Food Unwrapped

Season 252012

The food and science series that travels the world to explore the industry secrets behind our favourite produce, industry secrets, and how foods are really made.

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8 Episodes

E01 Grapefruit and Probiotics

Kate Quilton travels to Swaziland to find out how they get tinned grapefruit so perfect, and, in Finland, Matt Tebbutt discovers exactly what the bacteria are in Probiotics.

September 10, 2012

E02 Lemons and Ham

Kate and Matt investigate the wax on our lemons in Spain and Thailand, and Matt gets the real story behind formed ham here in the UK.

September 17, 2012

E03 Prawns and Mushrooms

This episode explores how prawns are intensively farmed and discovers why there are often so few wild mushrooms in our wild mushroom soups. Kate flies to Thailand - the world's biggest producer of farmed prawns - to get a sense of the scale of the industry, and Matt meets a professional wild mushroom forager in the woods of West Sussex.

September 24, 2012

E04 Olives and Beer

This episode explores the difference between green and black olives, and why not everything that goes into beer processing is listed in the ingredients. Matt travels to South Africa to visit one of the country's largest olive orchards in the Western Cape, where he discovers that black olives are just riper green olives, but that both need a year's soaking in brine to make them edible. In Spain, Kate is shown how mass production factories make super black olives found in pizza and salads. And Matt heads to a small brewery near Belfast to discover if it really is just water, hops, barley and wheat in beer.

October 1, 2012

E05 Seafood Sticks and Wine

The team head to Thailand to find out what seafood goes into seafood sticks, and then discover how some British wine is really made... in Spain. In a seafood stick factory in Thailand Kate sees some incredible production techniques and giant frozen blocks of fish called surimi. Confusingly, there are two types of domestically produced wines: British and English. British wine is much cheaper, so what's the difference?

October 8, 2012

E06 Orange Juice and Mayonnaise

Kate Quilton heads to Spain to find out how pure squeezed, not-from-concentrate orange juice is really made, and how 'fresh' it is. The team then travel around the UK to find out what is used to replace the fat in low-fat mayonnaise, and discover it's a bacteria that usually grows on rotting cabbages.

October 22, 2012

E07 Tomatoes and Strawberry Flavour

Kate Quilton travels to Holland to find out how manufacturers prevent tomatoes in packaged sandwiches from going soggy, and the team investigates the production of strawberry-flavoured food. Matt Tebbutt and Rachel Edwards-Stuart try to make yoghurt with the average amount of the fruit used in supermarket-own brands - 10 per cent - but the results are disappointing, while Martin Dickie visits the Nestle Rowntree factory to learn about the concentrated strawberry flavour used in their pastilles.

October 29, 2012

E08 Sausages and Ice-Cream

Matt Tebbutt travels to Sweden to learn how a food company uses liquid smoke to flavour sausages, a method that is cheaper and quicker and enables flavours to be tailored more effectively. The Food Standards Agency requires that ice-cream needs to contain milk protein and any kind of fat - vegetable being the one most commonly used. Martin Dickie and James Watt head to Brighton beach with an old-fashioned bicycle adorned with banners saying `Ice Vegetable Oil'. What will the public make of this product?

November 5, 2012

Food Unwrapped

E01 Grapefruit and Probiotics

E02 Lemons and Ham

E03 Prawns and Mushrooms

E04 Olives and Beer

E05 Seafood Sticks and Wine

E06 Orange Juice and Mayonnaise

E07 Tomatoes and Strawberry Flavour

E08 Sausages and Ice-Cream

Top Boy

Loki

Game of Thrones

The Night Manager

Elite Short Stories: Guzmán Caye Rebe

Adolescence

Marvel's The Defenders

Heels

Lupin

Breaking Bad

Sanctuary

Borgen

Pretend It's a City

The Sinner

Naked and Afraid

Narcos

Bad Sisters

Ramy

What We Do in the Shadows

Three Women

E01 Grapefruit and Probiotics

E02 Lemons and Ham

E03 Prawns and Mushrooms

E04 Olives and Beer

E05 Seafood Sticks and Wine

E06 Orange Juice and Mayonnaise

E07 Tomatoes and Strawberry Flavour

E08 Sausages and Ice-Cream