Food Unwrapped (2012) s07e01 Episode Script

1 'We Brits are a nation of food lovers.
Oh! My Goodness! One of those? 'Our supermarkets are jam-packed with products from every corner of the globe.
' Konnichiwa! 'But how much do we really know 'about the journey our food makes to our plates?' Wow! I've never seen anything like it in all my life.
Oh! 'The Food Unwrapped team travel all over the world and beyond' This is like stepping into the future.
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to reveal the trade secrets behind the food we eat.
'Coming up 'I go deep underground, digging for the secrets of salt.
' So can I lick the walls? Course you can.
That's salty.
I look at the extraordinary lengths farmers go to 'to try to keep hordes of hens happy.
' How many chickens are in here? There's 6,000.
'And I hunt for haggis.
' Haggis is as Scottish as it gets.
'Or is it?' That's why they sent me.
'First, salt.
' Hi there, can you just tell me, is there any real difference between dishwasher salt and table salt? 'That's a very good question.
'I'm afraid I don't actually have the answer to it, though.
' Ah.
'I'm assuming it must be a whole different type of salt, 'as in it may be LIKE salt, but not salt.
' - They put a load of chemicals in dishwasher salt, you reckon? - 'Yeah.
' I mean, is dishwasher salt real salt? To find out, I'm heading to one of Europe's finest sources of salt, the Italian island of Sicily.
Makes sense, as it's surrounded by the salty waters of the Med.
But the sat nav is sending us into the mountains.
So I've arrived in Italy.
I've got to say, we've left the coast, we're heading up the hills and it's looking more like a ski resort rather than a beach resort.
We drive higher and higher into the chilly mountains of Petralia Soprana, where we're surrounded by the white stuff.
But it isn't salt.
I hope Dr Giuseppe can explain, why here? - Hi, you must be Giuseppe.
- Hi, Jimmy.
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to meet you.
What a pleasure.
Welcome to Sicily.
It's an amazing place.
Now, listen, I want to know what the salt is doing up here in the mountains.
Ah, it's very funny.
It's very normal.
Try to imagine a million years ago, when earth was below the sea, so all the water was collected like a big lagoon.
The Mediterranean Sea was once an isolated, big, salty lagoon before it linked to the Atlantic and the island of Sicily emerged.
So all the origin of the salt is sea salt.
Right, so can we see the salt? Yes, immediately.
As these mountains formed, they trapped some of the richest salt deposits in Europe.
And we're going underground to find some.
- Look at this.
It's like a humungous cave, isn't it? - Right.
We drive into a complex network of tunnels over 12 levels, like a massive multistorey car park.
And how far do these tunnels go back? Up to 70km.
70km? It is just like a labyrinth, isn't it? As we drive deeper into the mountain, we hit a hive of activity.
Over 100 miners work around the clock, excavating the white stuff.
So all of this is salt? All this is salt, pure salt.
It is incredible, isn't it? It's a kind of a masterpiece.
- It is a kind of a masterpiece.
- It's a masterpiece.
So can I lick the walls? Course you can.
It's very pure.
- It is salt.
- That's salty.
'We're now 1,500 feet deep and almost at the salt face.
' Down here? Over this way, follow me.
Wow! There's these huge teeth just drilling away at the surface.
It's like it's snowing.
'This monstrous machine excavates 2,000 tonnes a day.
'The gradual left-to-right action is key to shaving off salt 'without weakening the mine's structure.
' Just move this forwards - Yeah? Oh, my lord! - .
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right and left.
And that's digging? Yes, that is digging, you see? Whoa! Everything's shaking.
You're scratching now, you are producing.
Now you're producing a track of salt, Jimmy.
Look.
Tonnes and tonnes of salt.
And it goes directly on the conveyor belt.
It's good fun, isn't it, Jimmy? Think your children would like to sit here, like my grandchildren did? They'd love it.
Coming up, I head deeper into the salt mine, to see the extraordinary origins of our everyday essential.
This salt is six million years old.
And this could end up on my chips? Yes.
Next, happy hens.
I always buy free-range eggs because I think, "Well, you know, the hens must be happier "than, say, the barn hens.
" I mean, do we know that for sure? 'Um' Just PECKING AROUND for the answer.
I've been looking into how life begins for a supermarket hen.
So what I'm seeing now is Basically, it's a video all about a hatchery in Holland and so they're dealing with a very big volume of chicks.
The vast majority of supermarket hens begin life in similar hatcheries.
