- 1 day ago
Featured breakfast cerea visits the massive scale of cereal production. This episodes showcase how millions of boxes of popular breakfast cereals are manufactured daily in massive industrial facilities...
早餐麦片的工业化生产涉及多个高科技且精密严谨的环节：清理与分级, 预处理与烹饪, 成形与剥片, 烘烤与涂层, 包装.
早餐麦片的工业化生产涉及多个高科技且精密严谨的环节：清理与分级, 预处理与烹饪, 成形与剥片, 烘烤与涂层, 包装.
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CreativityTranscript
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.
09:37Everybody has breakfast.
09:41Nobody has breakfast.
09:42Come here.
10:02Nobody has breakfast.
10:07Louise Dye and Katie Adolphus I have to confess I quite often miss breakfast to
10:14me extra time in bed is always gonna win is it really that bad it is that bad so
10:20basically breakfast does have a short-term beneficial effect on your
10:24cognitive performance across the morning so those that have eaten breakfast do
10:27better on tests of reaction time memory and tension than those who have skipped
10:32breakfast eating breakfast in the morning actually prevents a decline in
10:37cognitive function it's not gonna make me superwoman but it's gonna keep me
10:41constant
10:44with the help of the professors I set up an experiment so that I can see the
10:49effects of ignoring breakfast for myself it's 7 a.m. the sun hasn't even come up
10:56but we're here at this Leeds office and we're waiting for the workers to arrive
11:00because they're gonna be our guinea pigs our test subjects are creatives based at
11:06a workspace hub and none of them have had breakfast yet before we start the
11:11experiment Professor Dye needs a baseline reading of their cognitive function the
11:17first test is a memory test the second test is a reaction time test and the
11:21third test is a sustained attention test first the volunteers are shown 16 pictures
11:28and 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
11:39must respond correctly as soon as they see it in the attention test they must press a
11:45button whenever they spot three odd or three even numbers in a row
11:49that was really hard that was very hard and now we will you're in two groups so one group will
11:57get
11:57breakfast and the other I'm afraid won't so sorry to break this to you but team a you don't get
12:03any
12:04breakfast you just get a glass of water and team B you get breakfast and you can have as much
12:11or as
12:12little as you like go for it but just try not to you know show that law now all our
12:23volunteers need
12:24to work as normal an hour and a half after the experiment began and I'm checking in with the
12:32water only workers are you a breakfast eater yes I would have had a massive bowl of porridge about
12:38an hour ago and how you're feeling right now I'm pretty hungry just really distracting has it affected
12:44you so far well we've mainly been looking at pictures of food on the internet so yeah we're
12:49quite distracted I'm worried about it I'm thinking so much about the fact that I'm hungry and I'm
12:54worried about how well I would be able to manage the space two hours in and the professors are
13:01retesting both the control group and the fasting group by this time they've already exerted quite a
13:07lot of effort they've been performing all morning they've gone back to their desks and carried on
13:11working so they should be tiring now and we'd expect their performance to be declining so if
13:17you're used to having breakfast every day missing it is likely to be detrimental so when they haven't
13:22eaten breakfast they feel very sluggish they feel that they can't focus not as alert and they also feel
13:28very frustrated angry and quite hard done by that they haven't eaten breakfast I want to see if our
13:35hungry group is finding the test any harder the numbers thing they were dancing at me by
13:41about halfway through the numbers that was it was really hard to concentrate and by the end I was
13:46just kind of felt like I was in a blur of numbers I'm doing okay a bit of a foggy
13:50head just putting numbers
13:51together properly I'm having to triple check everything because I'm my concentration is a bit
13:55shocked how much do you think your productivity has been affected I think massively so yeah I've done maybe a
14:03third of what I normally do three and a half hours after we started and after the final test how
14:13did
14:13our office workers compare the breakfast eaters sailed through all the tasks the workers without
14:21food did okay on the memory test but they were four percent slower on reaction times and a whole six
14:28percent behind on the attention test it looks like the experiment has worked people who didn't have
14:33breakfast really did struggle with their performance absolutely from the studies in our lab the task that
14:39measures attention performance is normally seven percent lower in the breakfast skippers compared to
