Food Unwrapped (2012) s08e04 Episode Script
Bell Peppers, Leeks, Manuka Honey
1 'We Brits are a nation of food lovers.
' Oh, my goodness! Oh, hello.
'Our supermarkets are jam-packed with products 'from every corner of the globe.
' Konichiwa! '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.
'.
.
to reveal the trade secrets behind the food we eat.
' 'Coming up, I take to the skies above Israel 'on a mission to protect their pepper crop from attack.
' 'Me and the intrepid FU crew get bee-proofed, as we lift the lid 'on manuka honey.
' So you're saying that, ultimately, I'd probably need a PhD.
'And I muck in at the UK's largest leek harvest.
' You perhaps ought to stick to the day job.
'First, bell peppers.
'We Brits love a multicoloured three-pack.
'But what's the difference?' What is the difference between red peppers and green peppers? Didn't sleep a wink last night thinking about it.
So, I'm guessing they come from different plants.
'Yes.
I'd imagine they're a slightly different variety, 'so they probably come from a different tree.
' 'They are grown from different trees.
' Different bush.
'I would imagine so.
' I'll have a good night's sleep now.
'To solve this colour conundrum, I'm heading to Israel, 'where they grow 150,000 tonnes of technicolor peppers every year.
' 'Now, I've met a few farmers in my time, 'but never on an airstrip in the middle of a desert.
' Hi there! I'm Jim.
Hi! Hi, Jim.
Toma Tennay has been growing bell peppers in the inhospitable Arava desert for over 20 years.
- Do all the pepper farmers have aeroplanes? - Er, nearly.
So, what are you going to show me then, Toma? We have to eradicate from this area the Mediterranean fruit fly.
So, the Mediterranean fruit fly exists around here.
Is it a pest? It is a pest.
'Med flies are one of the world's most destructive pests.
'But farmers like Toma have an unlikely means of combat.
' So, what's in here? Here we have a box with the Mediterranean fruit fly.
Look at that.
'Have I missed something? 'Aren't these the very flies he's trying to exterminate?' These are sterile male flies.
- Sterile males? - Males.
- OK.
And once they mate with the females, the females cannot lay their eggs and we don't have the next generation, OK.
'Who'd have thought pepper farming would involve insect matchmaking?' Right, bye-bye flies.
Off you go and mate.
Very good.
'This is biological warfare on industrial scale, 'and to get as many of these bad boys into battle as possible, 'it's up, up and away.
' 'Joining me in the cockpit is ex-Israeli fighter pilot, Shai.
' 'Someone has done a risk assessment for this, haven't they?' 'And guess who's got the all-important job today?' 'Look closely.
You can see the insects eject.
' 'Operation medfly complete.
' 'Later, it's me who's under attack, 'as I enlist some feathered friends in an attempt to crack the pepper colour code.
' Urgh! You [BLEEP!.]
Obviously the birds like red.
Yeah, that's blood.
'Next, manuka honey.
'New Zealand's signature spread, hailed as the creme de la creme of honeys 'and prized for its antibacterial powers.
'But, with confusing labels on the jars, 'how do we know how much manuka is in our manuka?' If it says manuka, it's not going to be anything else, is it? 'Yeah, it's not going to be anything else.
' 'It's like you've got 5+, 10+, 15+' I just didn't know what that number meant.
MPA rated 15.
- Do you know what that is? - 'I haven't got a clue.
' And it's 100% manuka, what I've got in this jar? 'It is.
' 'But, surely, for a 100% pure honey, 'you need the bees to remain faithful to one type of plant.
'Is that even possible?' 'Now, most manuka comes from New Zealand, 'but I'm heading to beautiful Northumberland to see how bees operate.
'And to meet this fellow, Willie Robson, who's a third-generation beekeeper.
' - Hi! - Hello.
- Willie? - Kate.
How are you doing? - All right.
Look at this! This is your office! This is one of the places we keep the bees in.
Can we meet your bees? - Er, we can go to a more sheltered place.
- Great.
- Yeah.
- Let's do it, let's go.
- Yeah.
'Willie has almost 2,000 hives scattered around a 40-mile radius.
' How often do you get stung, Willie? Well, not very often.
'And it's not just me that's made to don a bee-proof onesie.
' Give me a wave.
'Time to get down to bees-ness.
' Gosh, that is incredible.
How many bees have you got in one hive? Well, they say there's 50,000 in there.
'This busy lot collect flower nectar and carry it back to the hive, 'where they make honey.
