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Inside The Factory
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00:00Tomorrow morning in Britain, we will get through over one and a half million bowls of cornflakes.
00:08And it all starts with thousands of tons of corn shipped from around the world.
00:17Within days, it will be on breakfast tables all over the country.
00:21But how do you manufacture breakfast cereal on this scale?
00:27We've been given access to the largest cereal factory in Europe to find out.
00:36I'm Greg Wallace.
00:37Give me crunching up.
00:39And I'm going inside to follow this epic production line.
00:42That is fabulous.
00:43I'll reveal the secrets to ensuring the breakfast cereals we've all grown up with.
00:48Whoa, hot rice christy.
00:51Taste exactly right every time.
00:53And the massive operation...
00:55The scale is unbelievable.
00:57...that delivers cereal all over the UK every day.
01:01If I'd have just seen that, I would not have believed that.
01:05I'm Cherry Healy.
01:07Oh, that's the dream.
01:08And I'll be finding out how the UK produces the perfect wheat for our best-selling cereal.
01:13We have one of the best climates for growing wheat in the world.
01:17Do we?
01:19I'll find out where special nutrient is added to our cereal.
01:23One in five of us are actually deficient in vitamin D.
01:26One in five of us.
01:28And historian Ruth Goodman looks at what we used to eat to start the day.
01:32Gamma.
01:33Black pudding.
01:34We've got a pig's head.
01:35It's hearty.
01:36It's hearty.
01:38In the next 24 hours, over a million boxes of cereal will come out of this one factory.
01:45And we're going to show you how they do it.
01:48Welcome to Inside the Factory.
02:09This is Kellogg's Manchester Factory.
02:12It is the single largest producer of breakfast cereal in Europe.
02:17And tonight, I'm going to watch closely as this handful of corn gets transformed into one
02:23of Britain's biggest-selling breakfast cereals, crunching up cornflakes in less than 24 hours.
02:32It all begins nearly 9,000 miles away in Argentina, where the corn is grown on 390 farms across
02:41an area the size of the Isle of Wight.
02:44During harvesting, the kernels are stripped from the corn cob.
02:48Then once a month, up to 30,000 tonnes of them are put onto a ship bound for the UK.
02:55After three weeks at sea, it arrives here at the port of Liverpool, with enough corn to
03:00make over half a billion bowls of cornflakes.
03:08At the harbourside corn mill, first the kernels are cleaned, then the outer skin is removed
03:15along with the germ, the bit that attaches the kernel to the cob.
03:25That's now on its way to the factory in Manchester, where, in a matter of days, the contents of
03:32that truck will be the cornflakes on your table.
03:37The truck full of corn kernels takes around an hour and 20 minutes to reach Kellogg's.
03:47Their Manchester factory, as big as 18 football fields, is a local landmark.
03:53And the cornflake production line keeps moving, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
04:02Making a million packets of cereal every single day.
04:08Factory director Tony O'Brien is in charge.
04:13So this is corn coming in on that wagon.
04:16Over a 24-hour period, we'll bring in about nine or ten deliveries, and that'll make about
04:21seven million bowls of cereal.
04:24It's a scale I can't possibly imagine.
04:26And I've got a big breakfast bowl, let me tell you.
04:28And if no corn came in, how long would it take till Britain ran out of cornflakes?
04:33Here, we've got about 700 tonnes of corn.
04:37I reckon we've got about two days' worth of...
04:40Is that all we've got?
04:43Then my phone would be gone very, very warm indeed.
04:46If all goes to plan, this precious cargo will be turned into boxes of cereal in under 24 hours.
04:55Getting it into the factory is the responsibility of logistics manager Paul Davies.
05:00That's naturally going to lift that up.
05:02And he's entrusting that job to me.
05:05So what you're going to do is you're going to pull that back.
05:07Like that?
05:08Yeah.
05:08Then put that chute into there.
05:11Ready for delivery of the corn.
05:13I've never done this.
05:14If I get this wrong, I'm going to waste 20 tonne of corn all over the floor.
05:18You're not going to get it wrong.
05:19Is that...?
05:20I'm not going to let you get that wrong.
05:21Thanks.
05:22OK.
05:23Now what?
05:24Take this, then turn it to open up the slide.
05:28That's a terrible responsibility.
05:30That's it.
05:33The 24-hour countdown from kernels to cornflakes begins.
05:38That is a corn waterfall, a corn avalanche.
05:46Tomorrow's cornflakes.
05:47Yep.
05:47That's incredible, mate.
05:49That is incredible.
05:52It takes an hour to pour all those kernels into the silo store.
05:57They're a good 30 metres away from the factory farm.
06:00But if the silo is any closer, it could be dangerous, because although it's rare, grain dust can be highly
06:07explosive.
06:08How on earth does it get into there to make the bowls of cereal?
06:12It drops from there into an elevator, which takes it up to the top.
06:17It then drops into the silo and gets blown across there into the plant.
06:22It gets blown over that bridge?
06:23It does, yeah.
06:24No way!
06:25I wouldn't lie to you, Greg, I promise.
06:30Blowing the kernels over is the quickest and most efficient way of transporting them.
06:35It gets madder here about a minute, Paul.
06:37You think so?
06:38Yeah!