14:45those who have eaten breakfast it's quite a big percentage so it doesn't matter if you're a toast a
14:52porridge or a scrambled egg person think twice before skipping breakfast I know that I will
15:09back at the cereal factory and our corn kernels are in the drying room three hours after they arrived here
15:19they've soaked up moisture during cooking so now they're moving slowly on a looped conveyor belt
15:25through this nearly 100 foot long extremely noisy double-decker dryer is this the biggest bit of kit in the
15:34factory it's probably the single biggest stand-alone piece of equipment that's all dryer yeah so you start there all
15:40the way along down all the way back again
15:43and it's so there's probably the reason of several thousand balls just don't blast your shoulder now you won't ever
15:48get closer to this amount of cool flakes ever
15:51absolutely I'm sure if there was Guinness Book of Records for here I'm gonna bowl big enough it will be
15:55the biggest ball of cobblakes
15:58it takes two and a half hours of hot air fanning over the corn before it's ready what are you
16:04looking for
16:05that was the corn coming out of your cooker so you can see it's got that sort of golden colour
16:10and it's sort of soft but not wet it's just squishy
16:13and as it goes through the drying process what we're looking for at the end is this sort of texture
16:17so it should be drier
16:19darker that should be slightly harder yeah it's like bounce on it it's got a little bit of giv
16:25yeah and actually that's absolutely critical if we dry it too fast or too hard we're in danger of crushing
16:31it into a powder
16:35if one stage breaks down what happens everything before it stops so it's not just this section that's
16:43not it's all the 26 tons of fuckers beforehand that stopped that could cost millions that's correct yes
16:49I can't believe they've given all that responsibility to somebody like you Dan
16:53sometimes I can't believe it myself the next stop is the milling room where our corn kernels still moist in
17:03the middle are about to be transformed into a much more familiar shape they roll through that mill what
17:10do you mean roll squashed imagine a man book they share it and sort of flatten it and elongate it
17:18mate they squash it yeah
17:21the kernels are fed between two giant steel rollers
17:26which turn in opposite directions one slightly faster than the other that means the kernels don't get crushed
17:33but stretched all in a second or less going through here 200 bowls a minute they now look like cornflakes
17:43to me they might look like cornflakes but they're not cornflakes to the end
17:57yeah that's not right no it's all stretchy and rubbery yeah what have you done to my cornflakes Dan
18:02no so would you like that in your breakfast while in the mardies no
18:08i'm about to discover how dan turns my squidgy wet flakes into the classic crunch we're all
18:15familiar with but around 150 years ago i wouldn't have had any kind of cornflakes in my breakfast
18:21bowl because cereal hadn't been invented now ruth goodman is finding out what the victorians were
18:28eating instead breakfast before cereal was a gut-busting business wow this is quite a spread
18:38here isn't it just i'm sitting down to a 19th century face with historian serene evans-charrington
18:47so what exactly have we got here we'll start off a 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
19:00a pig's head filled with jellied brawn it's hearty it's hearty so your breakfast would change depending
19:06on what you'd have the night before what was left over one thing i'm really noticing is that the
19:11enormous amount of protein that's on the table 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
19:23and keep you going until you ate again we're not thinking about our waistline we're not thinking
19:29about the nutritional 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 day
19:41almost twice the amount we eat now
19:46in a modern life if you sat down to this every day well you give yourself a whole range of
19:51health
19:51problems they are getting lots of gout you've got problems with obesity all sorts of gastro
19:56intestinal problems put simply this breakfast made people fat and flatulent things had to change
20:05so in 1863 an american doctor james caleb jackson came up with an alternative for his patients a healthy
20:12vegetarian breakfast that he called granular and we're going to try and recreate it so what we're
20:20looking for is stiff wall paste consistency we're mixing wheat flour and water to make a dough
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
20:45hard isn't it yeah it's tough break it up into these little pieces something like that yeah but it's hard
20:54going flaking it the flakes now need to be ground now that's starting to look much more like a cereal
21:02but