' 'And, at the moment, Willie's farm is mostly covered in heather.
' And it's just the heather nectar that they're getting right now? Obviously, it's going to be fairly well mixed up.
There's 1,000 plants out there which would contaminate heather honey.
'So, Willie's honey is a blend of different flowers, 'and that's what's known as multi-floral honey, 'which is what most of us have on our toast.
'But, there is another type of honey called monofloral, 'which would suggest the nectar is collected from a single type of flower.
' So, there's no option of creating a complete monoculture here of purely heather to get your monofloral honey.
Oh, no.
This is the wilderness, here.
They go where they like.
'So that begs the question, 'how do the producers of the pricier monofloral honeys like manuka 'get their bees to stick to just one plant?' 'New Zealand is the main producer of this prized honey, 'which is made from the flowering species of the tea tree plant.
' 'Back at FU HQ, I've set up a call with John Rawcliffe, 'the general manager of the manuka honey growers' association, 'who's agreed to let me into their beekeeping secrets.
' So, John, I met a beekeeper and he was telling me - how challenging it is to make these monofloral honeys.
- Yeah.
Because your beehive would have to be in a environment where there is only one flower blooming at that point -- but how do you manage it in New Zealand? The beekeeper works hard to ensure it actually puts its hives in a zone that is predominantly manuka.
We're using the latest technology to do that.
It's quite exciting.
I mean, they use helicopters.
Helicopters? 'To show me how John ensures his honey is legit, he sent me a clip.
They pick up the hives and they fly them into this unique, pristine environment, smack in the middle of a manuka plantation.
That is a bit James Bond, isn't it? It shows where the industry's at.
'Once airdropped, bee squadron get to work and before long, 'it's mission manuka accomplished.
' So, you know for sure that your bees are only going to manuka to get their nectar, and that is it.
It's 100% manuka.
Wholly or mainly, yes.
'So, there's no way of guaranteeing the honey is entirely monofloral.
'But you've got to give it to them, 'these guys are giving it a pretty good shot.
'But, as consumers, 'how can we be certain how much manuka is in our manuka?' 'Later, I learn that working this out needs some serious swotting up.
So, you're saying that I'd probably need a PhD.
'Now, leeks.
' I love a leek, but I'm always a bit unsure as to how much of it I can use.
Do you cut off all that dark green stuff? 'The tough, darker green sections at the top are not edible, and so you're advised to remove those.
'You chop off the long green bits and you chop off the white bit with the roots at the bottom 'so it just leaves the stump in the middle.
' OK.
Oh, I see.
So, you just use the middle bit and you chuck the rest away.
Yes.
'Really?' 'To find out how much of a leek you can eat, 'I'm headed to the UK's leek capital.
'No, not Wales, but the Fenlands of East Anglia, 'to meet farm manager, Jay Senecal.
' Jay, Matt.
- Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, Jay.
'Leek production is booming here, and farmers have invested 'big bucks in cutting-edge agricultural technology like this.
' So, what's this contraption, then? - Right, this is a rig.
- Right.
The output of one of these machines is around about ten tonne a day.
'This beast is a one-stop leek harvesting factory on wheels.
' 'It's 28 metres wide.
' That's huge.
And how much is one of these worth? Er, this is in excess of 300,000.
Wow! That's a lot of leeks.
That's a lot of leeks to pay for it.
And how do you do that? Just the sheer volume that you sell? Yeah.
Sheer volume and reinvesting.
Right, OK.
'As the biggest leek producer in Britain, 'Jay can afford three of these 'and they earn their keep working flat out for ten months a year -- 'and they stop for no-one.
' Think we're going to have to move it a bit.
'Ha-ha, Nicola's got her back to it.
' They'll work round you.
'This field factory is constantly fed by a crew of 25, 'who pick and prep 60,000 leeks every day by hand.
' - Then we'll make a cut here.
- Right.
- To take the base off.
- They'll then remove the skin.
- Yeah.
And then they will cut the stem to length.
- OK.
- So, that's what you end up with? That's what you end up with on the front of the machine.
'Looks pretty straightforward to me.
' - Just grab any one? - Any one.
Basically, roots off.
OK, so he's done about three He's done three to your one.
.
.
to my one.
'Clearly, I'm going for quality, not quantity.
' - No.
- Why? It will dry out because you've just took the base plate off.
All right.
You perhaps ought to stick to the day job.
