Original subtitles

They say that breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day.

- Lovely stuff. Put it on my tab. - You haven't got a tab.

That's what they all say.

SHE LAUGHS

So when I'm working hard hosting the UK's premier

factory-based TV show,

I couldn't agree more.

And this factory is massive,

so I need to keep my strength up.

Can someone throw us a couple of sausages on?

In the UK, we crunch through - get this -

a billion boxes of cereal every year.

So, luckily, I've come to one of Europe's biggest factories

that's dedicated to making the stuff.

That's going to take a big bottle of milk.

Everything here is supersized.

Holy granola, that is big!

With massive machines...

Where is everybody?

..and an automated process...

Hey! Get out!

..making multigrain cereal.

And while I find out exactly what goes into your breakfast bowls,

Cherry's drawn the short straw,

because she's learning how to clean up.

Oh, yeah. I'm getting down and dirty...

No. No, no, no, no, no.

..discovering the do's and don'ts of dishwashers.

- You don't rinse? - We don't rinse plates.

And historian Ruth Goodman is in search of the man from Sheffield

who revolutionised spoons.

So he doesn't set out to make a better spoon,

this is a man who wants to make a better gun?

This factory produces

120 million boxes of cereal every year,

and I'm going to show you how they make every single flake.

This is Inside The Factory.

Hygiene, very important.

Hygiene again.

That's... Oh, that's the wrong one. DRYER BLOWS

Where's the water? There it is.

Whatever happened to just taps?

A tap you turned on, a bit of soap. Lovely. Now it's all this.

Look at that. That tap's now turned into a hand-dryer.

What a time to be alive.

And now we're going over to this bit now.

It's like Blackpool Fun House. Here we go.

# Da-da, da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da. #

And this is like council swimming baths when you're a kid.

Get your feet in there with all verrucas and toenails.

Bit more sanitiser. Give them a wipe.

Through the thing.

Absolutely spotless.

This is the Kellogg's factory in Wrexham

and they've been making cereal here for almost half a century.

That's a lot of bowls of brekkie.

- # Wake up, it's a beautiful morning - Wake up

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

This factory runs around the clock.

A temple of high-tech...

Nice.

..making many of the nation's favourite cereals

like Bran Flakes and Fruit 'n Fibre.

# Wake up, wake up... #

But today I'm following Special K,

and I'm learning how they create these 440g boxes.

Got one! Come here.

- # Wake up - Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

- # The sun shining for your eyes - Wake up... #

And to get my morning going,

I'm trekking across this massive site to ingredients intake.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning... #

Now, excuse all the belts and buckles.

Here's Craig Williams, who's in charge, to explain all.

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

Good morning, Craig. You all right, pal?

- Morning, Paddy. You OK? - Yeah. Yeah, well, I am OK,

but I've got to be honest,

I've never started a show in this kind of get-up.

It's a little bit 50 Shades Of Grey. What are we doing?

Well, all will be revealed.

So we put all our tankers in here and this one contains rice.

Which, for me, is a little bit strange,

because obviously there's certain cereals that are just rice,

but I didn't think this particular cereal would contain it.

- 47% of the flake is actually rice. - Can I have a look?

Yeah, that's why we're wearing these, Paddy.

Let's go up and have a gander.

Like Challenge Anneka, this, isn't it?

Are you on my bum?

Right, then. We'll connect one of these to

- the back of your harness so we don't lose you. - OK. Yeah.

Don't want you falling off a tanker.

It turns out the harness isn't for fun,

but for safety...

It's like a seat belt

- and then it gets you like that. - Yeah, that's it. - Yeah, yeah.

..because we're climbing on top of the tanker

to take a sample of the rice delivery.

- Don't know if you want to do it? - Yeah, yeah, can do.

Oh, that's a first for me.

Give us one more.

What kind of rice is that, then?

It's a type of rice, if you do much cooking at home,

like you'd use in a risotto.

We use that because it's high in starch,

so once it's cooked it gets like a sticky texture.

- Right. - And it helps bond the flake together.

- Right, so now we've took the sample... - Yeah.

- ..we're going to give it to Paul. - OK, no problem.

- OK. - He'll do the relevant testing on it

- to make sure it meets the right specification. - Yeah.

First off, Paul makes sure

the rice is a mix of big and small grains,

which will give texture to the finished flakes.

MICROWAVE PINGS

Oh, hang on.

Looks like someone's peckish.

It's OK, though. Apparently it's part of the test.

Paul's checking the rice hasn't picked up any nasty tastes or smells.

And the scores are in.

- How's it looking, Paul? - Rice is all good, Paddy.

Belting. So we can load it in now.

- Yeah, let's get it going. - Right, OK. Load it up.

Start the clock. Breakfast is under way.

# I'm walking on sunshine... #

To make 350,000 boxes of cereal every day,

this massive factory has four 100-tonne,

30-metre-high silos...

..just for the rice.

And there's another three silos full of wheat.

So 47% of our flake is made up by rice

and the other's wholewheat.

Around 37% wholewheat.

Well, I'm glad you said that, Craig, because through the magic of telly,

I've sent Cherry down to the farm

to find out exactly how it's harvested.

The wheat for your cereal, Paddy, needs dry weather to harvest,

and the somewhat changeable British climate

is making that tricky.

It's been such a soggy summer.

It's been raining what feels like nonstop.

But I've just had the call from Farmer Stephen

to say he thinks that it's dry enough to harvest the wheat.

