Week 9: Frances Soar talks about foreign food.

Week 8: Wing Yip on the first Chinese restaurants in the UK

Week 7: Delia Green finds paradise in an old-fashioned sweet shop.

Week 6: In the days before Tesco, David Gregory recalls the country's first supermarket.

Week 5: Colin Lighten on the changing patterns of mealtimes.

Week 4: Professor Tim Lang discusses saturated fats and saturated markets.

Week 3: Peter Vinson reflects on a time when strawberry picking was a local community event.

Week 2: Steve Rogers on how his childhood love of Indian food spelt trouble for him.

Week 1: Food writer Claudia Roden talks about the importance of maintaining food traditions for immigrant communities, and remembers how British people prejudged Middle Eastern food as “disgusting” and all “eyeballs and testicles” when it first became available in the UK.

Since the Food: From Source to Salespoint project began in 1997, British Library researchers have carried out hundreds of life history interviews with farmers, large retailers, cooks, food campaigners and consumers. From a vivid account of the first UK Chinese restaurants which served sweet and sour, chips and bread and butter, to the use of a stocking to cook spotted dick by the fireplace, the archive contains a wealth of first-hand descriptions of UK food culture from the 1920s to the present day.

"Food Stories is a timely resource, responding to current concerns about food. Within living memory food production and consumption have changed dramatically. Food today is central to key debates about public health, the environment, animal welfare, ethical sourcing and cultural identity," says Dr Polly Russell, a British Library food researcher.

We have taken some of the best of these stories which explore the changing face of British food culture over the last century and made them available in roughly two-minute extracts below.

Food Stories aims to connect young people with the realities and complexities of food and food production. For more information and extracts visit: www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/foodstories

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