Thousands are born every day and sold by the crate-load to farmers.
But it's what's happening here that I find surprising.
Apparently, each chick undergoes a procedure called beak trimming, at a day old.
This automated system vaccinates them and holds their heads in place while an infrared light trims their beaks.
Makes you think, "Why do they have to do it? I mean, why are they doing this? 'I can see why vaccinations might be a good idea, 'but could there also be a good reason for beak trimming? 'I'm going to meet Mark Williams from the British Egg Industry 'to find out.
' Watch your step.
'We're at a typical commercial free-range farm.
'And they've certainly got plenty of outdoor space.
'But where are all the hens?' If we gently open this door Aw-haw! Hello, ladies.
'There are 6,000 hens in this enclosure.
'They're fed inside using an automated feeding system 'and are free to venture outside via these exits, called popholes.
'But it's sub-zero out today, so most are staying put.
' I want to have a close look at this lady's beak.
This hen has been beak trimmed.
What we don't want is a sharp hook on the beak, which can damage other hens.
We just treat the tip of the beak and that just falls off itself naturally.
We do not cut the beak.
Um, that's an important distinction to make.
And here in the United Kingdom, you know, we would argue we've probably got the highest animal welfare standards anywhere in the world.
Keeping thousands of hens together like this with untrimmed beaks could cause serious problems.
If they peck too hard, they can actually draw blood, and just to illustrate, um, that, you can see the tail of this particular hen, where she has been pecked, and that's drawn blood.
Now, in a really horrible situation, that can act as a magnet to other hens and they can then also peck her.
In fact, pecking problems can be more prevalent in large free-range colonies, when the birds have access to thousands of others.
Has anyone tried to keep hens in a system like this and not trim their beaks? Oh, yes.
Well, what happened Government-funded trial with 20 flocks which weren't beak trimmed.
Unfortunately in, um, one of those flocks, the hens did start aggressively pecking each other.
And did a lot of hens die? - Unfortunately, yes.
Yes.
- How many? It was about a third of them died.
- Really?! - I know.
- A third? You lost a third? - Yeah.
'Later, I meet a hen whisperer' How happy are you? Let's find out.
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and an unorthodox Dutch farmer 'who's done away with beak trimming altogether.
' We are most definitely henpecked.
Next, haggis.
Scotland's national dish.
Or so we thought.
I've been sent up here to find out, what is haggis and where does it come from? So I find myself here in Perthshire, on my way to visit the world's largest haggis producer.
A good place to start, I figured.
- Simon? - Hi, Matt.
- Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
Welcome to Scotland.
You can tell me all about haggis, is that right? - I'll give you your haggis education.
- Is that right? - Yeah, I am.
'And lesson number one is the ingredients.
'And there's an OFFAL lot of them.
' - Traditional haggis is made of what we'd call lamb pluck.
- Mm.
- And the pluck is like a set of bagpipes.
- Right.
- You've got the windpipe and - Yeah.
- .
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you've got, er This is the lungs.
- Yeah.
And then we've got the heart.
We're using ox heart.
OK.
They are beautiful pieces of meat.
Yeah, massive a bit of protein.
And then we've got the liver.
'All of these often-overlooked organs 'are thrown into the mother of all mincers.
' What strikes me is the fact this is really good meat.
'In fact, Simon's haggis is leaner than most burgers and sausages.
'He now shifts over a million a year 'and the majority of those are to England.
' - There's only so much staring at mince you can do.
- Yeah.
'Next, oatmeal, barley, onions and herbs are thrown in 'and then it's ready to be piped into the casings.
' This is a £200,000, state-of-the-art filling machine.
'Most haggis are cooked in a synthetic skin, 'but today, we're doing it the old-school way.
' So this is the small intestine of the ox.
- Would you eat that? - You wouldn't eat the skin.
- Are you going to make some? - Er, if you like.
'Whoa, this machine's a bit swift.
' - Is that it? - Your haggis, job done.
'Couple of jumbo staples and they're good to go.
' - This is the finished haggis.
- Right.
- Ready to go to the cooker.
- Yeah.
And leave it to cook for about two to two-and-a-half hours.
- Ooh, - BLEEP! Sorry! 'I fear I may have leant on the lever.
' Oh, God! Sorry! That's like a pound's worth of haggis.
Time to put these babies in the bath.
Very gentle water, isn't it? Yeah, well, it's about 90 degrees.
- OK, so this is it? - That's the haggis.
There's nothing more Scottish than that, is there? No.
Haggis is as Scottish as it gets.