Fingers crossed.

I'm in Northamptonshire,

meeting Stephen Evans, who runs a 1,600-acre farm...

- Lovely to see you. - Really nice to meet you.

..and grows 2,000 tonnes of wheat a year,

half of which goes to the cereal factory.

And today there's just one field left to harvest.

- Has the rain been a total pain? - Oh, it's been a horrible year.

It's made life very difficult.

Why can't you harvest when it's just rained?

The grain, if it's too wet, will go mouldy in the shed.

I mean, how much money do you lose if that happens?

It'll be tens of thousands across the farm.

So we've invested everything and we really need this.

Oh, my gosh.

More rain is on the horizon, but the last few sunny days means

this 25-acre field should be dry enough to harvest.

We just need to do a moisture test and see if it's good to go.

The stakes are really high.

There's a lot riding on this.

So this is our electronic moisture tester.

So we need the moisture of this grain to be 15 or less.

15% moisture or less, or we're in trouble today.

That's right.

- Oh! - 14.9. - So is it go time?

I think we'd better go.

With the weather forecast threatening,

it's a race against time.

But the 15-tonne combine harvester is ready for action.

It's absolutely amazing!

It's just the most enormous,

loudest monster of a machine I've ever seen.

Yeah, ten metres wide. It's amazing what they'll process.

I've seen a few farm machines in my time,

but this one is on another level.

- Yeah. - Woohoo!

To make sure the valuable crop is gathered

before the rain comes,

Stephen calls in another harvester from a neighbouring farm.

Today, it's all hands on deck.

There we are. Take a seat.

Look at this.

So we'll put the front header in gear.

Look at those teeth!

So that's the knife that will cut the crop.

- That is one hell of a knife. - Right, here goes.

- Whoa, look at that! - So, we're off.

So this rotating wheel is then pulling it all

into the body of the machine,

- which is like a mini factory back there. - Oh, it is.

A combine harvester gets its name

because it combines the three stages of harvesting.

First reaping,

where the front header cuts the stalks of wheat.

Next threshing, to shake the ears from the stalks.

And finally winnowing, to separate the wheat from the chaff,

the unwanted husks.

The straw and the chaff fly out the back

to fertilise the field for next year.

The grain which we use for cereals

is filling up the tank behind us.

How much are you collecting in one go?

This machine currently is doing about 30 tonnes per hour,

so that's a lot of bowls of cereals.

In fact, it's enough

to produce nearly 2 million bowls of our cereal.

And we've got two of these monster machines

working flat out to get the harvest finished.

I hope Paddy appreciates how much work has gone into this.

So do I.

It's about time we emptied.

Once the grain tank is full...

- Oh, here he comes! - Here he is. - There we go.

- Hello. - Right, so let's hope Frank is good at catching.

It needs to be emptied as quickly as possible

and we don't need to pause the harvest to unload...

He's absolutely nailed it.

..because the trailer comes to us.

It's like someone's just turned the tap on max.

- That can go into the store. - Off he goes.

With two combine harvesters, it takes just an hour and a half

to gather 90 tonnes of wheat from this final field.

We've dodged the rain...

..and the freshly harvested crop is taken to a dry barn.

Is this everything done? Have you finished the harvest?

We've finished now, we're over the line.

It's such a relief. The weather won't affect us any more.

The wheat will be sent to the cereal factory to be transformed

into 72 million servings of breakfast flakes.

Paddy, I've got 800 tonnes of wheat for you.

I hope it's enough.

I think that should keep us ticking over, Cherry.

Mind you, I'm still getting to grips with the size of this place.

It's a whopping 52,000 square metres!

And using the traditional TV measuring system,

that's bigger than seven football pitches.

Feeling fitter already.

I'm definitely getting my steps in.

We've had to put a wide angle lens on the drone

just to get this shot!

From the huge silos at intake,

I'm following our rice and wheat to the mini silos...

..where I've been told to look out

for factory food designer Lizzie Waiting.

- You all right, Lizzie? - Hey, Paddy, how are you doing?

- Keeping busy? - Oh, just about. - I just did a rhyming thing.

It's all right. Now, listen,

for the good licence-fee-paying people at home,

what are we doing here?

So this room is where all of the grains come to

after they've just been off-loaded.

So above us are all the silos.

Now, there's about 80 tonnes of the four key ingredients

that go into the multigrain cereal.

So we've got the rice that you've just seen.

- Yeah. - We've got the wheat and we've got two types of barley.

So this is the wheat,

which is really important for the structure of the flake,

it holds it all together, but it's a whole grain,

so it adds fibre, it's really good for your heart and digestive system.

Oh, OK.

Now, that's definitely changed from when I saw it with Cherry.

- What's been done to it? - This is cracked wheat.

It's been taken to a mill and then it's been cleaned

to get rid of any impurities.

And then those kernels are moistened a little bit

and then they're just cracked a little bit.

Random question, how do you clean wheat?

Just with water and a bit of

- scrubbing power. - So it's just like how you clean yourself at home?

- Yeah. - You get in the bath, you have a little bit of a scrub.

Yeah, exactly. Just no shower gel.

Oh, right.

SHE CHUCKLES

The other two main ingredients are kibbled barley,

which are crushed whole grains...

It's almost like tiny little stones.

It's quite hard.

..and finer-textured malted barley flour.

From here,

our cereals rush along pipes into one of four enormous cookers.

Whoa, this is massive!

# Stand back... #

Holy granola, that is big!