06:40The magic begins in the cooking hall, fundamentally a massive kitchen containing 26 super-sized pressure cookers.
06:49In charge is head chef or corn unit manager Dan Fox.
06:55This is the first stage where it starts its processing becoming a cornflake.
06:59So what we do here is essentially we cook the corn.
07:05The corn is cooked one tonne at a time.
07:09Whey!
07:10When the hatch is in position.
07:12It's like a little mini submarine.
07:14The press of a button.
07:15Ready?
07:16Yeah.
07:18Signals for the release of the corn kernels.
07:21I can hear them.
07:21I can hear them coming.
07:23All the way from the storage silo through a 250-meter-long pipe.
07:32So you've got a tonne of corn in here.
07:34That means, by my reckoning, we need half a swimming pool full of milk and about 30 kilos of sugar.
07:42An hour and five minutes after arriving off the lorry, the corn is sealed inside and ready to steam.
07:50The pressure will reach 20 psi, almost twice as high as a household pressure cooker.
07:56We add to it barley malt, iron, sugar and salt.
08:01And those natural flames help take on this characteristic colour.
08:04We add water into that corn.
08:07It swells it out.
08:08That makes it more malleable, which then enables it to be in the right sort of format to be made
08:13into a cornflake.
08:14I just, it's, it's just unfathomable.
08:18The pressure cookers continuously rotate to make sure the corn cooks evenly.
08:26Can you burn it?
08:28You can't burn it as such, but what you could do is absolutely, really ruin it by overcooking it tremendously.
08:33So a bit like, I say if you're cooking pasta, you could overcook the pasta so it just becomes a
08:37slot.
08:38And after one hour and 50 minutes at 100 degrees, it's ready.
08:43Whoa, that feels warm and tropical.
08:47It's sort of like dark sandy sort of colour.
08:50You see, it's free-flowing and essentially it's doubled in size.
08:54The tonne of steaming moist hot corn is whisked away to start drying out.
09:01Are you a bit of a cereal anorak?
09:04Probably I am actually, yeah.
09:06Secretly, yeah.
09:07How many times have you turned around and started talking to people about their breakfast cereal?
09:11To be honest, quite a lot.
09:12And the time to do, people's eyes do glaze over.
09:14I'm not going to lie to you.
09:15And then my wife says, come on, wind it up, wind it up.
09:17I'm probably a cornflake nerd.
09:18Yeah, you're probably right, yeah.
09:22Come here, mate.
09:24Come here.
09:25Come here.
09:36Come here.
10:02Come here.
10:04Come here.
10:04Come here.
10:05Come here.
10:05Come here.
10:05Come here.
10:05Come here.
10:07Come here.
10:07Louise Dye and Katie Adolphus I have to confess I quite often miss breakfast to me extra time in
10:15bed is always gonna win is it really that bad it is that bad so basically breakfast does have a
10:22short-term beneficial effect on your cognitive performance across the morning so those that
10:26have eaten breakfast do better on tests of reaction time memory and tension than those
10:32who have skipped breakfast eating breakfast in the morning actually prevents a decline in cognitive
10:38function it's not gonna make me superwoman but it's gonna keep me constant with the help of the
10:45professors I've set up an experiment so that I can see the effects of ignoring breakfast for myself
10:54it's 7 a.m. the sun hasn't even come up but we're here at this Leeds office and we're waiting
10:59for
10:59the workers to arrive they're gonna be our guinea pigs our test subjects are creatives based at a
11:06workspace hub and none of them have had breakfast yet before we start the experiment Professor Dye
11:13needs a baseline reading of their cognitive function the first test is a memory test the second test is
11:20a reaction time test and the third test is a sustained attention test first the volunteers
11:27are shown 16 pictures and 10 minutes later asked to recall which ones they saw next reactions are
11:34assessed by a black circle appearing on the left or the right of the screen they must respond
11:39correctly as soon as they see it in the attention test they must press a button whenever they spot
11:46three odd or three even numbers in a row that was really hard it was very hard and now we
11:55will you're in
11:56two groups so one group will get breakfast and the other I'm afraid won't so sorry to break this to
12:01you
12:01but team a you don't get any breakfast you just get a glass of water and team B you get
12:09breakfast and you can have as much or as little as you like
12:13go for it but just try not to you know show that lot now all our volunteers need to work
12:25as normal an hour and a half after the experiment began and I'm checking in with the water only workers
12:34are you a breakfast eater yes I would have had a massive bowl of porridge about an hour ago and
12:39how
12:39you're feeling right now I'm pretty hungry just really distracting has it affected you so far well
12:46we've mainly been looking at pictures of food on the internet so yeah we're quite distracted I'm a little
12:51worried about it I'm thinking so much about the fact that I'm hungry and I'm worried about how well I
12:55would be able to manage the space two hours in and the professors are retesting both the control group
13:02and the fasting group by this time they've already exerted quite a lot of effort they've been performing
13:08all morning they've gone back to their desks and carried on working so they should be tiring now and
13:14we'd expect their performance to be declining so if you're used to having breakfast every day missing it
13:19is likely to be detrimental so when they haven't eaten breakfast they feel very sluggish they feel that
13:25they can't focus not as alert and they also feel very frustrated angry and quite hard done by that they
13:31haven't eaten breakfast I want to see if our hungry group is finding the test any harder the numbers
13:39thing they were dancing at me by about halfway through the numbers bit was it was really hard
13:44to concentrate and by the end I was just kind of felt like I was in a blur of numbers
