yeah, that's me. It's a little bit of me in him. It's been lovely to hear about these two men

close friendships you've enjoyed. Do you think there's something about working with food that means professional relationships can quickly become friendships and really close, firm friendships? I'll tell you only one word. Yes, it is. And do you know what it is? Sharing. It's like you're eating a pizza. You share it with a friend you most love.

Gennaro Contaldo, ending this 10-year anniversary edition of The Food Chain. And we love sharing the programme with you. If you want more of anything you've just heard, all episodes are available online and as podcasts. Just search for the programme title. Also, if there's something you'd like us to talk about or look into for a future edition, please do email thefoodchain at bbc.co.uk.

From me and all the team, past and present, thanks for listening and join us again next week. When you're young, it feels like anything is possible. Maybe you're a little hot-headed, but your optimism lifts you up and your righteous fury can be rocket fuel, propelling you to fight for what's right. You might make choices that put you in danger. You might even make history. I'm Nicola Coughlan. This is History's Youngest Heroes. Rebellion.

Risk and the radical power of youth. Being young, maybe she didn't think too much. She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. 12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history. There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Including a young man called Nelson Mandela.

A firebrand who led the defiance campaign against apartheid. Break segregation laws, ignore curfews, enter the door for white people at the post office, stand on the white side of the platform at the train station. And it's decided that black people are going to do this en masse. And Lakshmi Bhai, the Rani of Jhansi.

India's warrior queen. She was a small woman, leading her troops astride a horse, sword in each hand, taking on the might of the entire British Empire. History is lit up by young people who act on instinct and stick to their principles. Like Julian of Norwich, one of the first women to write in the English language. A trailblazer, but

but at a cost. Why would somebody choose to have themselves blocked up into a tiny little cell with limited contact with the outside world, out of choice? And Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days, who refused to give up her faith and chose to face the executioner's axe. You have someone who is...

knowingly risking death and then ultimately knowingly taking death because there is something that matters more to them than their life itself. And that's a fundamentally heroic position. These are tales of saints, athletes, Hollywood superstars and pioneers. Some heroes are household names. Some have been all but forgotten, like Vasili Arkhipov.

A Soviet naval officer whose extraordinary courage helped save the world from nuclear catastrophe. Well, sticking to your guns on that submarine in that heat, that take guts. That really takes guts. History made by young people. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

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