# Stand back... #

Lizzie, quick question.

14 cookers, massive room - where is everyone?

So these are quite self-sufficient.

- Right. - We've got them all pre-set

to make sure that as one cook finishes,

another one still going, and there's a continuous feed

of cereal going to the next part of the process.

In one cook, how much cereal is that?

Around about 740 kilos.

That's about 1,500 boxes of cereal,

or 24,500 bowls of cereal.

Wowsers!

So the cook is in three stages.

For the first stage,

you have the cookers rotating,

so all the ingredients are mixed together,

and we add in lots of hot steam.

# This heat... #

A jet of steam is blasted into the cooker at 125 degrees Celsius,

adding moisture to the mix and starting the cooking process.

# Give me steam

# And how you feel to make it real

# Real as any place you've been

# Get a life with the dreamer's dream... #

It's very similar to if you were making a risotto at home.

- You have your stock and your rice. - Right.

You mix and heat it,

and it gets thicker and it starts to swell.

That's the same process that we've got going on in here.

# I need steam

# Feel the steam all around me... #

So when I'm looking at a cereal,

it's very, very dry and flaky.

Surely we don't want to be adding more moisture to it.

Is it not going to make it soggy?

Well, actually, Paddy, we need to add even more moisture to it.

- My word. - So at this stage, we actually add in

about a third extra moisture.

- We add this in. - Oh, now, now, now. I'm not a medical person,

but someone needs to drink more water.

SHE LAUGHS

This is, in fact, the flavour solution we add in

after the pre-steam.

So in here we have malt,

we have sugar, salt and water.

- Can I smell that? - Yes, you can smell it.

Have a little...

It's almost like a sweet and sour smell, that.

The flavouring is added to the cooker,

which slowly revolves for an hour,

mixing all the ingredients thoroughly as they cook.

If we go around there, we can go and take a little look at it.

- Thought you'd never ask. - Come on, then.

PADDY CHUCKLES

Three hours after the rice was delivered,

our mix is cooked and we've taken the first step towards

breakfast cereal heaven.

Beautiful.

All of this has just been dumped out of that cooker

and is coming along the Archimedes' screw...

- Dumped? - Yes. It's not the most romant... - Placed, placed.

It's not the most romantic word,

but we go with it.

PADDY LAUGHS

It's lovingly placed into this Archimedes' screw.

Still looks nothing like cereal that I recognise.

No, so the most important part about this is it's now cooked,

so that means it's ready to get all that moisture back out.

- So we put it in and now we need to take it back out again. - Right.

- It does smell lovely, though. - Yes, yes. - It smells gorgeous.

- That's all those cooked flavours coming through. - Yeah.

So, to save your fingers, I've brought you some

so you can have a little closer look at it.

- Oh, right. That's that? - That is that, yeah.

- God, that is hot. - Yes, yeah.

It's not very wet,

but there's definitely still quite a bit of moisture in there.

It's all moist now, but the next stage of the process

is to try and get all that moisture out

to get to that lovely crunchy cereal.

I'd love to try that, but I'm missing one key ingredient -

spoons.

And that, viewers, is my clever link to everyone's favourite historian,

Ruth Goodman.

She's visiting somewhere that makes the best of 'em.

Sheffield, the Steel City.

Fed by iron ore and coal mined from the Pennines,

Sheffield's metalworks put the city on the map

and they were particularly famous for their cutlery.

But it's one very specific piece of cutlery

that I'm in Sheffield to find out about.

And not just any old spoon, but the stainless steel spoon.

I'm at the Kelham Island Museum, a historic industrial site,

to meet curator of industry and metalwork Emma Paragreen.

So, Sheffield has a really long history

of cutlery making, doesn't it?

It does indeed.

It goes right back to the 13th century.

- OK. - And then Chaucer talks about a Sheffield thwytel,

- which is an early knife. - OK.

OK. But where do spoons come into it?

Spoons have been around for millennia -

spoons made in bone, wood, even glass and ceramics.

In terms of a metal spoon,

we're talking really the Tudor period

and then into the Elizabethan age.

And what sort of metal were they?

A lot of them were pewter.

- It's quite heavy though, isn't it? - Mm.

And, of course, pewter tastes.

Yeah, you can smell it, you can taste it.

- There'll be a lead content as well. - Which is really poisonous. - Yes.

OK, I'll give you that back.

EMMA LAUGHS

So maybe silver is a better option.

- OK. - This is going into the 17th, 18th century.

- So, solid silver? - Solid silver.

It's not exactly going to be

in your poor man's cupboard then, is it?

No, so a lot more expensive.

You always know if you're eating off a silver spoon.

- You can taste it on the food. - Yeah.

The bad taste you get when eating off pewter or silver

is due to the metal reacting with acids in the food

and with our saliva.

But steel -

an alloy of iron, carbon and other elements -

had the potential to react in a different way.

By the mid-19th century,

Sheffield was producing 85% of British steel

for everything from knives and forks to railway tracks.

But in 1913, just before the First World War,

a revolution in cutlery production came from a surprising source.

This gentleman, Harry Brearley,

was looking for different alloys

to make a gun barrel that wouldn't rust.

So he doesn't set out to make a better spoon,

this is a man who wants to make a better gun?

Yes.

In search of a metal that wouldn't rust or corrode,

Harry began to experiment

with steel alloys containing chromium,

which has a high melting point, ideal for use in gun barrels.

To find out more,

we're visiting the factory of Sheffield cutlery makers David Mellor

to look at some of Harry's experiments.