13:49I'm doing okay a bit
13:49of a foggy head just putting numbers together properly I'm having to triple check everything because I'm
13:54my concentration is a bit shocked how much do you think your productivity has been affected I think
14:00massively so yeah I've done maybe a third of what I normally do three and a half hours after we
14:09started
14:09and after the final test how did our office workers compare the breakfast eaters sailed through all the
14:19tasks the workers without food did okay on the memory test but they were four percent slower on
14:26reaction times and a whole six percent behind on the attention test it looks like the experiment has
14:32worked people who didn't have breakfast really did struggle with their performance absolutely from the
14:38studies in our lab the task that measures attention performance is normally seven percent lower in the
14:44breakfast skippers compared to those who have eaten breakfast it's quite a big percentage so it
14:51doesn't matter if you're a toast of porridge or a scrambled egg person think twice before skipping
14:56breakfast I know that I will back at the cereal factory and our corn kernels are in the drying room
15:13three hours after they arrived here they've soaked up moisture during cooking so now they're moving
15:23slowly on a looped conveyor belt through this nearly 100 foot long extremely noisy double decker dryer is
15:32is this the biggest bit of kit in the factory it's probably the single biggest stand-alone piece of
15:37equipment that's all dryer yeah so you start there all the way along down all the way back again
15:43finish and we've probably seen the region of several thousand balls just don't blast your shoulder now you
15:48won't ever get closer to this amount of cold flakes ever absolutely I'm sure if there was Guinness Book of
15:53Records were here and get a bowl big enough it would be the biggest ball of cold flakes
15:58it takes two and a half hours of hot air fanning over the corn before it's ready what are you
16:04looking
16:05for that was the corn coming out of your cooker so you can see it's got that sort of golden
16:10color and
16:11it's sort of soft but not wet it's just squishy and as it goes through the drying process what we're
16:15looking for at the end is this sort of texture so it should be drier darker that should be slightly
16:21harder yeah I bounce on it it's got a little bit of give yeah and that's absolutely critical if we
16:27dry it too fast or too hard we're in danger of crushing it into a powder if one stage breaks
16:37down what happens everything before it stops so it's not just this section that's not it's all the
16:4426 tons of buckets beforehand that stopped that could cost millions that's correct yeah I can't
16:50believe they've given all that responsibility to somebody like you dad sometimes I can't believe it
16:55myself if I'm honest the next stop is the milling room where our corn kernels still moist in the
17:03middle are about to be transformed into a much more familiar shape the kernels are fed between two
17:23giant steel rollers which turn in opposite directions one slightly faster than the other that means the
17:31kernels don't get crushed but stretched all in a second or less
17:37going through here 200 bowls a minute they now look like cornflakes to me they might look like
17:45cornflakes but they're not cornflakes to the end give it a feel feel it all right feel it yeah it's
17:52wet no it's
17:53just punch it you can make it into a ball yeah that's not right no it's all stretchy and rubbery
18:00yeah what have you done to my cornflakes Dan would you like that in your breakfast bowl in the
18:04marty's no
18:08I'm about to discover how Dan turns my squidgy wet flakes into the classic crunch we're all familiar
18:15with but around 150 years ago I wouldn't have had any kind of cornflakes in my breakfast bowl
18:22because cereal hadn't been invented now Ruth Goodman is finding out what the Victorians were eating
18:32instead breakfast before cereal was a gut-busting business wow this is quite a spread here isn't it just
18:40I'm sitting down to a 19th century feast with historian Saren Evans Charrington
18:47so what exactly have we got here we'll start off nice little bit of uh boiled lobster some
18:52langoustines we've got faggots meat pies bacon cold cuts of meat gammon gammon black pudding we've got a
19:00pig's head filled with jellied brawn it's hearty it's hearty so your breakfast would change depending on
19:07what you'd have the night before what was left over one thing I'm really noticing is that the enormous
19:12amount of protein that's on the table yes and the complete lack of fruit yes but this is really
19:19high-class dining you had a really hearty breakfast that was going to set you up for the day and
19:24keep
19:24you going until you ate again we're not thinking about our waistline we're not thinking about the
19:30nutritional value of it and it's thought that this is good for you at this point
19:36even the average Victorian was gorging down a mind-boggling four and a half thousand calories a
19:41day almost twice the amount we eat now in a modern life if you sat down to this every day
19:49well you give
19:50yourself a whole range of health problems they are getting lots of gout you've got problems with
19:55obesity all sorts of gastro intestinal problems put simply this breakfast made people fat and flatulent
20:03things had to change so in 1863 an American doctor James Caleb Jackson came up with an alternative for
20:11his patients a healthy vegetarian breakfast that he called granular and we're going to try and recreate
20:18it so what we're looking for is stiff wall paste consistency we're mixing wheat flour and water to make a
20:29dough
20:29we want to bake it until it's the consistency of a hard brick that's nine hours in a low temperature
20:37oven then cooled and put back in for another nine hours so this has been twice baked oh this is
20:45quite hard
20:45doesn't it yeah it's tough break it up into these little pieces yeah but it's hard going flaking it