'Processing right here in the field means all that waste can be 'ditched straight back onto the soil.
' So, how much of the leek do you leave behind in the field? - We leave roughly 50%.
- 50%? 50% of the leek will be left behind.
But that's a lot of leek to lose.
Yes.
- That's perfectly edible.
- Yes.
Does that not annoy you? It is what the consumer wants.
So, we deliver what the consumer wants.
'Coming up, I find out just how much leek is left in the end.
' Everywhere along the line you're losing more and more product.
We're losing a little bit every time.
Back to the leek harvest, and I've discovered something quite alarming.
50% of the leek will be left behind.
Jay's leeks are prepped for packaging right here in the field, in this £300,000 mobile processing plant.
People everywhere! Yes, they take the leek after it's been through the washer, it comes onto the sorting tables.
They've got different graded boxes, have they? Different graded boxes and different gauges which they go by.
Quite handy with knife as well, aren't they? Er, yeah.
This way Jay can save costs.
Instead of transporting all the offcuts to a waste facility, here they can eject them to plough back into the field.
But these bits look perfectly good to me.
So what's wrong with all this then? Out of specification.
We can't sell that.
- Really? This is a perfectly good leek.
- It's perfectly fine to eat.
- So if we complain, the amount of wastage is down to us? - Yes.
Waste! Awful! - It is it's almost criminal, isn't it? - Yeah, yeah.
But then, the consumer, as in me, and everyone else - It's what the consumer wants.
- .
.
has proven this.
The leeks are then sent to the pack house for one final pass before they're popped into the supermarket packets.
Now this is ready to go through a cutter to make all - the product the same length.
- So they're cut again? It will be cut again, but it's machine cut this time.
So every leek will be the same length as it goes into the packets.
Everywhere along the line you're losing more and more product.
We'll lose another 10% before it gets to you, in the packet - in the supermarket.
- And then once you get it home, the consumer will then chop off the green bit totally.
They end up with that piece in the middle.
Yeah.
Amazing.
In the end, most of us only eat around 35% of a perfectly good leek.
Is there as much flavour in the top as there is in the bottom? - Yeah, definitely.
- It's tougher, right? - Yes.
- So if you shred it finer you get the same taste? - Yes.
What there needs to be is a good quality programme, with the occasional celebrity chef thrown in the mix, to show people what to do.
Is Jamie available? Back to bell peppers.
I've been in the skies above the Israeli desert engaging in biological warfare essential for growing the crunchy fruit.
But I'm here to find out, what's the difference between green peppers and red ones? So farmer Toma is taking me into the trenches.
Wow! That's incredible.
Ein Yahav Farming Cooperative is the largest veg produce in Israel, spanning 2,000 acres.
Over 20 million gallons of water is needed, pumped up from huge aquifers.
- So the red one's here.
- Yes, red peppers.
- And the green one's here.
- Yes.
- So what is the big difference then? Here it looks different, but it's exactly the same variety.
- So that's a baby pepper.
- Yes, a baby pepper, and once it gets to the final size it becomes ripe.
And when it becomes ripe, it changes colour.
So that's the green bit, and it starts to go brown, and then finally, with the sun, starts to ripen, it goes red.
- Yes.
- Can I taste the difference? - Start with the green.
Mmmm, fresh, I'm now going to go for red.
Sweetens up.
Oh, sweet.
So although they look different in colour they are exactly the same variety, exactly the same plant.
But as I head for home, something's got me thinking.
Why did Mother Nature decide to make a ripe pepper red in the first place? So back in the UK, in order to solve this mystery, I've been sent to Birdworld!? - Hi, you must be Duncan.
- Hi, you're Jimmy.
- That's me.
Hi, good to see you.
Duncan Bolton is curator here at the zoo, which is home to nearly 1,000 birds.
- Bunch of parrots here.
- Right, I love a parrot.
- These are, er kind of interesting birds.
And with their help, he's going to show me why, in nature, ripe peppers are red.
- They don't bite or peck, do they? - No.
Not at all.
Worryingly, I seem to have the bowl.
Just watch them as you're coming through.
Wow, they're everywhere, aren't they? Whoa, eh-up! Hello.
So, tell me, what's the point of fruit going red? Well, fruits are designed to encourage animals to transport seeds.
- So you turn a nice bright colour, you can - Ooo, ouch! Hello.
Hello.
They're not designer shoes, are they? - No, I just polished these this morning.
- That's all right.
Never mind the peppers, this lot have taken a shine to me! Fruits go red when they're ripe.
