Original subtitles

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

Lovely stuff.

Put it on myself.

You haven't got a tab.

That's what they all say.

So when I'm working hard hosting the UK's premier factory -based TV show, I

couldn't agree more.

And this factory's 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.

Want 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.

Well, there it gets out.

Making multigrain cereal.

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

the short straw because she's learning how to clean them.

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

plates.

And historian Ruth Goodman is in search of the mum 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 the wrong one.

Where's the water? There it is. Whatever happens to just tap?

Tap, you're turned on.

Bit of salt.

Lovely. Now it's all this. Look at that.

That tap's now turned into an hand dryer.

Well, it's time to be alive.

And then we're going over this bit now. It's like Blackpool Funhouse. Here we

go.

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

Get your feet in there with hot verrucas and saw nails.

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 balls of wrecking.

This factory runs around the clock.

A temple of high tech.

Making many of the nation's favourite cereals like brown flakes and fruit and

fibre.

But today, I'm following Special K, and I'm learning how they create these 440

-gram boxes.

Come here.

And to get my morning going, I'm

trekking across this massive site to Ingredients Intake.

Now, excuse all the belts and buckles.

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

Morning, Craig. You all right, pal? Morning, Paddy. You OK? Yeah, yeah.

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 Fifty 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

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 paddies. Let's go up and have a gander.

Like Challenge Annika, this, innit? Are you on me bum?

Right then, we'll connect one of these to the back of your harness so we don't

lose you. Okay, yeah. When you're falling off the tanker.

Turns out the harness isn't for fun, but for safety.

It's like a seatbelt, isn't it? It gets you like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because we're climbing on top of the tanker to take a sample of the rice

delivery.

Do 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, that 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

flake together.

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

We're going to give it to Paul.

Okay, no problem. Okay. We'll do the relevant testing on it. Right. Make sure

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 flake.

Oh, hang on.

Looks like someone's pecking.

It's OK, though.

Apparently, it's part of the test.

Paul's checking the rice hasn't picked up any nasty taste or smell.

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. OK.

Load it up!

Start the clock.

Breakfast is underway.

To make 350 ,000 boxes of cereal every day, this massive

factory has four 100 -tonne, 30 -metre -high silos.

Just for the ride.

And there's another three silos full of wheat.

So, 47 % of our flake is made up by rice, and the others whole wheat.

Around 37 % whole wheat. 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 non -stop.

But I just had the call from Farmer Stephen to say he thinks it's dry enough

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 go to the cereal factory.

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

Has the rain been a total pain?

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.

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.

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

combine harvester is ready for action.

It's absolutely amazing.

It's just the most...

of a machine I've ever seen.

Yeah, 10 metres wide.

It's amazing what they're a process.

I've seen a few farm machines in my time, but this one is on another level.

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.

All right, here it goes.

Whoa, look at that.

So we're off.

So this rotating wheel is then pulling it all in 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 husk.

The straw and the chaff fly out the back to fertilise the field for next year.

The grain which will be used 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 two million bowls of our cereals.

And we've got two of these monster machines working flat out to get the

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.

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.

You've absolutely nailed it.

Because the trailer comes to us.

It's like someone's just turned the tap on for Max.

Let him 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're finished now. We're over the line.

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

The wheat will be sent to the cereal factory to be transformed into 72

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

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? Hi, Paddy, how are you doing?

Keeping busy?

Oh, just about. I just did a rhyming thing, it's all right. Now, listen, for

good licence fee paying people at home, what are we doing here?

So, this room is where all of the grains come through after they've just been

offloaded. So, above us are all the silos, and there's about 80 tonnes of

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

It holds it all together, but it's a whole grain, so it adds fibre. It's

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 colour. So it's just like how you clean

yourself at home. You get in the bath, you have a little bit of a scrub.

Yeah, exactly.

Just no shower gel.

All right.

The other two main ingredients are kibbled barley, which are crushed whole

grains.

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!

Holy granola, that is big.

So bad.

Lizzie, quick question.

14 cookers, massive room.

Where is everyone?

So these are quite self -sufficient.

We've got them all pre -set to make sure that as one cook finishes, another

one's still going, and there's a continuous feed of cereal going to the

part of the post -it.

In one cook, how much cereal is that?

About 740 kilos. That's about 1 ,500 boxes of cereal.

Or 24 ,500 bowls of cereal.

Wowzers! 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

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

adding moisture to the mix and starting the cooking process.