20:55the flakes now need to be ground now that's starting to look much more like a cereal but before you
21:03want
21:03to eat it got to soak it overnight after about 30 hours of preparation a very plain breakfast is served
21:12brace yourself it's not horrible but one exciting worthy I think that is what it's meant to be I
21:23can't say it's a food for pleasure I mean it tastes like a health food there's no sugariness there's no
21:28saltiness it's just very simple pleasant or not Jackson had invented the first commercially
21:36available breakfast cereal it wasn't profitable but it led to other health specialists developing
21:42their own varieties and this is where the Kellogg story starts in 1894 dr. John Kellogg chief medical
21:51officer of a sanatorium and his brother William Keith were trying to make granola for patients using corn
21:56oatmeal and wheat one day William Keith was experimenting with wheat grains and over softened a batch by mistake
22:06instead of destroying them he tried rolling and baking the mushy grains and by accident created the
22:13wheat flake of today and from there it was but a short step to creating the very first complex
22:37back at Kellogg's factory cornflakes might still be their most iconic product but it's not their only
22:43one here they also make chocolate frosted and raisin wheats frosties and ricicles and I want to see what
22:51else is cooking technician Paul Richardson is the man who puts the snap crackle and pop into one of their
22:58childhood classics I feel a bit silly but I never realized that rice krispies actually were made from rice
23:05the blues in the title isn't it what rice is it our body oh I've got that it's not Italian
23:11risotto rice I've got
23:12that at home after cooking and flavoring the rice is dried trimmed and put aside and then it has to
23:21be puffed up
23:22by hot air so from there to there in about 20 feet of tubes or air and color I'm gonna
23:36get rice to rice
23:37krispies that's right oh as you can see it's hot whoa hot rice krispies if I hadn't just seen that
23:45I
23:45would not believe half the rice krispies get extra special treatment they're covered in a mixture of
23:57cocoa water and sugar on their way to becoming cocoa pops that's a thing of beauty Vicky Stanton is in
24:06charge of the only cocoa pop machine in the country do you know how many bowls you're producing from this
24:14one machine so this is running constantly I feel like I should pay homage to it the hot chocolatey
24:23syrup turns the rice grains moist and sticky so now they need drying out very slowly so I can feel
24:30the
24:31cold air that's drying it and taking the heat away most of them are loose but I can still see
24:37some
24:37clusters way what happens to them they fall down onto what we call the cluster buster so it falls off
24:44the
24:44edge and breaks up the lumps brilliant you can leave them there if you want of course the cocoa and
25:00the two
25:00and a half teaspoons of sugar in an average bowl for is what makes cocoa pops so moorish but they're
25:07not the only extra ingredients every Kellogg cereal is fortified with minerals and vitamins most recently
25:14in some varieties vitamin D cherry is finding out why we need it added to our breakfast
25:22vitamin D is essential to absorb calcium for healthy teeth and bones but new research suggests that
25:30there are other important benefits I've come to St Bart's and London Centre for Immunobiology to meet
25:37Professor Adrian Martino for the last 10 years we've been working on the effects of vitamin D on the
25:44immune system in particular on resistance to the common cold so what did you discover we've done
25:49clinical trials and the results have shown in people who have low vitamin D levels to start with
25:54giving an extra vitamin D supplement can reduce the risk of getting a cold by around 50% that's absolutely
26:00huge so if you have low vitamin D levels topping them up can potentially prevent you from getting the
26:06common cold by up to 50% exactly right it's not just colds you risk if you're low in vitamin
26:15D serious
26:16conditions from type 1 diabetes to some cancers as well as children developing bone softening rickets
26:23have been linked to severe vitamin D deficiency one way we can get this super nutrient is sunshine we can
26:33produce it by our skin converting ultraviolet light so if we spend plenty of time outdoors then surely
26:41we'll get enough of it not in the short days of winter according to nutritionist Angelique Panagos so
26:49the Sun actually has to be at a certain angle so it has to be about 50 degrees above the
26:53horizon and that
26:54way the UVB rays can actually penetrate through the atmosphere and help us to synthesize vitamin D but in
27:01the UK the Sun in winter is always very low the Sun's unfortunately it's letting us down so from about
27:07October through to April we can't synthesize vitamin D so if you live in the UK and you got into
27:14the
27:15sunshine in winter you're not really getting a vitamin D benefit you're not getting the vitamin D benefit
27:21although we store the vitamin D we make in the summer it can be depleted over the winter research has
27:28shown that one in five of us are actually deficient in vitamin D one in five of our one inside
27:36that's enough to make me want to get my own levels checked so I'm using a self-testing kit if
27:4310
27:43million people have vitamin D deficient then there's quite a good chance that I am too but there's only
27:50one way to find out two weeks later my results are back now it's time to find out if I'm
27:59one of
27:59the 20 percent of the population that is deficient in this sunshine vitamin adequate that's not good
28:11adequate good excuse to go on more holidays okay so my vitamin D levels at the moment are okay but
28:18what happens if they dip what can I eat to keep them topped up so you can get some vitamin
28:24D from food
28:25sources so oily fish is a good one but you'd need to be eating a lot of one food to
28:31be getting that
28:31vitamin D kick that we're looking for to get my 10 microgram daily dose I would need to eat either