21:03before you want to eat it you've got to soak it overnight after about 30 hours of preparation a very
21:10plain breakfast is served brace yourself it's not horrible it's not one exciting worthy i think is
21:21that is what it's meant to be i can't say it's a food for pleasure i mean it tastes like
21:26a health food
21:26there's no sugariness there's no saltiness it's just very simple pleasant or not jackson had invented
21:35the first commercially available breakfast cereal it wasn't profitable but it led to other health
21:41specialists developing their own varieties and this is where the kellogg story starts
21:47in 1894 dr john kellogg chief medical officer of a sanatorium and his brother william keith
21:53were trying to make granola for patients using corn oatmeal and wheat
22:00one 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
22:10and by accident created the wheat flake of today
22:14and from there it was but a short step to creating the very first cornflakes
22:36back at kellogg's factory cornflakes might still be their most iconic product
22:41but it's not their only one here they also make chocolate frosted and raisin
22:47wheats frosties and ricicles and i want to see what else is cooking technician paul richardson
22:54is the man who puts the snap crackle and pop into one of their childhood classics i feel a bit
23:00silly
23:01but i never realized that rice krispies actually were made from rice
23:14after cooking and flavoring the rice is dried trimmed and put aside and then it has to be puffed up
23:22by hot air
23:29so from there to there in about 20 feet of tubes or air and color i'm gonna get rice to
23:37rice krispies
23:38that's right oh as you can see it's hot
23:40whoa hot rice krispies if i hadn't just seen that i would not believe that
23:49half the rice krispies get extra special treatment
23:55they're covered in a mixture of cocoa water and sugar
23:59on their way to becoming cocoa pops
24:03that's a thing of beauty vicky stanton is in charge of the only cocoa pop machine in the country
24:09do you know how many bowls you're producing
24:12two and a half million a day
24:13from this one machine so this is running constantly
24:16i feel like i should pay homage to it
24:21the hot chocolatey syrup turns the rice grains moist and sticky
24:25so now they need drying out very slowly
24:29so i can feel the cold air that's drying it and taking the heat away
24:34most of them are loose but i can still see some clusters
24:38whoa what happens to them
24:40they fall down onto what we call the cluster buster
24:43so it falls off the edge
24:45and breaks up the lumps
24:47brilliant
24:52you can leave them there if you want
24:58of course the cocoa and the two and a half teaspoons of sugar in an average bowl form
25:03is what makes cocoa pops so moorish
25:06but they're not the only extra ingredients
25:09every kellogg cereal is fortified with minerals and vitamins
25:13most recently in some varieties vitamin d
25:16cherry is finding out why we need it added to our breakfast
25:22vitamin d is essential to absorb calcium for healthy teeth and bones
25:27but new research suggests that there are other important benefits
25:32i've come to st bart's and london centre for immunobiology to meet professor adrian martineau
25:40for the last 10 years we've been working on the effects of vitamin d on the immune system
25:44in particular on resistance to the common cold
25:47so what did you discover
25:48we've done clinical trials and the results have shown
25:51in 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%
25:59that's absolutely huge
26:00so if you have low vitamin d levels
26:03topping them up
26:04can potentially prevent you from getting the common cold by up to 50%
26:09exactly right
26:11it's not just colds you risk if you're low in vitamin d
26:15serious conditions from type 1 diabetes to some cancers
26:20as well as children developing bone softening rickets
26:23have been linked to severe vitamin d deficiency
26:28one way we can get this super nutrient is sunshine
26:32we can produce it by our skin converting ultraviolet light
26:37so if we spend plenty of time outdoors then surely we'll get enough of it
26:43not in the short days of winter according to nutritionist angelique panagos
26:48so the sun actually has to be at a certain angle
26:51so it has to be about 50 degrees above the horizon
26:54that way the uvb rays can actually penetrate through the atmosphere
26:58and help us to synthesize vitamin d but in the uk the sun in winter is always very low
27:04the sun's unfortunately it's letting us down so from about october through to april
27:09we can't synthesize vitamin d so if you live in the uk and you go out into the sunshine in
27:15winter
27:16you'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
27:24it can be depleted over the winter research has shown that one in five of us are actually deficient
27:31in vitamin d one in five of us one in five