What's the reason for that? - Oh! - It's all right.
He's all right.
You look terrified.
There we go, look at that.
He's more interested in your hair.
As long as he doesn't pull any out, I don't mind(!) - What product have you been using? - It's just Just For Men.
I've never had my ears pierced.
I 'Right, focus, Jimmy, why am I here again?' So tell me, what's happening with the different colours in fruits? Oh, you BLEEP! - Did he get you? - He bit my thumb.
That's my my knee! Obviously, the birds like red.
Look at that.
'Yep, that's blood.
' This is like Alfred Hitchcock(!) 'Before I meet my end in a bird enclosure in Surrey, 'can someone please tell me why ripe peppers are red?' The animal needs to know when the fruit's ripe.
When the seeds are good for dispersing.
The fruit turns a nice, bright colour, often red.
Animal comes along, eats the fruit, can't digest the seeds, so it goes straight through the system, out the other end, with a nice little package of manure and grows into a new plant.
Right, so it's like a light shining out to everyone? - "Come and eat me".
- Yep, come get me.
So they're obviously not just attracted to TV presenters, - it's the red of the pepper that they're here for.
- Absolutely.
I bet this bird's never watched any of my shows.
Watches them all the time, mate.
'Back to honey.
' Look at this! 'I've learnt the extreme lengths some makers of Manuka go to, 'to guarantee its authenticity.
' That is a bit James Bond, isn't it? It just shows where the industry's at.
So producing manuka honey doesn't come cheap, which goes some way to explain its hefty price tag.
But what else are we paying a premium for? This is a food mega lab, one of the biggest in the country, and we're here to get forensic on some manuka.
Hi, Adrian.
- Hey, nice to meet you.
- Kate.
You too.
You too.
Dr Adrian Charlton and his team, have been pioneering techniques to identify authentic manuka for the past five years.
OK, come on in.
It's one of the most hi-tech facilities of its kind in Europe.
The food industry relies on places like this to check the spec on foods.
So, Adrian, what's unique to manuka? The degree of antimicrobial activity that the honey has.
Now there is some science behind this.
This is a plate of bacteria.
Bacteria grows around these little holes.
We then add small amounts of honey into the holes.
What you can see, is that manuka honey will kill the bacteria.
And you can see that there are little clear areas that don't have any bacteria on at all.
So, ultimately, that little drop of honey has killed all - the bacteria in that little field all around it.
- Absolutely.
Now the amount of bacteria that are killed can be estimated by working out the size of those disks.
The info from this plate determines the number on the side of the jar in some honeys.
So maybe Adrian can help me decipher the labels.
When I see all these manukas, and they might say UMF or NPA or a whole range of abbreviations that I don't really quite know what they mean.
The labels, really, are trying to reflect the degree of anti-microbial activity that the honey has.
The industry itself has not set a common standard.
There's a good example here.
It says UMF on it.
Now that stands for Unique Manuka Factor.
And the higher the number, usually the impliaction is that that's a better quality product.
OK, so this one says MGO.
Now you can see the scale of the number here is very different.
So what you've got is a whole host of different manuka honeys, that are rated against a whole rainbow of different rating systems? It's like they're in different currencies.
It is.
There's no euro, I guess, in the honey market.
At the moment it's a fully legitimate thing to do.
The guidelines state that to call a honey manuka it must have certain characteristics.
Including a presence of MGO, the chemical largely responsible for giving manuka honey its antibacterial qualities.
They say you only need a presence of this.
We tested five manuka honeys available to buy in the UK for MGO.
The results show all the honeys we tested were legitimate manuka, but the levels of MGO were surprisingly varied.
This mid-range honey by Rowse fared well with five times more MGO than one of its more expensive competitors.
The problem for us consumers is that until there is standardised rating, there's no easy way of comparing how much of this antibacterial stuff is in these jars by simply looking at the labels.
You can convert the numbers between the system, but that's not something that the average consumer would easily do.
So you're saying that, ultimately, I'll probably need a PhD in order to decipher the difference between these two on the supermarket shelf.
At the very least you'd need a calculator! Oh, really.
Next time I climb to new heights in Vietnam to see how they extract the virgin coconut oil that's sizzling away in every health-conscious kitchen.
100%? I'm in Italy to find out what goes into a jar of artichokes.
Look at this place, artichokes everywhere! And with floppy hair and tortured brow, I set out to see why absinthe is the favourite drink of every louche, living poet.