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.

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. You're not going to keep

making it soggy.

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

So, at this stage, we actually add in about a third extra moisture.

Oh, no, no, no.

I'm not a medical person, but someone needs to drink more water.

This is, in fact, the flavour solution we added after the pre -seed.

So in here we have malt, we have sugar, salt and water.

Can I smell that?

Yes, you can smell it.

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 now, we can go and take a little look at it.

Thought you'd never ask. Come on then.

Three hours after the rice was delivered, our mix is cooked and we've

first step towards breakfast cereal heaven.

Beautiful.

All of this has just been dumped out of that cooker.

And it's coming along these Archimedes too.

Jump. Yes.

Play. Play.

It's not the most romantic word, but we go with it.

It's been lovingly placed into this Archimedes too.

Still looks nothing like cereal that I recognise.

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

That means it's ready to get all that moisture back out. So we put it in and

we need to take it back out again. It does smell lovely though.

Yes, yes. That's all the cooked flavours coming through.

So, to save your fingers, I've brought you some so you can have a little closer

look at it.

All right, that's that.

That is that, yes. Oh, that is hot.

Yes, yes.

It's not very wet, but there's definitely still quite a bit of moisture

there. It's all moist now, but the next thing you're supposed to do is 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 them.

Sheffield, the steel city.

Fed by iron ore and coal mined from the Pennines, Sheffield 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

about.

Not just any old spoon, but the stainless steel spoon.

I'm at the Kellam Island Museum, a historic industrial site, to meet

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 swivel, which is an early

OK. But where do spoons come into it?

Spoons have been around for millennia. Spoons made in bone, wood, even glass

ceramic. In terms of a metal spoon, we're talking really the Tudor period

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?

And, of course, you can pewter taste.

Yeah, you can smell it, you can taste it. There'll be a lead content as well.

Which is really poisonous.

OK, I'll give you that back.

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

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 acid 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, really, was looking for different alloys to make a

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 visited 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 Brilly had been

working on with his gun barrel.

And then he discovered that...

Actually, this might be useful for something else.

On the 13th of August, 1913, Harry discovered a form of steel that was not

rustproof, but had another revolutionary property.

So he discovered this rustless steel, stainless steel, and left it with

no paste.

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.

Yeah, very much so. And as it says on the box, Neither rust 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

spoons then it's indestructible it's incredibly resilient lasts forever

and there is nothing really to substitute good old stainless steel i

simply is the best material to make a spoon out of a hundred 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 pit for the best of spoons.

It's like the Beatles.

What a beautiful day.

I'm the king of all time.

Don't be noisy.

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

So I'm in search of Head of Operations, Ian Selley.

All right, Ian.

How are you, Paddy? All right? OK, thanks.

Ian, I tell you, everything in this factory is supersized. Yeah, it's a

big plant. Oh, my word, is it? Now, I've just left Lizzie.

All that cereal's not quite cereal. Yeah. 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 cups 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. 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 cox mix coming down through

tube. And we put it between two rollers. We're 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

dimples, moulding it into little balls of dough called pellets.

I can see the little balls are dropping here.

Be heavy and hang on.

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

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, look at these cheeky little scamps.

Having a right little bounce about.

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.

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, they return back into the process.

How much is coming through here now, Ian? So each pellet mill, Paddy,

about 48 ,000 pellets a minute.

Wow.

If we multiply that by the amount of pellet mills we've got on, that's 10. It

equates to about 4 ,000 bowls of cereal a minute.

Hey, 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, just how is

even possible?

It really is amazing.

It really is amazing to see.

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.

It's chewy, but it's not unpleasant.

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

After four and a half hours, we're leaving the pellets behind, and we've

metres to cover to get to the plate making.

And here we are.

That looks a little bit more familiar now.

Go on, Ian.

Reveal the flake.

It's like playing the tastiest tuppany nudger on the pier, as your

We've only gone and won the flaky jackpot.

Paddy, this is one of our flaky mills. This is very similar to a pellet mill,

two steel rolls.

Yeah. But without the dimpled...

And as you can see there, that becomes the plate.

Would you like to take a sample? Yes, sir. Okay. Pull the handle there and

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

flake, I'm getting the flavour a bit more now.

Possibly, yeah.

But seeing those floppy flakes makes me think of one of me pets here.

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 Healy 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 dish washing divide.

Cut the roof first. No, do the plate. No, the plate.

No, cutlery first.