28:38one fresh
28:39salmon fillet or six eggs or eight homemade beef burgers 52 bacon rashers or 333 fried mushrooms
28:50taking a vitamin D supplement would be easier and having a boost at breakfast could also help the
28:57sunshine vitamin is put into a range of cereals voluntarily by Kellogg's and most other cereal
29:04manufacturers providing around a tenth of the recommended daily allowance at the mega cereal
29:20factory our corn kernels have reached the toasting area it's five hours and 36 minutes since they
29:27entered the factory and they're halfway to becoming a bowl of proper corn flakes wow now those soggy flattened flakes
29:36need crisping up
29:37it's in here we dry it we toast it that's a circular rotating toaster in simple terms yes it's taking
29:46the moist
29:46flake and making it crispy yes and as it rotates around there the rotation action separates the little flakes out
29:53so my big gooey plate becomes separate like crispy absolutely yes
30:00it's in there for about seven to ten seconds no that is the fastest cereal I've ever seen yes
30:09incredibly these cornflakes are coming through at a rate of ten bowls a second
30:31the cornflakes are good to go great big river of cornflakes that's right there cornflakes but equally we could turn
30:38them into functional cornflakes or frosties really really yeah so right now that could be any one of three
30:43any one of three yes five hours 36 minutes and 15 seconds in and the plain cornflakes head off for
30:51packing while frosties is diverted away for extra flavoring along with crunchy nut which was invented right here at the
30:59factory
30:59i'd love to make crunchy nut how do you stop them going up to cornflakes i'd make a popcorn
31:04can i make that one second no way is that steve steve can we divert some to crunching up give
31:14me crunching up go crunching up do it steve
31:22cornflakes on that way
31:23crunching up down that way
31:27am i going there next you'll be going there very shortly yes i'm becoming very fond of you dad well
31:32the feeling's mutual
31:39cornflakes have been the same shape and size as they were when they were first invented over a hundred years
31:45ago
31:45but what if you prefer your breakfast cereal more biscuit shaped
31:50cherry's been to find out how we to fix is made
32:00this is the most popular cereal in the UK we eat over 10 million of these every morning
32:09producing that many biscuits takes a massive amount of wheat it used to come from all over the UK and
32:17sometimes abroad but six years ago the cereal factory in Northamptonshire made a big decision to grow every single grain
32:26within a 50 mile radius
32:28closer contact with the wheat farms means a more consistent crop and less damage to the environment
32:35i've come to visit one of their 160 farmers
32:39wow oh that's amazing
32:42robert barns supplies enough wheat for about 150 million wheat biscuits
32:50this is a monster mountain of wheat in this barn we've got two and a half thousand tons of wheat
32:58destined for wheat a bit that's absolutely staggering
33:02we have one of the best climates for growing wheat do we in the world so you're telling me that
33:08england is a great climate to grow wheat when the temperature gets too hot the wheat plant will shut down
33:15and the yield will be suppressed
33:17southern europe they won't get the yields that we'll get because their temperatures are too high
33:22too high so delicate
33:24it's a little princess isn't it
33:27the wheat is harvested in the height of summer and stored for up to 10 months
33:32it has to be kept cool to prevent pest infestation so its temperature needs constant monitoring
33:39we have remote sensors in the grain that have little radio transmitters on and it'll say i'm too warm here
33:45i need the fans on so it'll start my fans to cool and that fan will draw the air through
33:52the grain
33:53and up through the column to cool the grain down to five degrees
33:57i had no idea it was so high tech
34:03every year robert fills a hundred trucks with wheat to keep up with demand from the factory
34:09that's a 29 ton truckload of wheat
34:17that might sound like a lot but up the road is the world's largest wheat-a-bix factory
34:23and they go through 10 truckloads every single day
34:29at the factory it's cleaned and softened in water before being pressure cooked with salt sugar vitamins
34:36and malt
34:37that's amazing oh wow
34:40showing me the just cooked wheat is factory manager gordon riddick
34:45so you can feel it's quite sticky it's quite moist it's quite soft
34:49yes quite pliable and smells fantastic
34:52that is oh that's the dream
34:54malty cooked wheat
34:59the wheat is then pressed into flakes by one of the 48 rolling mills in this huge milling room
35:09this is what we call the cathedral
35:11it's such a large building
35:13oh it's magnificent
35:14absolutely
35:15that is so nearly wheat-a-bix
35:19that's an individual grain been squashed
35:22squashed
35:23squashed
35:23they cram around 365
35:27wheat grains into every biscuit
35:29if you want to take a whole handful
35:31squeeze it tight in your hands
35:33it's just the moisture content
35:35and the compression
35:37that form the biscuit
35:38it's a wheat-a-bix
35:39it's a wheat-a-bix
35:40it's a wheat-a-bix
35:41it's a wheat-a-bix
35:41it's a weat-a-bix
35:41it's a fresh air
35:41and moisture
35:42and moisture
35:43and moisture
35:43the appliance of physics that's all is
35:45it looks a little bit like a squash tennis ball but it's alright
35:50all the grain flakes are carried along to the biscuit machine where they tumble into moulds
35:56this is fabulous
35:58I can absolutely see now how the wheat-a-bix are being cooked
36:06once the biscuits are shaped they're twice baked
36:11how long is this oven this oven is 150 foot long almost comical here we make a quarter of a
36:19million
36:20biscuits every single hour that equates to 13 million biscuits for the whole site a day a day
36:28end to end they would stretch from here to averaging and back again and 45 minutes after the wheat grains