If you consume enough wormwood quickly enough, it's going to have effects.
' Oh, my goodness! Oh, hello.
'Our supermarkets are jam-packed with products 'from every corner of the globe.
' Konichiwa! '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.
'.
.
to reveal the trade secrets behind the food we eat.
' 'Coming up, I take to the skies above Israel 'on a mission to protect their pepper crop from attack.
' 'Me and the intrepid FU crew get bee-proofed, as we lift the lid 'on manuka honey.
' So you're saying that, ultimately, I'd probably need a PhD.
'And I muck in at the UK's largest leek harvest.
' You perhaps ought to stick to the day job.
'First, bell peppers.
'We Brits love a multicoloured three-pack.
'But what's the difference?' What is the difference between red peppers and green peppers? Didn't sleep a wink last night thinking about it.
So, I'm guessing they come from different plants.
'Yes.
I'd imagine they're a slightly different variety, 'so they probably come from a different tree.
' 'They are grown from different trees.
' Different bush.
'I would imagine so.
' I'll have a good night's sleep now.
'To solve this colour conundrum, I'm heading to Israel, 'where they grow 150,000 tonnes of technicolor peppers every year.
' 'Now, I've met a few farmers in my time, 'but never on an airstrip in the middle of a desert.
' Hi there! I'm Jim.
Hi! Hi, Jim.
Toma Tennay has been growing bell peppers in the inhospitable Arava desert for over 20 years.
- Do all the pepper farmers have aeroplanes? - Er, nearly.
So, what are you going to show me then, Toma? We have to eradicate from this area the Mediterranean fruit fly.
So, the Mediterranean fruit fly exists around here.
Is it a pest? It is a pest.
'Med flies are one of the world's most destructive pests.
'But farmers like Toma have an unlikely means of combat.
' So, what's in here? Here we have a box with the Mediterranean fruit fly.
Look at that.
'Have I missed something? 'Aren't these the very flies he's trying to exterminate?' These are sterile male flies.
- Sterile males? - Males.
- OK.
And once they mate with the females, the females cannot lay their eggs and we don't have the next generation, OK.
'Who'd have thought pepper farming would involve insect matchmaking?' Right, bye-bye flies.
Off you go and mate.
Very good.
'This is biological warfare on industrial scale, 'and to get as many of these bad boys into battle as possible, 'it's up, up and away.
' 'Joining me in the cockpit is ex-Israeli fighter pilot, Shai.
' 'Someone has done a risk assessment for this, haven't they?' 'And guess who's got the all-important job today?' 'Look closely.
You can see the insects eject.
' 'Operation medfly complete.
' 'Later, it's me who's under attack, 'as I enlist some feathered friends in an attempt to crack the pepper colour code.
' Urgh! You [BLEEP!.]
Obviously the birds like red.
Yeah, that's blood.
'Next, manuka honey.
'New Zealand's signature spread, hailed as the creme de la creme of honeys 'and prized for its antibacterial powers.
'But, with confusing labels on the jars, 'how do we know how much manuka is in our manuka?' If it says manuka, it's not going to be anything else, is it? 'Yeah, it's not going to be anything else.
' 'It's like you've got 5+, 10+, 15+' I just didn't know what that number meant.
MPA rated 15.
- Do you know what that is? - 'I haven't got a clue.
' And it's 100% manuka, what I've got in this jar? 'It is.
' 'But, surely, for a 100% pure honey, 'you need the bees to remain faithful to one type of plant.
'Is that even possible?' 'Now, most manuka comes from New Zealand, 'but I'm heading to beautiful Northumberland to see how bees operate.
'And to meet this fellow, Willie Robson, who's a third-generation beekeeper.
' - Hi! - Hello.
- Willie? - Kate.
How are you doing? - All right.
Look at this! This is your office! This is one of the places we keep the bees in.
Can we meet your bees? - Er, we can go to a more sheltered place.
- Great.
- Yeah.
- Let's do it, let's go.
- Yeah.
'Willie has almost 2,000 hives scattered around a 40-mile radius.
' How often do you get stung, Willie? Well, not very often.
'And it's not just me that's made to don a bee-proof onesie.
' Give me a wave.
'Time to get down to bees-ness.
' Gosh, that is incredible.
How many bees have you got in one hive? Well, they say there's 50,000 in there.
'This busy lot collect flower nectar and carry it back to the hive, 'where they make honey.
' 'And, at the moment, Willie's farm is mostly covered in heather.
