Seasons & episodes
25 seasons · 154 episodes
Episode 01
Grapefruit and Probiotics
Kate Quilton travels to Swaziland to find out how they get tinned grapefruit so perfect, and, in Finland, Matt Tebbutt discovers exactly what the bacteria are in Probiotics.
Episode 02
Lemons and Ham
Kate and Matt investigate the wax on our lemons in Spain and Thailand, and Matt gets the real story behind formed ham here in the UK.
Episode 03
Prawns and Mushrooms
This episode explores how prawns are intensively farmed and discovers why there are often so few wild mushrooms in our wild mushroom soups. Kate flies to Thailand - the world's biggest producer of farmed prawns - to get a sense of the scale of the industry, and Matt meets a professional wild mushroom forager in the woods of West Sussex.
Episode 04
Olives and Beer
This episode explores the difference between green and black olives, and why not everything that goes into beer processing is listed in the ingredients. Matt travels to South Africa to visit one of the country's largest olive orchards in the Western Cape, where he discovers that black olives are just riper green olives, but that both need a year's soaking in brine to make them edible. In Spain, Kate is shown how mass production factories make super black olives found in pizza and salads. And Matt heads to a small brewery near Belfast to discover if it really is just water, hops, barley and wheat in beer.
Episode 05
Seafood Sticks and Wine
The team head to Thailand to find out what seafood goes into seafood sticks, and then discover how some British wine is really made... in Spain. In a seafood stick factory in Thailand Kate sees some incredible production techniques and giant frozen blocks of fish called surimi. Confusingly, there are two types of domestically produced wines: British and English. British wine is much cheaper, so what's the difference?
Episode 06
Orange Juice and Mayonnaise
Kate Quilton heads to Spain to find out how pure squeezed, not-from-concentrate orange juice is really made, and how 'fresh' it is. The team then travel around the UK to find out what is used to replace the fat in low-fat mayonnaise, and discover it's a bacteria that usually grows on rotting cabbages.
Episode 07
Tomatoes and Strawberry Flavour
Kate Quilton travels to Holland to find out how manufacturers prevent tomatoes in packaged sandwiches from going soggy, and the team investigates the production of strawberry-flavoured food. Matt Tebbutt and Rachel Edwards-Stuart try to make yoghurt with the average amount of the fruit used in supermarket-own brands - 10 per cent - but the results are disappointing, while Martin Dickie visits the Nestle Rowntree factory to learn about the concentrated strawberry flavour used in their pastilles.
Episode 08
Sausages and Ice-Cream
Matt Tebbutt travels to Sweden to learn how a food company uses liquid smoke to flavour sausages, a method that is cheaper and quicker and enables flavours to be tailored more effectively. The Food Standards Agency requires that ice-cream needs to contain milk protein and any kind of fat - vegetable being the one most commonly used. Martin Dickie and James Watt head to Brighton beach with an old-fashioned bicycle adorned with banners saying `Ice Vegetable Oil'. What will the public make of this product?
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