So we've got some early samples of some of the tests

that Harry Brearley had been working on with his gun barrels,

and then he discovers that, actually,

this might be useful for something else.

On the 13th of August, 1913,

Harry discovered a form of steel that was not only rust-proof,

but had another revolutionary property.

- So he discovers this rustless steel, stainless steel... - Stainless steel.

- A metal with no taste. - Oh, really?

No, so if you imagine this is the first time

that a metal hasn't really had that aftertaste.

So out of rifle barrels comes cutlery.

Yeah, definitely.

Originally known as rustless steel,

in 1921, Harry teamed up with a local firm to produce cutlery

which they marketed as stainless steel.

So this is a mass market product.

- It's cheap in comparison to what went before. - Yes.

Yeah, very much so.

And as it says on the box,

"Neither rusts, tarnishes nor stains.

"Cutlery made from this steel is unaffected by food acids

"and is in consequence a universal boon."

A universal boon!

"Guaranteed."

And here at David Mellor,

they've been making stainless-steel spoons

since the 1960s.

Today, David's son, Corin, is the company's creative director.

So, what's so great about stainless steel for spoons, then?

It's indestructible. It's incredibly resilient.

Lasts forever.

And there is nothing really

to substitute good old stainless steel.

I mean, it simply is the best material to make a spoon out of.

100-odd years on,

it's just part of life.

Absolutely part of life.

It's there every morning for your cereal, isn't it?

And you just use it.

Spot on, that, Ruth.

Back at the factory,

I'm making a cereal fit for the best of spoons.

It's like The Beatles.

# What a beautiful day Hey, hey

# I'm the king of all time... #

Bloody noisy.

# And nothing is impossible

- # In my all-powerful mind... # - That's better.

What we've got so far is nothing like flakes yet.

PADDY WHISTLES

So I'm in search of head of operations, Ian Selley.

You all right, Ian? How are you, pal? Are you all right?

- OK, thanks. - Ian, I'll tell you,

everything in this factory is supersized.

- Yeah, it's a really big plant. Really big. - Oh, my word, is it?

Now, I've just left Lizzie.

All that cereal's not quite cereal yet. It's still very moist.

I believe you're the man to dry it out.

I sure am, Paddy.

So we've been through the cooking process.

Everything that we're going to see in the next few stages

is about how we're going to transform that

- into the crispy cereal that we know. - OK.

It starts with the granulator,

a fierce-looking bit of kit

which forces the mixture through a mesh.

This, essentially, is a box now with a steel conveyor inside.

- Right. - And it will hold roughly three cooks

at any one time, which is about two tonnes of food.

My word.

And we're just trying to break it up,

trying to make it more even, more free-flowing,

- in order that we can take moisture out. - OK. Got it.

And off we go,

following the mix to a massive 30-metre-long dryer...

Keep going, Ian.

..where the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius.

As it travels along, the mix loses a third of its moisture,

starting the transformation from soggy to crunchy.

What have we got here, Ian?

- So these are our pellet mills, Paddy. - Right, yeah.

And what you can see there is that's the cooked mix

coming down through that tube,

and we put it between two rollers that are going to make

little tiny dough balls with it.

One of the metal rollers is covered in hundreds of dimples.

It looks a bit like bubble wrap.

When the cooked cereal passes between the rollers,

the mix is pushed up into the dimples,

moulding it into little balls of dough called pellets.

I can see the little balls that are dropping, yeah.

- Behave, Ian. - I know.

Each pellet will eventually become one flake of cereal.

So they've still got a little bit of moisture in them, yeah?

They still need to hold quite a lot of moisture

in order that we can get them to form together now

to make them little balls.

These little pellets don't look like cereal flakes yet...

..but they look over the moon to be on their way.

Oh-oh! Look at these cheeky little scamps.

Having a right little bounce about.

# Bounce... #

So at this point now, we've put the product through a mesh,

so those that have made it into a pellet small enough

drop through that mesh.

# Bounce

# Bounce

# Bounce

# Bounce... #

Those that don't make it through there...

So you can see there are some lumps

- that go over the top and over the end. - Yeah.

They return back into the process.

How much is coming through here now, Ian?

So each pellet mill, Paddy, produces about 48,000 pellets a minute.

Wow.

# Bounce... #

If we multiply that by the amount of pellet mills we've got on -

that's ten - it'll equate to about 4,000 bowls of cereal a minute.

Mate, sometimes when I'm doing this show,

people tell me facts and figures, I can't get my head around it,

and that's one of them. I mean,

yeah, just how's that even possible?

- A lot of cereal. - It really is amazin...!

It really is amazing to see.

IAN CHUCKLES

# Bounce. #

Want to try one, Paddy?

- Absolutely. - At this point?

Oh, still very moist.

Still very moist at this point.

You've got to put a lot in your mouth to get

that cereal taste.

They're chewy, but it's not unpleasant.

But it's definitely not what I know that taste to be.

After 4.5 hours, we're leaving the pellets behind,

and we've got 100m to cover to get to the flake making.

And here we are.

- Ah-ah-ah-ah! - OK, Paddy... - That looks a little bit more familiar now.

Go on, Ian. Reveal the flakes.

ARCADE GAME BEEPING

It's like playing the tastiest tuppenny nudger on the pier.

Ask your grandparents.

We've only gone and won the flaky jackpot!

So, Paddy, this is one of our flaking mills.