' And it's just the heather nectar that they're getting right now? Obviously, it's going to be fairly well mixed up.
There's 1,000 plants out there which would contaminate heather honey.
'So, Willie's honey is a blend of different flowers, 'and that's what's known as multi-floral honey, 'which is what most of us have on our toast.
'But, there is another type of honey called monofloral, 'which would suggest the nectar is collected from a single type of flower.
' So, there's no option of creating a complete monoculture here of purely heather to get your monofloral honey.
Oh, no.
This is the wilderness, here.
They go where they like.
'So that begs the question, 'how do the producers of the pricier monofloral honeys like manuka 'get their bees to stick to just one plant?' 'New Zealand is the main producer of this prized honey, 'which is made from the flowering species of the tea tree plant.
' 'Back at FU HQ, I've set up a call with John Rawcliffe, 'the general manager of the manuka honey growers' association, 'who's agreed to let me into their beekeeping secrets.
' So, John, I met a beekeeper and he was telling me - how challenging it is to make these monofloral honeys.
- Yeah.
Because your beehive would have to be in a environment where there is only one flower blooming at that point -- but how do you manage it in New Zealand? The beekeeper works hard to ensure it actually puts its hives in a zone that is predominantly manuka.
We're using the latest technology to do that.
It's quite exciting.
I mean, they use helicopters.
Helicopters? 'To show me how John ensures his honey is legit, he sent me a clip.
They pick up the hives and they fly them into this unique, pristine environment, smack in the middle of a manuka plantation.
That is a bit James Bond, isn't it? It shows where the industry's at.
'Once airdropped, bee squadron get to work and before long, 'it's mission manuka accomplished.
' So, you know for sure that your bees are only going to manuka to get their nectar, and that is it.
It's 100% manuka.
Wholly or mainly, yes.
'So, there's no way of guaranteeing the honey is entirely monofloral.
'But you've got to give it to them, 'these guys are giving it a pretty good shot.
'But, as consumers, 'how can we be certain how much manuka is in our manuka?' 'Later, I learn that working this out needs some serious swotting up.
So, you're saying that I'd probably need a PhD.
'Now, leeks.
' I love a leek, but I'm always a bit unsure as to how much of it I can use.
Do you cut off all that dark green stuff? 'The tough, darker green sections at the top are not edible, and so you're advised to remove those.
'You chop off the long green bits and you chop off the white bit with the roots at the bottom 'so it just leaves the stump in the middle.
' OK.
Oh, I see.
So, you just use the middle bit and you chuck the rest away.
Yes.
'Really?' 'To find out how much of a leek you can eat, 'I'm headed to the UK's leek capital.
'No, not Wales, but the Fenlands of East Anglia, 'to meet farm manager, Jay Senecal.
' Jay, Matt.
- Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, Jay.
'Leek production is booming here, and farmers have invested 'big bucks in cutting-edge agricultural technology like this.
' So, what's this contraption, then? - Right, this is a rig.
- Right.
The output of one of these machines is around about ten tonne a day.
'This beast is a one-stop leek harvesting factory on wheels.
' 'It's 28 metres wide.
' That's huge.
And how much is one of these worth? Er, this is in excess of 300,000.
Wow! That's a lot of leeks.
That's a lot of leeks to pay for it.
And how do you do that? Just the sheer volume that you sell? Yeah.
Sheer volume and reinvesting.
Right, OK.
'As the biggest leek producer in Britain, 'Jay can afford three of these 'and they earn their keep working flat out for ten months a year -- 'and they stop for no-one.
' Think we're going to have to move it a bit.
'Ha-ha, Nicola's got her back to it.
' They'll work round you.
'This field factory is constantly fed by a crew of 25, 'who pick and prep 60,000 leeks every day by hand.
' - Then we'll make a cut here.
- Right.
- To take the base off.
- They'll then remove the skin.
- Yeah.
And then they will cut the stem to length.
- OK.
- So, that's what you end up with? That's what you end up with on the front of the machine.
'Looks pretty straightforward to me.
' - Just grab any one? - Any one.
Basically, roots off.
OK, so he's done about three He's done three to your one.
.
.
to my one.
'Clearly, I'm going for quality, not quantity.
' - No.
- Why? It will dry out because you've just took the base plate off.
All right.
You perhaps ought to stick to the day job.
'Processing right here in the field means all that waste can be 'ditched straight back onto the soil.
