Original subtitles

DEBBIE CHAZEN: Welcome back to the 1980s,

a decade that went super sized.

Everything was big.

Big hair, big clothes, big phones...

Britain was changing at breakneck speed.

We went from a steel-producing, coal mining, struggling nation,

to a shoulder pad-clad, money-obsessed powerhouse.

It was the era when technology changed our lives...

My mum had one of the very first microwaves,

and people came round to look at it.

New foods tempted our palates... CUCKOO

Nothing says '80s more than a slice of Viennetta.

And our supermarkets became enormous.

These were monsters.

Nobody had ever seen these things before.

Now, we're taking a step back in time...

Oh, wow!

To discover the products we loved...

Oh, Ice Magic! Yes!

Despised... It's abysmal.

And ones that caused a stir.

It's not an attractive product, is it? No.

Much like a kind of artistic vagina. CHUCKLING

We'll also lift the scientific lid on the fun...

Say hello to my little friend.

And the quite frankly bizarre.

This is transglutaminase, also known as meat glue.

And we'll whip up some '80s classic dishes

that got our tastebuds tingling.

Today, I'm making French bread pizza.

So zip up your shell suit, pour yourself a Cinzano,

and sit back as we reveal the secrets of the 1980s' supermarket.

Piece of cake. Do you get it?

Ha-ha-ha! I'm not very good, am I, with jokes?

It's the mid-80s, and everything's growing at a relentless pace.

Our hair...

portion sizes...

and our waistlines.

As a nation, we were eating far more processed food.

People were working in offices and being more sedentary.

We were all exercising less, eating more, and it started to show.

TEST CARD TONE

Despite being bombarded by images of the body beautiful,

the nation's health was a ticking time bomb.

But help was on its way.

One woman was ready to single-handedly

get us off our backsides and get us lunging.

Morning. How are you this morning? Ready to roll out of bed?

Lizzy Webb, affectionately known back then as "Mad Lizzy".

Perhaps you want to put one hand on a hip, and click like this?

Every morning, I would do about four minutes of fitness,

and trying to make it fun by using different music,

bright, early-morning clothes to wake people up,

and just encourage people - get on the move throughout the day.

Stretch, bend, stretch, change, stretch, bend, stretch...

All of a sudden, every single morning,

there were exercises in our living room,

Mad Lizzy, shouting at us to jump up and down,

get up off the sofa. And we did. We really did.

Are you ready to face the day?

With Lizzie's help, almost overnight,

Britain became health obsessed.

The mid '80s was the era of exercise and dieting

in a way we had never clone before.

It was legwarmers and lycra and Leotards...

We loved it!

The nation's supermarkets were quick to cash in

on this new soaring diet and fitness craze.

At Sainsbury's, we launched into our low-fat ranges.

So, low-fat sausage, bacon,

low-fat cheeses, of course,

and on the dairy, in the milk section,

we had a Vitapint, which was a very reduced fat milk.

Tesco and Marks 8; Spencer also launched low-calorie options,

and a key focus in the '80s was getting the calorie count down.

One brand of frozen ready meals

was leading the market in doing just that,

and its memorable TV ad epitomised the decade.

♪ Hey, hey, hey, good lookin' What you got cooking...? ♪

The Lean Cuisine advert was pretty epic at the time.

The whole thing sells itself almost like a romantic movie.

♪ How's about cooking Something up with me? ♪

It's a playful way to basically say, "I find you attractive."

And for a brand, attractiveness linked to your brand

is a really important thing.

'Findus Lean Cuisine.'

At just 300 calories a pop,

the frozen ready meals were an instant hit

with Britain's newly diet-conscious shoppers.

We couldn't get enough of the product.

Every other customer was coming in,

"Have you got those new Lean Cuisine products?"

Ancl we'd be selling out between deliveries,

cos we just couldn't get enough.

Demand was huge. Huge.

There was a variety of dishes,

including things like spaghetti bolognese with mushrooms...

Beef and pork cannelloni with a Mornay sauce.

And chicken Forange with almond rice.

Mm, sounds delicious (!)

Although can I have chips instead of almond rice?

♪ It's light, it's Lean Cuisine... ♪

Sadly, the reality of tucking into a microwave ready meal

that's just 300 calories wasn't ever going to provide

quite the level of excitement or glamour promised by the adverts.

They came frozen, and they would have two packets,

you know, the protein and the starch.

Ancl they were basically very small, very over-salted.

Ancl they were, for me, very unsatisfying.