This is very similar to a pellet mill - two steel rolls.

- Yeah. - But without the dimples.

And as you can see there, that becomes a flake.

- Would you like to take a sample? - Yes, sir.

OK, pull the handle there and we'll take a sample.

My God!

- That's floppy. - There's still a lot of moisture at this phase. - Yeah.

I thought they were going to come out totally solid and crispy.

So at this point we've taken out about 40% moisture.

There's still moisture in there,

because if we dried it out completely at this point,

we wouldn't be able to get it through that flaking mill.

It would probably disintegrate into a powder.

I don't know if it's a psychological thing,

but because it's a bit more like a flake,

I'm getting a flavour of it more now.

- Possibly, yeah. - Yeah.

But seeing those floppy flakes makes me think of

one of my pet hates -

soggy bits of breakfast stuck on the dishes.

It's the eternal debate -

what's the best way to stack those dirty cereal bowls

in your dishwasher and get them spotlessly clean?

Well, luckily for us,

Cherry Healey is about to give us the answer.

And ever the professional,

she's brought her own prop along.

Looks heavy, that, Cherry.

In most households,

it would seem there is one person who stacks the dishwasher

with the precision of a Scandinavian architect,

and there is another who takes more of a cram-it-in approach.

So I'm in Bristol to dish the dirt on this dishwashing divide.

- Cutlery first. - No, do the plates. - No, plates.

- No, cutlery first. - You are cutlery first.

You are plates first.

There's always an argument, isn't there?

This is the wrong way.

This is wrong, because there should be no pots up there.

Who is the stacker and who is the shover?

I'm the stacker.

- Does he sometimes just shove the dishes in? - Occasionally,

and then I have to take it out and redo it.

What do you think about this stacking?

How does it make you feel?

- Untidy, I'd say. - It looks like something I would do.

- That would drive me nuts. - Right.

I would have to take it all out and restack.

It seems there's only one conclusion -

everyone thinks they're right.

SHE LAUGHS

Time to clear it up once and for all.

Back in my very own kitchen,

my family's dirty breakfast bowls

are waiting for some expert treatment...

- Hi, Andrew. I'm Cherry. Nice to meet you. - Hi, Cherry.

- Nice to meet you. - Come in.

..from Andrew Laughlin, dishwasher guru

and principal researcher at consumer organisation Which?.

Is there anything that causes more domestic arguments

than stacking the dishwasher?

I would say no.

They cause a lot of arguments,

but hopefully we can settle a few arguments today.

But before Andrew gives me a masterclass in stacking,

I need to rinse my very dirty plates.

- No. No, no, no, no, no, Cherry. - Oh, what?

- Cherry, Cherry, Cherry... - Oh, it's gross, though!

- We don't. - You don't rinse? - We don't rinse plates.

You can actually mess up how the machine works by doing it,

because on most machines' auto programme

it has what's called a turbidity sensor.

- Now... - A turbidity sensor? - Yeah.

That senses, in that prewash cycle, how cloudy the water is.

And what it's looking for is how dirty your dishes are.

So imagine if you cleaned all this stuff, put it all in,

the machine's going to go, "Hold on a minute.

"This is just clean dishes.

"I'll adjust the temperature and lower it accordingly."

So if you want your dishes really clean,

make sure they're dirty?

The dishwasher wants to clean. Let it.

Instead of rinsing,

scrape leftovers into your food waste bin

and regularly clean the dishwasher filter.

And when stacking,

face everything towards the centre of the machine

for the best performance.

As a rule of thumb, typically, if you eat out of it,

it goes on the lower rack.

- If you drink out of it, it goes on the upper rack. - Right.

And make sure no items are touching,

so the water can flow and wash effectively.

Non-stick cookware, sharp knives and wood

should never go in the dishwasher,

as high temperatures and water pressure

could damage them.

- Oh, my God, are you restacking? - No...

It's like a natural thing.

Is it because some of them weren't quite even?

Well, you know, I mean, it is my job,

you know, to be a slight...slight pedant.

Particular placement might be important,

but with this next lot, Andrew's got his work cut out.

These are two of the worst offenders -

cereal-based anything and scrambled eggs.

Yeah. What you've got here is carbs, sugar and starch,

and protein with the egg,

so they take a bit more time to break down.

When left behind, the starches and proteins on the bowls

form bonds with each other and start to harden.

The longer the food sits, the more cement-like it becomes.

By adding moisture, the dishwasher breaks these bonds.

So what we want to do with this one

is put it in the middle where the intensity is highest.

I'll be stunned if that comes off.

We'll see.

Time to put Andrew's tips to the test.

Right, in the tablet goes.

A prewash sprays jets of cold water between

the carefully-spaced plates and cutlery,

knocking off excess foods before the main cycle begins.

But perfect stacking is not the only thing required

for my dishes to sparkle.

What about tablets? Is that important?

Absolutely, yeah.

They are designed to break down all the dirt

and the food waste and start the cleaning process.

Most tablets contain enzymes which attack

protein-based foods like my scrambled eggs,

as well as the starchy residue of breakfast cereal.

They also have something else in them,

which is a surfactant, and it basically stops water

from forming droplets and it makes it spread more easily.

We want our detergent to have maximum coverage

and the water is the vehicle to get that there.

Another addition, rinse aid, disperses the water

on the surface of the dishes,

helping them to dry at the end of the cycle.

And to run efficiently,

special dishwasher salt softens the water,

preventing limescale build-up

and those horrid white marks on glasses.