'Coming up, a historical bombshell' We've got recipes which talk about haggis, but with no mention of Scottish roots or connections at all.
Really? That's going to upset people.
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and guess who has to deliver the news?' Don't shoot the messenger, cos that's all I am.
Back to haggis.
I've been getting the lowdown on Scotland's famous meaty treat.
- Is that it? - That's a haggis.
And there's nothing more Scottish than that, is there? Haggis is as Scottish as it gets.
So where did the delightful idea of stuffing various internal organs into an ox's intestine come from? Historian Dr Sarah Pennell from the University of Greenwich has a revelation.
So these are very old books - Yes.
- .
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which is why they have their own pillow.
- Yes.
- This is a recipe for a good Scots haggis.
- Right.
This is published in Edinburgh in 1782.
This is the recipe that we'll recognise today? Yes.
But this is not the earliest recipe for haggis.
- We've got recipes published in England - Mm.
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which talk about haggis, but with no mention of Scottish roots.
That's going to upset people.
'So let me get this straight.
'The first haggis recipes are in English cookbooks from the 1600s? 'Wow!' When did the Scots claim haggis? You start to see, in the 1730s and '40s, talking about the haggis in relation to the Scottish.
Robert Burns picks up on that and he is definitely one of the creators of the myth of the haggis as a Scottish dish.
Do you think this is going to upset people? I think it might do, yes.
That's why they sent me.
Yes, I've drawn the short straw.
I've been dispatched to share this shock discovery with the good people of Scotland.
So, here's the thing.
I've learnt that, potentially, haggis isn't Scottish at all, and the producers think it would be hilarious to send me up, on Burns Night, the most sacred of Scottish nights, to go and question this fact.
And they've also given me this poem to read out.
See how it's goes down.
'They really had better start giving me the foreign travel stories.
' Ancient tradition dictates the haggis must be welcomed with a whisky and addressed with a Robert Burns poem.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face Great chieftain o' the pudding race He's got a knife! What a glorious sight Warm Reekin' Rich.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extra item on the agenda this evening.
'And this is the moment I've been dreading.
' Matt Tebbutt has a poem about a haggis he'd like to share with us.
Right, OK, hello.
So, I'm Matt and I've been looking at haggis.
Don't shoot the messenger, cos that's all I am.
OK.
My friends, I stand here slightly nervous About this splendid dish they've served us I hate to disturb the natural order But haggis originated south of the border Rubbish! The history books show And I'm not fibbing That haggis is as English As Yorkshire pudding.
- Rubbish! - Rubbish! Thank you and good night.
I thought it was quite clever.
Did he do it all by himself? Oh, my God! Back to salt.
I've journeyed to where no Food Unwrapped presenter has gone before -- deep inside a Sicilian mountain.
Wow! It's incredible! It's like it's snowing.
Most salt is extracted from our seas and oceans, but here it's carved from deep underground, and inside this mine, there's an entire salt factory.
You've got to understand, Jimmy, this is the only place in the world that it's done underground.
- So everything's done underground? - Everything's done underground.
If a James Bond villain had a food factory, - this is what it would look like.
- He would enjoy that, I can tell you.
Miles of conveyors speed the rough salt, freshly cut from the face, to this subterranean processing plant.
There you are.
This is the salt which you mined this morning.
And how old is this salt? This salt is six million years old.
That's incredible.
- And this could end up on my chips.
- Yes.
But before it can be sprinkled, it's got to be jiggled.
Salt, it is first of all crushed, then sieved because we want to get a different grain size.
- So if you want fine salt, chunky salt.
- You have fine salt, yes.
Now this is, for example, it's table salt.
Look.
And which shoulder do I throw this over? Whatever you like.
It brings good luck.
This looks like sugar lumps.
What's this for? Not sugar lumps, this is salt tablets for dishwashers.
- What chemicals have you added to this? - Nothing.
- No chemicals? - No chemical at all.
Are you telling me, then, the salt tablets I put in my dishwasher - is the same as my table salt? - Yes.
There seems to be no limit to what Giuseppe's salt mountain can produce.
So the salt that goes on my roads, the salt that goes into my dishwasher tablet and the salt that goes onto my chips, from here, it's all the same? From this mine, yes.
From other parts of the world, it's different because of the quality of the deposit.
This unadulterated seasoning produces 20 different products, used for everything from curing ham to salting our pasta.
It's shipped all over Europe so we can all enjoy this million-year-old marvel.
Back to happy hens.