36:39went into the pressure cooker they've become Britain's top-selling cereal this is the end of
36:47the process this is us ready to pack the biscuits they go all over the UK all over Europe
36:59every grain of wheat has been grown locally so whether this ends up on a breakfast table in
37:07Brighton or Berlin it's all thanks to the farmers around this factory here in Northamptonshire
37:26it's five hours 39 minutes since the raw corn kernels were delivered and back at the factory I'm now in
37:32the coaching room where my ordinary corn flakes are about to be crunchy nutted yes they come from
37:41the America's we take them as whole peanuts then we slice them through and you get that how do you
37:46stick the nuts to the cornflake we use honey to the Americans again molasses sugar and vitamins it's like a
37:52syrup to form a glue why don't you use British honey you haven't got anything against British honey we need
37:58consistent supply 365 days a year good of course it's good it's a cold flake nuts and honey yeah
38:07every 24 hours the factory mixes together 10 tons of nuts 3 tons of honey and 2 tons of molasses
38:16a sweet syrup
38:19on a bigger scale
38:25in this room here is your base cornflakes then you're adding your honey your molasses sugar your vitamin profile and
38:33nuts all in there they're spinning around have been coating that drum the sweet molasses and honey glue plus
38:40sugar mean there's just over two and a half teaspoons of sugar in your average bowl of crunchy nuts if
38:47you
38:47present it just over 3,000 bowls a minute no way yeah no way yeah as they fall out they're
38:54evenly coated
38:55onto this bed here that is a sugary rake my grandmother used to make me go out in autumn and
39:01do that with a
39:02ton of leaves obviously it's got to dry out now a little bit hasn't it that's right so the minute
39:08you can see it shine and it's hot so what happens now is it goes to the grain process and
39:13then it's the
39:13standard dry crunched up complex that you're used to
39:20most of the breakfast cereal we buy is sold ready to eat you just add milk and it's ready
39:26but there are signs of a breakfast revolution the market for cold cereals has barely changed over
39:34the past five years while porridge sales have zoomed up nearly 60 percent cherry is investigating its appeal
39:47there are three best-selling types of oats traditional scottish oatmeal which is simply
39:54roughly ground oat kernels jumbo rolled oatmeal is whole kernels steamed and flattened and pre-cooked and
40:03finely ground instant porridge which is the big hitter winning over half of all hot cereal sales but does it
40:11taste
40:11just as good and do you as much good as traditional or jumbo rolled porridge scoffing more porridge than
40:20anyone else a 25 to 34 year old so we're going to test all three types on early morning city
40:28commuters
40:29it's just turned 6 a.m. but already there is a stream of people going to work today we are
40:35going
40:35to ask the hungry office workers to try three different porridges and tell us which one is
40:41their favorite it's a porridge showdown and there can be only one winner we're cooking up all three types
40:49in the scottish oat corner is homegrown chef gizzy erskine backing the jumbo rolled oat is neil hargett a
41:00childhood porridge enthusiast he's recently rediscovered its joys and now eats it religiously
41:08and then there's me armed with instant porridge which is great because my porridge making skills are
41:13a bit rubbish welcome to the porridge showdown i'm very excited to have you here so the rules of the
41:21day
41:22are you have to use the ingredients provided to you with porridge milk water salt you can use them in
41:30any proportion you like no fancy toppings just salt no sugar just salt yes and i'm watching you are you
41:38ready ready ready right let's do this
41:44chef gizzy starts her scottish oats cooking in water her 30 minute recipe uses equal parts milk to oats
41:52why do you cook it so slowly and for such a long time the slower you cook the sort of
41:58more evenly
41:58it's going to cook a lot of people don't cook their oats properly that there's too much bite to them
42:03i'm going to put some salt in there as well
42:06porridge oats contain a soluble fiber called beta-glucan which lowers cholesterol and can
42:13help control blood sugar levels it can even reduce the risk of heart disease neil has more reason than
42:21most for championing this healthy breakfast how often do you have porridge i have porridge virtually every
42:27day really virtually every day why is that i had a heart attack and i went off the like fried
42:35breakfast
42:35and everything else back to basics so the porridge has really helped your health yeah neil is using
42:42twice the quantity of milk to his jumbo rolled oats you put the oats in the pan you put the
42:47milk in the
42:48pan you stir it while it's getting warm and his porridge needs 10 minutes
42:56gizzy and neil have nearly finished their porridge i'd better crack on with mine the instructions say add milk
43:03cook for two minutes i think even i can't get that wrong
43:13all three porridges are nearly cooked and there's already quite a difference
43:19gizzy seems the creamiest neil's definitely has more texture and mine well starting to feel a little
43:26less confident mine's very beige brown and yours is a kind of creamy white yeah also mine smells like
43:34mine smells like biscuits
43:38unsweetened instant oats do have the same health value as the others but according to the latest
43:44research from the british journal of nutrition scottish or rolled oats metabolize slower and keep you
43:51feeling fuller for longer okay so we've got our three porridges are you confident dead confident
43:59yes i'm pretty confident yeah let's see which one's the best right okay
44:09hit our three porridges please could you taste them and tell us which one you like the most this one's
44:15already yeah it's not a stick taste more like white pudding so which one is your favorite i'm gonna go
44:21for
44:21the middle one the creamy ricey one so am i same here yeah do you like porridge i love porridge