Which is so annoying.

Every household has a cloudy glass.

Yeah, that will be because you've not kept up with your salt.

And with the cycle over,

it's time to see if my impeccably-stacked dishwasher

has done its job.

No!

SHE GASPS

No! It dealt with the cereal.

- Dealt with the eggs. - Even the egg. - Even the egg.

- So the cutlery is sparkling. - Yeah.

So does that mean that stacking properly works?

Yep. Don't prewash, stack properly the first time,

and you'll get good results every time.

I'm sorry I didn't wear sunglasses,

because that is some good-looking cutlery.

So we've learnt how to get the best out of our dishwasher.

Now all that remains is the battle of whose turn it is to empty it.

# We are giants... #

That's going to take a big bottle of milk.

# We are giants We are giants... #

Just like everything in this factory,

we've now got supersized bowls of cereal.

But these flakes are still missing that all-important crunch,

so I'm on the hunt for Ian again.

# Do-do-do... # Is it that way?

I'm not sure where I'm going

from here now.

PADDY CHUCKLES

I want to find out how flakes go from floppy to fabulous.

There he is.

Good to see you again, Ian.

- How are you, pal? - OK. - I'll tell you what...

- ..it's toasty here. - Oh, it's really warm.

The heat coming off that, flippin' heck!

Phwoar!

IAN LAUGHS

We've arrived at the toasting machine.

That explains a lot.

So this is the part where we generate

- the really crispy, crunchy flake. - OK.

So what you can see at the point coming up the in-feed,

we've still got the floppy flakes.

- Yeah, I can see some hung over the side there. - Yeah.

- So there's still a significant amount of moisture in there. - Yeah.

And what they're going to do now, they go into our toaster.

- Right. - It's very similar to a toasting machine

that you'd get in a hotel.

If you think about one

where you load the bread on the conveyor...

I was going to say, you might be wasting your money there.

Get a new machine.

Because I have never used a hotel toaster

that toasts the bread.

It just comes out warm.

IAN CHUCKLES

- This is significantly different. - This is proper? Right, OK.

What temperature's in there, Ian?

So this is way in excess of 200 degrees.

Oh, my word. That's proper.

So we're now going to put these floppy flakes inside the oven.

Inside there is a conveyor, but it's a vibrating conveyor.

- Yeah. - And it's bouncing the flake up and down,

and we're going to really reduce that moisture.

The bouncing helps the evaporation process

and stops them sticking together.

Look at that.

I've got to say, they're definitely a nicer colour now.

What you're seeing now is 6.3 tonnes an hour here.

- Wow. - So that's the equivalent of about 12,500 boxes an hour.

It's bonkers, isn't it?

You know, it's amazing to me

the amount of stuff that's going out of factories every single day.

The product, the ingredients, the work.

- It's mind-blowing. - Yeah.

I'm getting them lovely aromas, Ian.

So what's happening within there

is something called the Maillard reaction.

That's where you get a browning effect

and it also really fetches out the aromas and the flavours.

It was French chemist Louis Maillard who discovered

that heating amino acids and sugars

gives cooked food that taste we love.

We're talking barbecued meat,

roasted coffee and, of course, the toasty flavour of cereal.

So when I'm on the beach in Tenerife,

on my sunlounger, I'm getting the Maillard effect?

- Probably, yeah. - Oh!

IAN CHUCKLES

Also, what's happened through the toaster is we've enhanced

the surface texture of it.

You'll see where the rice grain has expanded.

Yeah, and it's popped, so the textures look much different.

And that's the wheat, the kibbled barley, the rice,

all coming together now.

Now it'll be really crunchy.

What are we left, moisture-wise?

At this stage now, we've taken out 90%,

- most of the moisture. - Oh, right.

- Can I try one? - You can. - Or two.

- Extremely hot. - My God, they're roasting!

I mean, you would be hot, wouldn't you,

- if you've come out of an oven, to be fair? - Yeah. - Blimey.

- Wow! - Right.

Oh!

Lovely bit of crunch there now, Ian. That's lovely.

I'm just not quite getting the full flavour, Ian.

Just there's something missing there.

So that's because, Paddy,

we're going to add a little bit more flavour in

- in the next phase... - OK. - ..which is our coating plant.

Lead on, Ian.

Tell you what, moreish, them.

Very nice.

# Shut the bedroom window in the morning

# Go to the shop, make plans to be leaving

# In the morning... #

The breakfast flakes travel on through the vast factory,

up this spiral elevator,

which uses vibration alone to jiggle them upwards...

# In the morning... #

..as they head towards the enormous coating drum.

# Out of the dark and into the light

# When the morning comes, I will be all right... #

Oh, my word, they are absolutely flying in.

They're coming out of that tube so quick

they don't even look like flakes till they hit the drum.

This stage now, believe it or not,

- we actually put a little bit of moisture back in. - Right.

Only a very, very low level.

And so we're putting a coating syrup on here,

so that contains sugar, salt, water,

and we put some vitamins in at this point.

# Out of the dark and into the light

# When the morning comes, I will be all right... #

Inside the drum,

the sugary liquid is sprayed onto the flakes from above,

and the drum keeps moving them

so the syrup doesn't make them all clump together.

Then after a trip through yet another dryer,

my flakes emerge looking good enough to eat...

..again.

There they are.

Now, straight away there, Ian,

I can see that little bit of sheen on 'em.

So that's the coating, or the flavour, that we've added.

