New documentaries for food lovers

Love food? You may want to check out The Great Food Revolution, a new four-part documentary series being shown on CBC. The first two hours air Thursday, March 19 at 8 pm (8:30 in Newfoundland), the second on Thursday, March 26. Below is the information CBC sent me about the shows’do let me know if you watched them and what you thought.

March 19 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT)

The series launches with The Great Food Revolution‘an exploration of our evolving food preferences in the last 30 years. In this episode, we’ll see how sushi has stormed the North American market to become a regular diet staple on this continent, how balsamic vinegar vaulted from an obscure to an everyday condiment, and the time-saving invention and success of salad-in-a-bag. Go behind-the-scenes to watch as ‘wannabe’ celebrity chefs learn the tricks of the trade at chef school. The change in North American menus, from the simple, traditional home cooked meal to exotic and spicy flavours spurred by the global food trade, will also be explored. The irony is, despite our expanding palettes, people spend less time than ever in the kitchen actually preparing food. Eating out and taking in have replaced home cooked family meals.

Episode Two, The Battle to Get on Your Plate, looks at the fierce competition in the food industry. Last year alone, 18,000 new products were developed for North American consumers. But nine out of the 10 didn’t make it to store shelves. Food manufacturers are in a battle to win over consumers’ taste buds like never before. Exotic, organic and fair-trade are on everyone’s lips. Large grocers must keep up with the trends, to compete with smaller, specialty food boutiques. And new to the food revolution are the ‘locavores’ ‘ an increasingly important collection of farmers, urbanites and chefs who favour locally grown produce and who are appalled by the average 2,400 kilometre-long trek from field to fork.

March 26 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT)

How does New York feed its eight million hungry inhabitants three times a day? 24 Hours, 24 Million Meals: Feeding New York documents the challenges of supplying, preparing and feeding a food-crazed population over a 24-hour period. Meet the people who live and work on the food chain’from dock workers unloading food from around the globe to fishmongers peddling their wares, chefs on the prowl for the freshest ingredients, family shoppers selecting meals for the week and street vendors selling quick bites. Watch as each vies for their place on the chain.

The series finale, Food of the Future, ventures into the great unknown and asks: what kinds of food will we be eating in the next five years? In the 1950s, people predicted that the food of the future would be tiny pills. The reality is far from that vision, as people continue to search for complex and exotic taste sensations including jellyfish or new designer fruits like ‘pluots’ (combined plums and apricots).

In this episode, viewers will be transported to the assembly lines of the world’s biggest food company, to the kitchens of cutting-edge ‘molecular gastronomists’ creating the latest food sensations like liquid ravioli and to the labs of scientists making ‘Petri-dish’ steak.

Join scientists, ‘foodies’, fishermen and world famous chef Jamie Oliver on a gastronomic, but surreal journey into the brave new world of food. See how the meals of our future continue to be experimented with’and how the results could go beyond your wildest imagination.

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