27:36that's enough to make me want to get my own levels checked so i'm using a self-testing kit
27:42if 10 million people are vitamin d deficient then there's quite a good chance that i am too
27:48but there's only one way to find out two weeks later my results are back now it's time to find
27:58out if
27:58i'm one of the 20 of the population that is deficient in this sunshine vitamin
28:09adequate that's not good adequate good excuse to go on more holidays okay so my vitamin d levels at the
28:18moment are okay but what happens if they dip what can i eat to keep them topped up so you
28:22can get some
28:24vitamin d from food sources so oily fish is a good one but you'd need to be eating a lot
28:30of one food to
28:31get in that vitamin d kick that we're looking for to get my 10 microgram daily dose i would need
28:37to
28:37eat either one fresh salmon fillet or six eggs or eight homemade beef burgers 52 bacon rashers or 333
28:47fried mushrooms taking a vitamin d supplement would be easier and having a boost at breakfast could also
28:56help the sunshine 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
29:19at the mega cereal factory our corn kernels have reached the toasting area it's five hours and 36 minutes
29:27since they entered the factory and they're halfway to becoming a bowl of proper corn flakes wow
29:32yeah now those soggy flattened flakes need crisping up it's in here we dry it we toast it
29:41that's a circular rotating toaster in simple terms yes it's taking the moist flake and making it crispy
29:48yes and as it rotates around there the rotation action separates the little flakes out so my big gooey
29:55plate becomes separate like crispy one absolutely yes
30:00it's in there for about seven to ten seconds is that all yeah that is the fastest cereal i've ever
30:06seen yes
30:09incredibly these cornflakes are coming through at a rate of 10 bowls a second help yourself took it
30:16they're hot they're hot yeah like a plate of hot chips
30:21hey have you ever thought about something hot cornflakes well i say it's a treat not many
30:25people get to experience you won't get a fresher cornflakes than that
30:31the cornflakes are good to go great big river of cornflakes that's right there cornflakes
30:36but equally we could turn them into functional cornflakes or crusties really really yeah so right now that
30:42could be any one of three any one of three yes five hours 36 minutes and 15 seconds in and
30:50the plain
30:50cornflakes head off for packing while frosties is diverted away for extra flavoring along with crunchy nut
30:57which was invented right here at the factory i'd love to make crunchy nut how do you stop them going
31:02up to
31:03cornflakes i'd make a popcorn can i make that boat then one second no way is that steve steve can
31:12we
31:12divert some to crunching up give me crunching up go crunching up do it steve hey
31:22cornflakes up that way crunching 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 dan well
31:32the feeling's mutual
31:38pool flakes have been the same shape and size as they were when they were first invented over a hundred
31:44years ago but what if you prefer your breakfast cereal more biscuit shaped
31:50cherry's been to find out how wheatabix is made
32:00this is the most popular cereal in the uk we eat over 10 million of these every morning
32:10producing 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
32:24every single grain within a 50-mile radius closer contact with the wheat farms means a more consistent crop
32:33and less damage to the environment i've come to visit one of their 160 farmers wow oh that's amazing
32:43robert barnes 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 wheatabix that's absolutely staggering we have one of the best climates for growing
33:05wheat do we in the world so you're telling me that england is a great climate to grow wheat when
33:12the
33:12temperature gets too hot the wheat plant will shut down and the yield will be suppressed southern
33:18europe they won't get the yields that we'll get because their temperatures are too high too high
33:23so delicate it's a little princess isn't it the wheat is harvested in the height of summer and stored
33:31for up to 10 months it has to be kept cool to prevent pest infestation so its temperature needs
33:38constant monitoring we have remote sensors in the grain that have little radio transmitters on and
33:43it'll say i'm too warm here i need the fans on so it'll start my fans to cool and that
33:50fan will draw
33:51the air down through the grain and up through the column to cool the grain down to five degrees i
33:57had
33:57no idea it was so high tech every year robert fills a hundred trucks with wheat to keep up with
34:07demand from
34:08the factory that's a 29 ton truckload of wheat
34:18that might sound like a lot but up the road is the world's largest wheatabix 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