You are cutlery first, you are plate 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 chase it out of the way to it.

What do you think about this stacking?

How does it make you feel?

I'm tired of doing it. Looks like something I would do.

That would drive me nuts.

I would have to take it all out on research.

It seems there's only one conclusion.

Everyone thinks they're right.

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 Terry. Nice to meet you.

From Andrew Lockson.

dishwasher guru and principal researcher at consumer organization 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

arguments today but before andrew gives me a master class in stacking i need

to rinse my very dirty plates

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, what?

Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. 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 program, it has what's called a turbidity sensor.

Turbidity sensor.

It senses, in that pre -wash 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

go, hold 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 bins and regularly clean the dishwasher filter and when

stacking face everything towards the center of the machine for the best

performance as a rule of thumb Typically, if you eat out of it, it goes

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,

high temperatures and water pressure could damage them.

Oh my God, are you re -stacking?

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 pedant.

Particular placement might be important, but with his neck locked, 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

So take a bit more time to break down.

When left behind, the starches and proteins on the bowls form bonds with

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 tip to the test.

Right, in the tablet goes.

A pre -wash sprays jets of cold water between the carefully spaced plates and

cutlery, knocking off excess food 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 egg, as well as the starchy residue of breakfast cereal.

They also have something else in them, which is a surfactant.

It basically stops water from forming droplets and it makes it spread more

easily.

want to add 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

the special dishwasher salt softens the water preventing lime scale build up and

those horrid white marks on glasses

So annoying.

Every household has a cloudy glass.

Yeah. That would be because you've not kept up with your fault.

And with the cycle over, it's time to see if my impeccably stacked dishwasher

has done its job.

No.

No!

It dealt with the cereal.

Dealt with the egg. Even the egg. Even the egg.

So the cutlery is sparkling.

Yeah. So does that mean that stacking properly works?

Yep. Don't pre -wash.

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

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.

Gonna take a big bottle of milk.

Just like everything in this factory, we've now got super -sized balls of

cereal.

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

So I'm on the hunt for Ian again.

Is it that way?

I'm not sure where I'm going from here now.

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

There he is.

Good to see you again, Ian.

All right, pal.

I'll tell you what.

It's toasty here. Oh, it's really warm here. Heat coming off that.

Flippin' heck!

We've arrived at the toasting machine.

That explains a lot.

So this is the part where we generate the really crispy, crunchy flakes.

Okay. So what you can see at the point coming up the end feed, we've still got

the floppy flakes. Yeah, I can see some of them go over the side there.

Yep.

So there's still a significant amount of moisture in there. Yeah. What they're

going to do now, they go into their toaster.

Right. It's very similar to a toasting machine that you get in a hotel.

If you think about one where you load the bread in the conveyor... I'm going

say you might be wasting your money there, get a new machine.

Because I have never used a hotel toaster. That toaster bread just comes

warm. This is significantly different.

What temperature is 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

Look at that.

I've got to say, there's definitely a nicer colour now.

What you're seeing now is 6 .3 tonnes an hour here.

Wow. So that's equivalent to 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

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

and the flavours.

It was French chemist Louis Mayard 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

of cereal.

So when I'm on the beach in Tenerife on my sun lounger, I'm getting the Mayard

effect. Probably, yeah. Oh.

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

of it. You'll see where the rice grain has expanded.

Yeah, and it's popped. See, the textures look much different. And that's the

wheat, the kibble barley, the rice all coming together now. Now it'll be really

crunchy. That's what we left moisture -wise. At this stage now, we've taken

90 % of the moisture.

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'd come out of an oven, to be

fair. Right.

Right.

Ah.

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

I'm just not quite getting the full flavour, Ian. There's just a summit

though. Well, that's because, Paddy, we're going to add a little bit more

flavour in in the next phase. OK. We have a coaching plan.

Lead on, Ian.

There you are.

More for them.

Very nice.

The breakfast flakes travel on through the vast factory, up this spiral

elevator, which uses vibration alone to jiggle them upwards.

As they head towards the enormous coating drum.

Oh my word, they are absolutely flying in.

They're coming out of that tube so quick, they don't even look like plates

they hit the drum.

Believe it or not, we've actually put a little bit of moisture back in. Only a

very, very low level. And so we've put the coating syrup on here.

So that contains sugar, salt, water, and we've put some vitamins in at this

point.

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 they're in. I can see that little bit of sheen on them.