- Yeah. - But now they've been through the dryer,

now that's a final product in its final, finished state.

You know what I'm going to ask, don't you?

- I do, Paddy. - Get your scoop in there, Ian.

- Let me get you a sample, mate. - Let's have a look.

Right. Here we go. Big moment.

Oh!

Instantly, I get that sweetness, which is amazing,

because if I'd have had that without trying it before,

I wouldn't have recognised that.

- Yeah. - And at the end, when you swallow it,

it's still sort of there in your mouth.

But, yeah, it makes all the difference, that, doesn't it?

- We're really fetching the flavours out now. - Yeah.

This is exactly what I recognise now.

This is what I pour out the box into the bowl,

splash of milk, job's a good 'un.

So now they're ready to go off to packing.

Which is where I'm heading, Ian.

Me and you will have to say goodbye.

I have absolutely loved having our all-day breakfast together.

Put the handshake away.

- Come on. Thanks for looking after me today. - Thanks, Paddy.

- Take care, pal. - Take care.

Of course, this lot would be nothing without one thing...

COW MOOS

..milk.

Which brings us to Ruth, who's down on the farm.

For centuries, our countryside has been blessed

with miles of rolling pasture land and grazing cows.

But much like today,

the history of dairy farming has been a troubled one,

as farmers battle the challenges

of wavering demand and falling prices for their milk.

Back in the 1930s,

there was an organisation that set out

to give farmers a better deal.

And one of their aims was to get the British public

to fall back in love with drinking a lot more milk.

All right with you, girls?

- Hello! - Hi.

Historian Amy Swainston knows a thing or two about the milk industry.

They do look happy.

THEY CHUCKLE

Just been fed.

I'm meeting her at this dairy farm in Dorset

to find out why farmers needed help a hundred years ago.

So what was going on for dairy farmers in the 1920s, then?

Well, in the late 1800s,

many farmers had turned to dairy as a way to make money,

because it was seen as quite a stable product to sell.

But by the 1920s,

milk production far exceeded the demand for milk.

- So essentially there was a surplus? - Exactly.

Just not enough people buying what they were making.

As supply outstripped demand,

most dairy farmers were struggling to get a fair deal for their milk.

Farms were a lot smaller back then.

You'd have about 14 cows in a herd, whereas today it's about 200 to 300.

They would sell their milk to the creameries,

which were a lot bigger.

- So all these little tiny farmers have got to deal with this middleman. - Yes.

Yeah, and it's the creameries

that would dictate the prices to the farmers.

Across the country,

creameries processed the milk,

and made butter and cheese.

To fight their control over the market,

the farmers decided to band together.

The decision was taken

in 1933 to set up a cooperative between farmers,

to help them to sell their milk at a reasonable price to buyers.

They called themselves the Milk Marketing Board,

and they were a cooperative that was run by farmers for farmers.

- So that instead of the power being with these middlemen... - Yeah.

- ..the power should actually sit with the producers, the farmers. - Yeah.

So that they could get a fair price.

Farmers no longer had to accept

the prices offered by the creameries.

Instead,

each month the board set the price for the milk they supplied...

Hello!

..and paid the money straight back to the farms.

Ahh, we're in the heart of the action now!

RUTH LAUGHS

It ensured 70,000 farmers across the UK

could maintain a steady income.

And as well as negotiating a fair deal for farmers...

There we go.

..the board was also responsible for popularising dairy products.

Over the following decades, their marketing team got busy,

making milk not just a favourite of children,

but a drink that appealed to adults too.

So here we've got a milk bar.

RUTH LAUGHS

The Milk Marketing Board opened up quite a few milk bars

throughout the country,

and you can see the photos of trying to persuade young women

this is a trendy thing to do.

It's particularly young women, isn't it?

Beautifully dressed.

And they didn't stop there.

In 1958,

they sponsored the Tour of Britain cycle race,

renaming it the Milk Race.

Oh, and we've got footballers here as well.

Footballers, yeah.

- Really associating it with physical fitness, with youth, vitality. - Yeah.

And there were advertising campaigns that came along with this,

so they were spending about 1.7 million

- on marketing per year by the mid '60s... - Wow.

..which is about 30 million today.

The investment paid off.

Throughout the '60s and '70s,

the British public fell in love with milk.

And by the early 1980s,

as football's League Cup was rebranded the Milk Cup,

annual sales of the white stuff peaked

at nearly 13 billion litres,

compared to 4 billion in the 1930s.

But it didn't last.

So there is no Milk Marketing Board any more.

- What happened? - Well, in 1994,

the MMB's actually shut down for good by the Government,

and that's because the Milk Marketing Board

- has a monopoly over the dairy industry. - Ahh, yeah.

The Government wanted to increase competition,

but with the break-up of the Milk Marketing Board,

the farmers lost their power to set the best price.

So from the mid '90s, dairy farmers are on their own.

Yeah. So where before they'd had that assurance on prices,

now there wasn't any.

With retailers driving prices down

and the costs of farming going up,

many dairy farms couldn't survive.

So today we actually have around 10,000 dairy farms left,

which is the lowest it's been in living memory.

And now supermarkets are the main seller of milk, so...

- Yeah, so all the power is with them. - Yeah.

The Milk Marketing Board had its detractors.

But for 60 years,

it provided stability in an unstable industry.

It was a sort of organisation of a different era, wasn't it?

Quite revolutionary at its time.

Yeah, in many ways it seems

that we need something similar today.

Oh, send a bottle of milk my way, Ruth.