I'm looking at the way we farm supermarket hens and I've discovered a dark side to our feathered friends.
I mean, will they be pecked to death? Is that what happens? Well, the worst-case scenario is, yes.
Why do chickens perpetually peck, and is there anything we can do about it? I'm meeting a leading scientist in hen welfare at the University of Bristol.
- Hi, Christine.
- Oh, hi, Kate.
'Professor Christine Nicol.
' Do you want to come and see them? - Yeah.
- Yeah? - Let's meet your hens.
- OK.
Christine's pioneering research into chicken happiness was key to the UK ban on battery hen farming in 2012.
We've got four chickens that we can introduce to, if you like.
Oh, yes.
Hello, ladies.
Thanks to these plucky volunteers, Christine has devised ways to interpret hen behaviour and find possible solutions to deal with hens' compulsion to peck.
Come on, Primrose.
Right, how happy are you? Let's find out.
Where do we go? In this experiment, the birds must push against a heavy gate to get to the food.
Ooh.
It's quite If you think There's a big weight on that.
First, they're offered worms buried in this tray.
So we're really trying to measure how important foraging material is.
Here's Primrose.
She sets her beady eye on the prize.
No problem.
She is having a good old kick about.
She's causing a right old mess.
The birds will be more enthusiastic to have to actually work for their food uncover it, explore it almost like a behavioural need to forage than if we just put food in a bowl.
Let's put that to the test.
No pressure.
You know what's required of you now.
Oh, here we go.
She's not interested, is she? You sometimes see them dithering and they'll turn around and go back the opposite way.
- Ooh.
- Yeah.
- She's thinking about it.
It's taken a while, but eventually the whiff of the worms is too much to resist.
So she did want the mealworms.
And finally, to demonstrate how even just the thought of foraging gets a hen's heart racing, Christine has devised one more test.
That's the little electrode, just pick up the heart rate.
The results make clear that the mere prospect of a good peck is a huge excitement.
And there's that spike of anticipation.
That is really marked, isn't it? And if you allow the hens to forage does it stop them from pecking each other? Yeah, I mean, I can't say it would 100%, but it's probably the most important thing to do to reduce the risk that they're going to peck each other.
The work of scientists like Christine has been key to the conception of a hen farm for the future.
I'm off to the Netherlands to see for myself.
I am definitely in the right place.
Have a look up there.
A giant chicken.
Hello, Peter.
Hi, Kate.
Welcome.
You look very happy.
Are your hens happy too? Yes.
My hens are happy, so I am happy.
Peter Vingerling manages this innovative hen farm that has been designed with contented chooks in mind.
What we did is, we had researchers, scientists, consumers and animal welfarists binding up together and try to make the system for the future.
Unlike most British hen enclosures, the entire side of the night quarters is lifted and all 6,000 inhabitants are encouraged to roam.
Here they come.
Morning, hens! And it looks like a mass exodus.
It is quite surprising that they all flood out like that because you don't often see that.
That is because we don't have that small pop-holes.
When there are dominant hens sitting in front of it, nobody dares to go out.
And here you see that every hen can go out then.
- You step in first.
- Thank you.
Look at all the chickens.
How many chickens are in here? There are 6,000.
Chicken cam.
This farm system provides a woodland area, dust baths and foraging material to ensure these birds' bodies and minds are stimulated.
Of course, all of this costs, and inevitably leads to more expensive eggs.
Now, what I noticed about these girls is when they peck your legs, you feel it, and that's cos they've got a complete beak.
Yes, you can.
You can indeed feel it.
Could they not just turn on each other in these close quarters? As you can see, we give them so much distraction, there's no need to de-beak them.
Peter's birds are fed both in and outside.
Scattering the feed encourages these hungry hens to forage.
They like to spend a lot of time seeking food.
They are occupied now and instead of pecking to each other, they are looking for the food, they are pecking the food.
Oh, my word! Girls, don't draw blood now, please.
- Come on.
- Maybe we try to move on? Let's start shifting.
So, are these hens really any happier than ours? Even with these enriched living quarters, Peter's flock still have a strong compulsion to peck.
And not just each other.
Look at that! We are most definitely henpecked! Next time I travel to Japan in search of the ancient secret behind tofu.
We're at the sea.
Have fish got anything to do with it? I travel 60 years back in time, to investigate if modern portions are making us lot porkers.
Is that for one person? And I'm travelling to Wales to get up close and personal with a new type of milk.
- They don't seem to mind.
- No.
- Wow!