' So, how much of the leek do you leave behind in the field? - We leave roughly 50%.
- 50%? 50% of the leek will be left behind.
But that's a lot of leek to lose.
Yes.
- That's perfectly edible.
- Yes.
Does that not annoy you? It is what the consumer wants.
So, we deliver what the consumer wants.
'Coming up, I find out just how much leek is left in the end.
' Everywhere along the line you're losing more and more product.
We're losing a little bit every time.
Back to the leek harvest, and I've discovered something quite alarming.
50% of the leek will be left behind.
Jay's leeks are prepped for packaging right here in the field, in this £300,000 mobile processing plant.
People everywhere! Yes, they take the leek after it's been through the washer, it comes onto the sorting tables.
They've got different graded boxes, have they? Different graded boxes and different gauges which they go by.
Quite handy with knife as well, aren't they? Er, yeah.
This way Jay can save costs.
Instead of transporting all the offcuts to a waste facility, here they can eject them to plough back into the field.
But these bits look perfectly good to me.
So what's wrong with all this then? Out of specification.
We can't sell that.
- Really? This is a perfectly good leek.
- It's perfectly fine to eat.
- So if we complain, the amount of wastage is down to us? - Yes.
Waste! Awful! - It is it's almost criminal, isn't it? - Yeah, yeah.
But then, the consumer, as in me, and everyone else - It's what the consumer wants.
- .
.
has proven this.
The leeks are then sent to the pack house for one final pass before they're popped into the supermarket packets.
Now this is ready to go through a cutter to make all - the product the same length.
- So they're cut again? It will be cut again, but it's machine cut this time.
So every leek will be the same length as it goes into the packets.
Everywhere along the line you're losing more and more product.
We'll lose another 10% before it gets to you, in the packet - in the supermarket.
- And then once you get it home, the consumer will then chop off the green bit totally.
They end up with that piece in the middle.
Yeah.
Amazing.
In the end, most of us only eat around 35% of a perfectly good leek.
Is there as much flavour in the top as there is in the bottom? - Yeah, definitely.
- It's tougher, right? - Yes.
- So if you shred it finer you get the same taste? - Yes.
What there needs to be is a good quality programme, with the occasional celebrity chef thrown in the mix, to show people what to do.
Is Jamie available? Back to bell peppers.
I've been in the skies above the Israeli desert engaging in biological warfare essential for growing the crunchy fruit.
But I'm here to find out, what's the difference between green peppers and red ones? So farmer Toma is taking me into the trenches.
Wow! That's incredible.
Ein Yahav Farming Cooperative is the largest veg produce in Israel, spanning 2,000 acres.
Over 20 million gallons of water is needed, pumped up from huge aquifers.
- So the red one's here.
- Yes, red peppers.
- And the green one's here.
- Yes.
- So what is the big difference then? Here it looks different, but it's exactly the same variety.
- So that's a baby pepper.
- Yes, a baby pepper, and once it gets to the final size it becomes ripe.
And when it becomes ripe, it changes colour.
So that's the green bit, and it starts to go brown, and then finally, with the sun, starts to ripen, it goes red.
- Yes.
- Can I taste the difference? - Start with the green.
Mmmm, fresh, I'm now going to go for red.
Sweetens up.
Oh, sweet.
So although they look different in colour they are exactly the same variety, exactly the same plant.
But as I head for home, something's got me thinking.
Why did Mother Nature decide to make a ripe pepper red in the first place? So back in the UK, in order to solve this mystery, I've been sent to Birdworld!? - Hi, you must be Duncan.
- Hi, you're Jimmy.
- That's me.
Hi, good to see you.
Duncan Bolton is curator here at the zoo, which is home to nearly 1,000 birds.
- Bunch of parrots here.
- Right, I love a parrot.
- These are, er kind of interesting birds.
And with their help, he's going to show me why, in nature, ripe peppers are red.
- They don't bite or peck, do they? - No.
Not at all.
Worryingly, I seem to have the bowl.
Just watch them as you're coming through.
Wow, they're everywhere, aren't they? Whoa, eh-up! Hello.
So, tell me, what's the point of fruit going red? Well, fruits are designed to encourage animals to transport seeds.
- So you turn a nice bright colour, you can - Ooo, ouch! Hello.
Hello.
They're not designer shoes, are they? - No, I just polished these this morning.
- That's all right.
Never mind the peppers, this lot have taken a shine to me! Fruits go red when they're ripe.
What's the reason for that? - Oh! - It's all right.