So that's the coating or the flavour that we've added. Yeah. Now we've been

through the dryer.

Now that's the final product in its final finished state. You know what I'm

going to ask, don't you? I do, Paddy.

Yeah, you scoop it there, Ian. Let's have a look.

All 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.

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.

This is exactly what I recognise now. This is what I pour out the box, into

bowl, splash your 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

breakfast together.

Put the handshake away. Go on.

Thanks for looking after me today, Ian. Take care, pal. Take care.

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

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,

farmers battle the challenges of wavering demand and falling prices for

milk.

Back in the 1930s, there was an organisation that set out to give

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.

Feel bad.

I'm meeting her at this dairy farm in Dorset to find out why farmers needed

100 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

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,

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,

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

was run by farmers for farmers. So that instead of the power being with these

middlemen, 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 creamery.

Instead, each month, the board set the price for the milk they supplied and

paid the money straight back to the farms.

We're in the heart of the action now.

It ensured 70 ,000 farmers across the UK could maintain a steady income.

And as well as negotiating a fair deal for farmers, the board was also

responsible for...

popularising dairy products.

Over the following decades, their marketing team got busy, making milk not

a favourite of children, but a drink that appealed to adults too.

So here we've got a milk bar.

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's cycle race renaming it the milk crane oh and we got

footballers here as well yeah

Really associating it with physical fitness, with youth vitality.

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, 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 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 anymore.

What happened?

Well, in 1994, the MMB is actually shut down for good by the government, and

that's because the Milk Marketing Board has a monopoly over the dairy industry.

Ah, yes.

The government wanted to increase competition, but with the break -up of

Milk Marketing Board, the farmers lost their power to set the best price.

So from the mid-'90s...

Dairy farmers were on their own.

Yeah, so where before they'd had that assurance on prices, now there wasn't

With retailers driving prices down and the costs of farming going up, many

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

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

at the 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.

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

it in.

First, exactly 440 grams of cereal is weighed and dropped into a bag.

They're sealed and fall onto a vibrating conveyor that shakes the contents flat.

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 okay?

Yeah, welcome to packing.

So talk me through it, what's happening now?

So we loaded the boxes onto the carter and it's got a conveyor mechanism and

they work their way up the conveyor here.

So each of those black boxes are pulled down by the suction cups and as you can

see there's suction cups extracting them. Yeah. So they work their way into

guide. And Brad Box is being pushed open. Really clever.

Yeah, he's clever.

Amazing. Someone has sat down and invented a machine that takes a flat box

flips it up.

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

We'll work our way down.

So what's happening now?

Hold on. Don't worry, I know how to handle these situations.

You're going to be impressed by this. Shut it!

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

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. So it's pushing the food into the open box. I can see

Yeah, I can see it.

And it makes its way along the conveyor.

It's now going to seal the boxes.

So clever.

It is.

Don't use my fingers.

Don't 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, tell us!

Don't build me up.

I'm embarrassed.

Don't tell 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 megathigh.

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

And I can see what looked like a load of dodgeums, but with no drivers.

How many of these little rascals are here? Hey, get out.

So we have 25 of these.

They're called automated guided vehicles, Paddy. They just operate

And what their job is, is that they take all the finished boxes, either into

storage on site, or they load it onto the autobay, 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,

a scanner.

Yeah. What that's doing is talking to a control system, which is in the heart of

the warehouse here.

All right, OK.

They're actually that clever, it'll actually detect obstacles in front of

and it'll stop.

Shall we give it a go?

Let's give it a go, yeah.

What we've got here, is this a specialist robotics operator 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 can you pop it on the floor there?

Let's see.

Oh!

Right bumper, 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.

It doesn't have to be a blue box. No. It could be any object.

It could be you, Paddy. Wow.

Here we are.

Oh! Oh!

That... 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, you did, yeah.

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

And it still kept you safe?

Thank you.

Off you go.

Very clever.

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 rye, my boxes of cereal are about to leave

factory.

Well, there they are, there, Donna.

We'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 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 appétit.

So there you go, we've finally got boxes of crunchy flakes without a drop of

moisture inside.

Well, not until they get in your breakfast bowl. Right, get me some milk.

Shut the bedroom window in the morning. Global Glamazons runway ready on BBC3.

Brand new RuPaul's Drag Race UK versus the world.

A school in crisis on BBC1. Mr Rimmer makes a dramatic return.

Waterloo Road is next.

An alley cat chewing on dead meat in the

morning.