34:34sugar vitamins and malt that's amazing oh wow
34:40showing me the just cooked wheat is factory manager gordon riddick so you can feel it's quite
34:46sticky it's quite moist it's quite soft quite pliable and smells fantastic that is oh that's the dream
34:55malty 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 it's such a large building yeah it's magnificent absolutely
35:16that is so nearly wheatabix that's an individual grain been squashed squashed squashed they cram around 365
35:27wheat grains into every biscuit if you want to take a whole handful squeeze it tight in your hands
35:33it's just the moisture content and the compression that form the biscuit it's a wheat of it it's a
35:39wheat of it pressure and moisture and moisture the appliance of physics that's all it is it looks
35:46a little bit like a squash tennis ball but it's all right all the grain flakes are carried along to
35:53the biscuit machine where they tumble into molds this is fabulous i can absolutely see now how the
36:01wheat of eggs are being pulled
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 end to
36:29end
36:29they would stretch from here to abergene and back again
36:36and 45 minutes after the wheat grains went into the pressure cooker they've become britain's top
36:43selling cereal
36:46this is the end of the process this is us ready to pack the biscuits
36:51where do they go 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
37:07in brighton 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 cornflakes are about to be crunchy nutted so these peanuts are not
37:39you on the crunchy nut yes they come from the americas we take them as whole peanuts then we slice
37:44them
37:44through and you get that how do you stick the nuts to the cornflakes we use honey from the americans
37:50again
37:50molasses sugar and vitamins it's like a syrup to form a glue why don't you use british honey you
37:56haven't got anything against british honey we need consistent supply 365 days a year good of course
38:02it's good it's a cold plate nuts and honey yeah every 24 hours the factory mixes together 10 tons of
38:11nuts
38:12three tons of honey and two tons of molasses a sweet syrup
38:20on a bigger scale
38:25in this drum here is your base cornflakes then you're adding your honey your molasses your sugar
38:32your vitamin profile and you know all in there they're spinning around they've been coating that drum
38:37the sweet molasses and honey glue plus sugar mean there's just over two and a half teaspoons of
38:44sugar in your average bowl of crunchy nuts have just over 3 000 bowls a minute no way yeah no
38:51way yeah
38:53as they fall out they're evenly coated onto this bed here that is a sugary rake my grandmother used to
39:00make me go out in autumn and do that with a lot of leaves obviously it's got to dry out
39:06now a little
39:06bit hasn't it that's right so at the minute you can see it's shiny and it's hot so what happens
39:10now is
39:11it goes to the grain process and then it's the standard 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 the
39:34past 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
40:03and finely ground instant porridge which is the big hitter winning over half of all hot cereal sales
40:10but does it taste as good and do you as much good as traditional or jumbo rolled porridge
40:19scoffing more porridge than anyone else a 25 to 34 year old so we're going to test all three types
40:26on
40:26early morning city commuters it's just turned 6am but already there is a stream of people going to work
40:34today we are going to ask the hungry office workers to try three different porridges and tell us which one
40:41is
40:41their favorite it's a porridge showdown and there can be only one winner we're cooking up all three types
40:50in the scottish oat corner is homegrown chef gizzy erskine
40:56backing the jumbo rolled oat is neil hargett a childhood porridge enthusiast
41:01he'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
41:13are a bit rubbish welcome to the porridge showdown i'm very excited to have you here so the rules of
41:21the day are you have to use the ingredients provided to you we have porridge milk water salt you can
41:29use
41:29them in any proportion you like no fancy toppings just salt no sugar just salt yes and i'm watching
41:37you are you ready ready ready right let's do this
41:43chef 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 porridge oats contain a soluble fiber called beta glucan
42:11which lowers cholesterol and can help control blood sugar levels it can even reduce the risk of heart
42:19disease neil has more reason than most for championing this healthy breakfast
42:24how often do you have porridge i have porridge virtually every day really virtually every day