He's all right.
You look terrified.
There we go, look at that.
He's more interested in your hair.
As long as he doesn't pull any out, I don't mind(!) - What product have you been using? - It's just Just For Men.
I've never had my ears pierced.
I 'Right, focus, Jimmy, why am I here again?' So tell me, what's happening with the different colours in fruits? Oh, you BLEEP! - Did he get you? - He bit my thumb.
That's my my knee! Obviously, the birds like red.
Look at that.
'Yep, that's blood.
' This is like Alfred Hitchcock(!) 'Before I meet my end in a bird enclosure in Surrey, 'can someone please tell me why ripe peppers are red?' The animal needs to know when the fruit's ripe.
When the seeds are good for dispersing.
The fruit turns a nice, bright colour, often red.
Animal comes along, eats the fruit, can't digest the seeds, so it goes straight through the system, out the other end, with a nice little package of manure and grows into a new plant.
Right, so it's like a light shining out to everyone? - "Come and eat me".
- Yep, come get me.
So they're obviously not just attracted to TV presenters, - it's the red of the pepper that they're here for.
- Absolutely.
I bet this bird's never watched any of my shows.
Watches them all the time, mate.
'Back to honey.
' Look at this! 'I've learnt the extreme lengths some makers of Manuka go to, 'to guarantee its authenticity.
' That is a bit James Bond, isn't it? It just shows where the industry's at.
So producing manuka honey doesn't come cheap, which goes some way to explain its hefty price tag.
But what else are we paying a premium for? This is a food mega lab, one of the biggest in the country, and we're here to get forensic on some manuka.
Hi, Adrian.
- Hey, nice to meet you.
- Kate.
You too.
You too.
Dr Adrian Charlton and his team, have been pioneering techniques to identify authentic manuka for the past five years.
OK, come on in.
It's one of the most hi-tech facilities of its kind in Europe.
The food industry relies on places like this to check the spec on foods.
So, Adrian, what's unique to manuka? The degree of antimicrobial activity that the honey has.
Now there is some science behind this.
This is a plate of bacteria.
Bacteria grows around these little holes.
We then add small amounts of honey into the holes.
What you can see, is that manuka honey will kill the bacteria.
And you can see that there are little clear areas that don't have any bacteria on at all.
So, ultimately, that little drop of honey has killed all - the bacteria in that little field all around it.
- Absolutely.
Now the amount of bacteria that are killed can be estimated by working out the size of those disks.
The info from this plate determines the number on the side of the jar in some honeys.
So maybe Adrian can help me decipher the labels.
When I see all these manukas, and they might say UMF or NPA or a whole range of abbreviations that I don't really quite know what they mean.
The labels, really, are trying to reflect the degree of anti-microbial activity that the honey has.
The industry itself has not set a common standard.
There's a good example here.
It says UMF on it.
Now that stands for Unique Manuka Factor.
And the higher the number, usually the impliaction is that that's a better quality product.
OK, so this one says MGO.
Now you can see the scale of the number here is very different.
So what you've got is a whole host of different manuka honeys, that are rated against a whole rainbow of different rating systems? It's like they're in different currencies.
It is.
There's no euro, I guess, in the honey market.
At the moment it's a fully legitimate thing to do.
The guidelines state that to call a honey manuka it must have certain characteristics.
Including a presence of MGO, the chemical largely responsible for giving manuka honey its antibacterial qualities.
They say you only need a presence of this.
We tested five manuka honeys available to buy in the UK for MGO.
The results show all the honeys we tested were legitimate manuka, but the levels of MGO were surprisingly varied.
This mid-range honey by Rowse fared well with five times more MGO than one of its more expensive competitors.
The problem for us consumers is that until there is standardised rating, there's no easy way of comparing how much of this antibacterial stuff is in these jars by simply looking at the labels.
You can convert the numbers between the system, but that's not something that the average consumer would easily do.
So you're saying that, ultimately, I'll probably need a PhD in order to decipher the difference between these two on the supermarket shelf.
At the very least you'd need a calculator! Oh, really.
Next time I climb to new heights in Vietnam to see how they extract the virgin coconut oil that's sizzling away in every health-conscious kitchen.
100%? I'm in Italy to find out what goes into a jar of artichokes.
Look at this place, artichokes everywhere! And with floppy hair and tortured brow, I set out to see why absinthe is the favourite drink of every louche, living poet.
If you consume enough wormwood quickly enough, it's going to have effects.