Stefan Gates

Stefan Gates
Occupations
Years active1990–present

Stefan Gates is a British television presenter, author, broadcaster and live-show performer. He has written books about food, cooking and science. He has presented over 20 TV series mostly for the BBC, including Cooking in the Danger Zone about unusual food from the world's more dangerous and difficult places. He develops half of these TV series himself, including the CBBC children's food adventure series Gastronuts and Incredible Edibles.

Gates presented BBC One's Food Factory. He wrote and presented the BBC Two series E Numbers: An Edible Adventure, Full on Food and the BBC Four series Feasts.

Gates has also written and presented two BBC Four documentaries: Calf's Head and Coffee: The Golden Age of English Food on food history, and Can Eating Insects Save the World? on entomophagy. He appears as a guest on TV and radio programmes including Newsnight, Loose Ends, BBC Breakfast, Sunday Brunch, The Wright Stuff, Iron Chef, Blue Peter, The Alan Titchmarsh Show and This Morning. Gates was a panellist on BBC Radio 4's Kitchen Cabinet, and has made two radio documentaries.

He is the author of 13 books, including recent titles such as Fartology: The Extraordinary Science Behind the Humble Fart (2018), Catology: The Weird and Wonderful Science of Cats (2021), Rude Science (2024), and Science You Can Eat: Putting What We Eat Under the Microscope (2025), a children's science book that explores food through interactive experiments.

Early life

As a child, along with his sister Samantha, he was photographed for knitwear patterns and appeared separately in commercials and TV dramas, including Poldark and Supernatural. They were the child models on the cover of English rock band Led Zeppelin's album Houses of the Holy (1973).

TV career

Gates presents food programmes including three series of Cooking in the Danger Zone, which has been shown in 25 countries, as well as broadcast globally on BBC World News. In each episode of the series he visits a dangerous part of the world such as Afghanistan, Chernobyl, Haiti and Burma where the living is not easy and the food is unusual. This has gained him a reputation for travelling to difficult or extreme places and eating unusual or shocking food. The series won the Slow Food award for best TV series at the 2008 Slow Food on Film Festival in Bologna and was nominated for the 2009 Guild of Food Writers Food and Travel award.

TV

Radio

Books

References

  1. ↑ "Fartology: The Extraordinary Science Behind the Humble Fart". Penguin Books. 1 November 2018. ISBN 9781849499682. Retrieved 9 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  2. ↑ "Catology: The Weird and Wonderful Science of Cats". Penguin Books. 2 December 2021. ISBN 9781787136328. Retrieved 21 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  3. ↑ "Rude Science: Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About the Science No One Ever Talks About". Penguin Books. 27 October 2022. ISBN 9781787136403. Retrieved 21 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  4. ↑ "Science You Can Eat: Putting What We Eat Under the Microscope". Penguin Books. 24 May 2018. ISBN 9780241301838. Retrieved 21 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  5. ↑ "See the 'Houses of the Holy' Cover Child Models All Grown Up". Ultimate Classic Rock. 27 March 2013. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  6. ↑ "My Life In Travel: Stefan Gates, TV presenter". The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 December 2024. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  7. ↑ Wilkinson, Carl; Wilkinson, Interview by Carl (9 July 2006). "Me and my travels". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  8. ↑ Pass the igunaq! – that's rotten, frozen walrus to you Independent Newspaper interview[dead link]