I've got a lot of flakes to get through here.

# In the morning, you know you won't remember a thing... #

But you can't have breakfast cereal without a box to put it in.

First,

exactly 440g of cereal is weighed and dropped into a bag.

They're sealed and fall onto a vibrating conveyor

that shakes the contents flat.

# In the morning, you know it's gonna be all... #

I'm meeting project lead Donna Jenkins

to find out more about how the bags get into the boxes.

- Hi, Paddy. - How are you? Nice to meet you.

- You OK? - Yeah. Welcome to packing. - So talk me through it.

What's happening now?

So we loaded the boxes onto the cart there,

and it's got a conveyor mechanism,

and they work their way up the conveyor here.

So each of those flat boxes are pulled down by the suction cups.

- As you can see, the suction cups extracted them. - Yeah.

They work their way into the guides

and the front box is being pushed open.

- Really clever. - Yeah, it is clever. - Yeah.

Amazing. Someone has sat down and invented a machine

that takes a flat box and flips it up.

Someone's sat down and thought about that, that's bonkers.

We'll work our way down. So what's happening now...

TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT

Hold on. Don't worry.

I know how to handle these situations.

- Yeah. - You're going to be impressed by this.

Shut it!

SHE LAUGHS

- That's how you do it. - And then resume.

THEY LAUGH

So we apply glue to the top and the bottom of the box.

- Right. - We have what we call a pusher.

It's getting the food,

it's pushing the food into the open box.

- Ah, I can see it, yeah. - It's pushing it, yeah. - I can see it.

Then it makes its way along the conveyor.

It's now going to seal the boxes shut.

- So clever. - It is.

# Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs

# Gonna use my style, gonna use my sidestep

# Gonna use my fingers... #

The machine turns out 150 boxes a minute.

That's more than two a second.

So what I've always wanted to know is,

what's the K for on Special K?

Come on, Paddy.

Kellogg's!

- # I'm special - Special

- # So special - Special

# I gotta have some... #

Don't film me. I'm... I'm embarrassed.

# Give it to me... #

Come on. Don't pretend you knew that as well.

Moving on, me and Donna are leaving packing and heading to distribution.

And, you've guessed it, it's mega-sized.

This is like having a little stroll in the old breakfast cereal future.

And I can see what looked like a load of dodgems,

but with no drivers.

How many of these little rascals are here?

Hey! Get out!

DONNA LAUGHS

So we have 25 of these.

They're called automated guided vehicles, Paddy.

They just operate themselves.

And what their job is,

is to actually take all the finished boxes

either into storage on site, or they load it onto the auto bay

and it'll get fed onto a truck all by itself.

Are you not worried about being taken out by one of these?

- They're everywhere! - No, Paddy, they're actually really intelligent.

If you look at the top, it's got a scanner.

- Yeah. - So what that's doing is talking to

a control system which is in the heart of the warehouse here.

- Oh, right. OK. - They're actually that clever,

it'll actually detect obstacles in front of them and it'll stop.

- Shall we give it a go? - Let's give it a go. Yeah.

What have we got here?

Is this a specialist robotic stoperator machine?

- No, bog-standard blue carton. - It's a blue box.

All right. As good as any.

Right, I'll give it a whirl. Here we go.

So if you pop it on the floor there.

Let's see.

Oh!

Doesn't right bump it. We like that.

- Yeah, it'll now detect if it's safe... - Right.

- ..and then it'll start off again. - Brilliant.

Amazing. Very, very clever little things.

- Does it have to be a blue box? - No.

- It can be any object? - It could be you, Paddy. - Wow.

Here we are.

Halt! Oh!

- That... - Close.

That was that. Look at that!

Look how close that were.

But, to be fair, I jumped out in front of it.

- I took it by surprise. - Yeah, yeah. You did, yeah.

It was just going about its everyday microchip business then and then...

- ..I jumped in there. - And it still kept you safe. - Thank you.

VEHICLE BEEPS

Off you go.

Very clever.

# Way too fast

# Don't slow down, you're gonna crash

# You should watch

# Watch your step

# Don't look out, gonna break your neck

# So shut, shut your mouth

# Cos I'm not listening anyhow... #

Amazing!

That's fantastic. Go on, you little rascals.

I love that.

Oh, I could hang about here all day,

but apparently we haven't finished filming yet.

Don't worry about stopping in front of the camera, lads.

Just mow them straight over.

Seven hours after the delivery of rice,

my boxes of cereal are about to leave the factory.

Well, there they all are, Donna.

You've got around about 19,000 finished boxes on there, Paddy.

- 19,000 boxes? - 19,000.

A lot of cereal.

And every day, 40 trucks leave the factory,

so we'd best get this one loaded up and on its way.

There they go.

Families across the nation will be enjoying them very soon.

All this talk of breakfast and cereals,

you know what I'm in the mood for?

Full English breakfast.

Good girl. Come on, Donna.

From the factory in Wrexham,

cereal is sent to all corners of the country

to fill the bowls of hungry souls the nation over.

And 30 million boxes are exported from here right across Europe.

Bon appetit.

So there you go.

We finally got boxes

of crunchy flakes without a drop of moisture in sight.

Well, not until they get in your breakfast bowl.

Right,

get me some milk.

# Shut the bedroom window in the morning

# Go to the shop, make plans to be leaving

# In the morning

# Thought I was sleeping, it was just a dream

# An alley cat chewing on dead leaves

# In the morning. #