44:27okay yeah that's good
44:33i can just tell from the noises that you've made which one you like the most
44:38i think this one is my favorite so do you eat porridge yes so which one is your favorite for
44:45me it's probably the one
44:48head stick it's porridge i think i like this more i think that one i think i like this one
45:04that's all right yes what you've nailed it although we only tested a small sample we've had some strong
45:11opinions about the different types of porridge so the results are in i came last with four
45:19four neil you were next with seven and gizzy you blew us out the water with eleven
45:29so there you have it gizzy's traditional slow-cooked porridge one hands down so if you want a really rich
45:37and creamy porridge in the morning you may have to get up just a little bit earlier
45:52so
45:53my crunchy nut cornflakes have reached the packing area of the factory
45:57just over six hours since they came here as corn kernels
46:01first stop is the weighing room so every clip you hear is a bag of crunch nut
46:05it's been weighed out to form a perfect 500 gram packet it's like a chorus of metal frogs
46:13gives you a really clear indication of how fast you're making it
46:18it's not as simple as each hopper separately weighing out 500 grams of cornflakes
46:24each of these metal pans contains a weight somewhere between 100 made up to 200 grams of food so for
46:32example that fan might have 100 grams in it that might have 200 grams in it that might have 203
46:39and
46:40that one might have sort of 98 what the computer program does it says there's eight pans there all
46:46with various different weights it selects the best combination of those weights and old pans to give you the 500
46:51grams
46:51that is a stupid system that just confuses everything
46:55why don't you just weigh out of box worth in one hopper because every cornflake
46:59every country of cornflakes is slightly different so to get an exact weight on the product is very very difficult
47:07each precise combination of cornflakes drops directly into a bag
47:12which is heat sealed bottom
47:15and top
47:17to prevent any defective bags getting through they go past a sensor that measures them exactly
47:23this little blue box here is a bit like a laser beam
47:27that laser beam detected the correct length of that bag so at the bag first you deviated from set length
47:33and that will be rejected
47:36you're a good teacher though that thank you very much
47:43over in the packaging department cardboard is being turned from flat pack into boxes in one slick move
47:51the machine even opens each box as it goes that's genius six hours and three minutes ago each one of
47:59these crunchy nut cornflakes was a plain little kernel of corn now to make sure they're all as perfect as
48:05they
48:05should be jim carney in quality control carries out a random check every two hours
48:12how long have you been doing this jim a long time 42 years 42 years so what year did you
48:17start i did
48:1773. if you do find a problem does that mean you have to stop the whole batch depends on the
48:22defect
48:23if it's minor then we make it and just accordingly if it's a possible hold then we stop the line
48:29and we tell relevant supervision so how many boxes of cereal we likely to throw away probably about 10 000
48:35wow that can't happen very often hopefully not but it does happen it does that yes
48:42there's a detailed checklist but jimmy is so experienced he knows in an instant if there's a
48:47problem smell the inside of the box you do what you smell the inside of the box
48:54smell from the inside of a box jim well it's hard to describe it through experience but
48:57sometimes the carpet itself can actually taste or smell off then we have to report it you know like
49:04a wine buff has a perfect nose can you honestly stick your nose over a box and tell me if
49:09it's wrong
49:09on yes really yes you do realize you're telling me you can tell the difference between fresh and stale
49:15carbon yes jimmy i love you give me a five five that is just remarkable so okay once we've done
49:22the box
49:22then what are we looking for right make sure there's a good seal that seems fine with all the
49:29contents into this bowl here feel it and feel it against this yes it's standard batch of crunching up
49:36that's your template yes we're looking for similarity actually look lighter or darker
49:41or too much coating or not enough coating and then i have a taste can i yeah i mean the
49:49peanuts the syrup
49:50the honey and then we go to the reference and try that one actually that really does smell heavily
49:56of peanut which i've never even considered before to me it's fine jim i believe you you have got an
50:02expert nose when it comes to breakfast cereal thank you the humble cereal has come a long way in the
50:11last hundred years but the most important development came in the 1950s when admin realized that the secret
50:17weapon in selling a box of cereal wasn't the cereal it was the box itself
50:29we in britain eat more breakfast cereal than any other nation in europe in fact 87
50:36percent of british adults sit down to a bowl every day
50:42back in the first half of the 20th century eating cereal had already become well established but it
50:49was the 1950s that sealed the deal for our love affair with cereal
50:54i want to find out what triggered the start of cereal domination after the war from advertising guru
51:03robin wright rationing disappeared the sugar-coated products arrived and kids gobble them up and then at
51:13the same time almost television arrived with television advertising promoting these new products
51:20the other game changer for cereal companies was a crucial shift in family dynamics
51:27the power of what i've called the tyrant child emerge there was a shift to recognize the power of children
51:34they were the the big consumers
51:39advertisers responded by inventing pester power doodle you get me free
51:47me not only were we showing the brand to a child very early on we were then using