42:29why is that i had a heart attack and i went off the like fried breakfast and everything else back
42:37to
42:37basics so the porridge has really helped your health yeah neil is using twice the quantity of milk to his
42:44jumbo rolled oats you put the oats in the pan you put the milk in the pan you stir it
42:48while it's
42:49getting warm and his porridge needs 10 minutes
42:56gizzy and neil have nearly finished their porridge i'd better crack on with mine
43:00the instructions say add milk cook 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 beigey 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 yes
44:00i'm pretty confident yeah let's see which one's the best right okay
44:09here are three porridges please could you taste them and tell us which one you like the most
44:14this one's already yeah it's not a stick taste more like white pudding so which one is your favorite
44:19hmm i'm gonna go for the middle one the creamy ricey one so am i same here yeah do you
44:26like porridge i love
44:27porridge okay 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
44:41so do you eat porridge yes so which one is your favorite for me it's probably the one
44:48it's thick it's porridgey 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
45:11strong opinions 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
46:09it's like a chorus of metal frogs
46:13it gives you a really clear indication of how fast you're making it it's not as simple as each hopper
46:21separately weighing out 500 grams of cornflakes each of these metal pans contains a weight somewhere
46:28between 100 made up to 200 grams of food so for example that pan might have 100 grams in it
46:35that might
46:36have 200 grams in it that might have 203 and that one might have sort of 98 what the computer
46:43program
46:43does it says there's eight pans there all with various different weights it selects the best
46:48combination of those weights and old pans to give you the 500 grams that is a stupid system that just
46:54confuses everything why don't you just weigh out of boxworth in one hopper because every cornflake
46:59is 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 and 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 that laser beam detected the correct length of
47:29that
47:29bag so at the bag first you deviated from set length and 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 should be jim carney in quality control carries out a random check every two hours
48:12how long you been doing this jim one time 42 years 42 years so what year did you start i
48:17did 73. if you
48:19do find a problem does that mean you have to stop the whole batch depends on the defect if it's
48:23minor
48:24then we make it and just accordingly if it's a possible hold then we stop the line and we tell
48:29relevant supervision so how many boxes of cereal we likely to throw away probably about 10 000. wow that
48:36can't happen very often hopefully not it does happen it does that yes there's a detailed checklist
48:44but jimmy is so experienced he knows in an instant if there's a problem smell the inside of the box
48:51you
48:51do what you smell the inside of the box can you smell from the inside of a box jim well
48:56it's hard to
48:56describe it through experience but sometimes the carpet itself can actually taste more smell off
49:02then we have to report it you know like a wine buff has a perfect nose can you honestly stick
49:07your
49:07nose over a box and tell me if it's wrong on yes really yes you do realize you're telling me
49:13you can
49:13tell the difference between fresh and stale carbon yes jimmy i love you give me a five five that is
49:19just
49:19remarkable so okay and once we've done the box then what are we looking for right make sure there's a
49:25good
49:26seal that seems fine with all the contents into this bowl here feel it and feel it against this
49:34yes it's standard batch of crunching up that's your template yes we're looking for similarity actually
49:40look lighter or darker or too much coating or not enough coating and then i have a taste can i
49:46yeah
49:47hang on with the peanuts the syrup the honey and then we go to the reference and try that one
49:54actually that really does smell heavily of peanut which i've never even considered before to me it's
49:59fine jim i believe you you have got an expert nose when it comes to breakfast cereal thank you
50:09the humble cereal has come a long way in the last hundred years but the most important
50:13development came in the 1950s when ad men realized that the secret weapon in selling a box of cereal
50:19wasn't the cereal it was the box itself
50:29we in britain eat more breakfast cereal than any other nation in europe in fact
50:3587 percent 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 emerged 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
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