51:55what's now called loyalty marketing so that irrespective of the taste they'd like to have
52:00the toy they'd like to play games on the side of the pack all these things are unfurled in britain
52:06and british kids and i was one of them really loved it it was fun it was great of course
52:11while we were
52:12enjoying it these brands were embedded in our brains so even now all those years later what's my favorite
52:18cereal is we did it cereal is the only food on the menu at one london cafe owned by gary
52:28and alan keery
52:29so i went to find out why it's still so appealing to adults
52:35i don't think i have ever seen so many cereals all in one place it's quite astounding i mean what
52:41is
52:41so special about cereal well for us it was when we were kids it was the first thing that we
52:45fell
52:46in love with we remember going to the supermarket and giving that choice once a week to buy a cereal
52:51that you had to eat for the rest of the week and it was the biggest responsibility you had so
52:54do you
52:54think that cereals are really just a childhood thing i think everything is all about nostalgia these
52:59days people like to feel like a kid again even though they're not we always used to in the
53:05mornings like turn over the cereal box and used to do like the little puzzles on the back yeah
53:10we had to pour out the whole cereal get the toy and nostalgia certainly seems to pay the six top
53:17sellers
53:17in the uk today were all invented more than 30 years ago some ad campaigns have barely changed since the
53:25successes of the 1950s and they're still as effective now as they were back then oh i love cocoa pots
53:32snap crackle and pop snap crackle and pop the cereal industry has never stopped growing and in the uk
53:40it's now worth around 1.57 billion pounds
53:54at the factory the final stage of our crunchy nut production line is the distribution area
54:02nearly six and a half hours since the start of their journey here
54:06my cornflakes are boxed up and traveling just under three kilometers from packing
54:12and over the sky bridge to the warehouse
54:15now urgent orders for uk supermarkets are dispatched straight away
54:21while cereal destined for europe and the middle east is stored awaiting shipping
54:26the warehouse supervisor is jeff bolton
54:29how many boxes are you holding in here do you know about quarter of a million
54:33about ten percent of what we produce so the ones that go to our uk shops they don't sit around
54:38no no they're straight out the door they're straight out the door the scale is unbelievable
54:44every box of crunchy nut cartons has been given a barcode
54:48so it can be scanned into the system before getting some top-to-toe plastic protection
54:53yeah hey this is the wrapping machine all those crunchy nut cartons all gets wrapped the stabilization
55:01we all need one of those for our suitcase when we go on holiday
55:07it's gonna come forward it's gonna get labeled yeah you i'm not standing no you're not getting
55:10labeled but i'd watch your back because of the vehicle coming what's happening i don't feel safe
55:14anymore what's gonna be a vehicle going to collect this 22 sophisticated robot shuttles do all the
55:22lifting eight white ones collect the boxes and take them to the loading bait or hand them to the 14
55:29red ones which shelve them ready for dispatch i mean how do they work top of the vehicle we've got
55:36a
55:36laser spinning round got a computer inside the truck we've got some computer in the control room and
55:42that's where it's getting its position from so they're always finding their own position it also
55:45knows where to take it it knows where it's going to where it's picking what it's doing all automated
55:50programmed by boffins and do the white ones hand over to the red ones at the end of the conveyor
55:56the red ones will pick them up and the red ones look after the warehouses the red ones look after
56:00the warehousing the storage do they have much of you have a game of cricket no they won't mix they
56:05won't mix
56:12you know what i used to see sci-fi films about this when i was a little kid i think
56:17so did i the
56:18computer is capable of simultaneously tracking all 25 000 cartons heading for europe and beyond
56:27how many humans are there here i have three operators and one craftsman looking after the
56:31whole process in here four people and a team of robots four people team of robots that is unbelievable
56:38that is remarkable million boxes of cereal a day wow wow
56:48for the past six hours and 40 minutes i've followed corn kernels through a hugely ambitious mega machine
56:55process they've been cooked squashed and stretched toasted and covered in honey and nuts
57:01that's it that's the last pallet let's get this truck loaded
57:11those crunchy nut corn flakes could be delivered to supermarkets within 24 hours of being raw corn
57:17yorkshire and humberside are the biggest cereal eaters in britain but they'll also be sent to europe
57:22and all over the world as far away as asia the scale of this production is very impressive but what
57:30really amazes me is the length these people go to they're taking natural products it's corn honey and
57:39nuts they bend them and they shape them and condition them until they give us the exact same cereal
57:47every single time bowl after bowl after bowl millions of times that is impressive
57:59next time bring her in we'll take you inside the largest crisp factory in the world that's a packet of
58:06crisps
58:06as they make five million bags of crisps in 24 hours how did he do it that fast we'll reveal
58:14the secrets to keeping crisps fresh
58:16every bag of crisps is a bag of nitrogen and cherries on a production line that makes 12
58:21million monster feet a day it's really mesmerizing to watch that is the most crisps i've ever seen in one
58:29place
58:32the lifestyle change we all need or another fad diet in disguise bbc3 investigates green eating's
58:39dirty secrets online now like tonight on bbc2 birds with beaks as well as clever brains some of the smart
58:46creatures living at extremes in new zealand