It wasn't this high-class date food

that they're trying to present to us in the advert.

If I went on a date and somebody served me a diet ready meal,

let me tell you, I wouldn't even bother to say goodbye.

I would be out of that door,

and I would block that person in every way that I possibly could.

You're not joking.

Who wants a snog when you've been eating chicken chasseur?

♪ It's light, it's Lean Cuisine. ♪

But it wasn't just ready meals jumping on the diet bandwagon.

Chocolate manufacturers were doing it, too.

There was a whole host of chocolate bars

that started to market themselves as a slightly healthier alternative.

In 1983, Maltesers started using the tag line,

"The lighter way to enjoy chocolate."

Cadbury's went on to advertise,

"A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat."

Ancl even Boost, which came out in 1985,

made us feel it was good for us, somehow.

But if there was one chocolate bar

that truly summed up the '80s mindset,

it had to be the Milky Way.

Light, fluffy, and promoted with the tag line,

"The sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite."

Milky Way was never anybody's first choice of a chocolate bar,

but it was marketed as a low-calorie sweet,

so therefore, we found it acceptable.

Yes, I ate Milky Ways in the '80s.

I really think they did a number on me.

It's that psychology, right?

They basically, as a kid, they set me a challenge,

which was that you can eat these,

and it's not gonna ruin your appetite.

The Milky Way slogan was etched on everyone's memory,

thanks to its famous advert and catchy theme tune.

REVVING Sing along if you know the words.

♪ The red car and the blue car Had a race

♪ All Red wanted to do ls stuff his face... ♪

The Milky Way red car versus blue car advert was so memorable.

I think most people who grew up in the '80s

will remember it, even today.

You could get behind the characters and see the impact

of choosing the Milky Way over the wrong choices that the red car took.

♪ He eats everything he sees, From trucks to prickly trees

♪ But smart old Blue He took the Milky Way. ♪

It's pretty much like a parable, right?

And in this parable, the red car's eating everything

and getting really large and fat.

And ultimately, it can't jump the ravine.

♪ Oh, no, the bridge has gone Old Red can't carry on... ♪

Back then, we were promoting a chocolate bar

as a light or a healthier option for a snack,

and today, that wouldn't wash.

I don't think you'd get an advert made today

where you've got a chocolate bar overtly promoting itself

as being the healthy option, and being fattist.

♪ But smart old blue He took the Milky Way. ♪

Dated advert aside,

does this light and fluffy treat still appeal today?

Welcome to our very own corner of a 1980s' supermarket,

packed full of the decade's iconic products

to give today's shoppers a true taste of the '80s.

Oh, my God!

Oh, wow. Oh, wow! Look at all this!

This is very vintage.

So what's the verdict on the Milky Way?

Mm.

It's so good.

That IS good. It's a bit chewier than I remember.

Mm-mm! Ancl maybe even a bit tastier.

There was only one way to eat it. Always take the chocolate off first

until you're left with the nougat. That's the gold.

It's enjoyably bland and sweet.

I'm sorry, Milky Way, I mean that as a compliment.

It seems Milky Way gets the thumbs up from our shoppers.

Can I eat all of them? CHUCKLING

But how did makers, Mars, make it so light and fluffy?

Over to a man who's made it his mission in life

to answer these questions.

Scientist Dr Chris Clark.

So, the light and fluffy filling that we find inside a Milky Way

is actually what we call a "nougat".

Nougat is essentially just a mixture of sugar,

egg whites and lots and lots of fluffing.

Is that a technical term?

To explain how it works, Dr Chris is going to attempt

to make his own version of the Milky Way filling.

This might not be how they do it in the big factories,

but on this scale, this is enough to demonstrate the principle.

So I'm gonna start with the two main ingredients,

sugar, and more sugar.

First of all, good old standard table sugar.

As you can see, that's quite a lot of sugar already really, isn't it?

But there's more to come. This is glucose syrup.

This stuff is a simplified form of this sugar,

and it's just gonna help to stop the nougat from going all gritty.

So in that goes.

00f! That should just about do it for the sugar.

Well, thank goodness for that!

Next, Chris adds water,

and heats the mixture to a very precise temperature.

So the reason we're going for around 127 Celsius

is because that's the optimum temperature

for a nice, stretchy, chewy, malleable nougat.

If we go above 127 Celsius,

it can start to become a bit more brittle and toffee-like.

While the sugar syrup heats up, Chris whips up some egg whites.

WHIRRING

What the whisk is doing is dragging air pockets into the mix,

making a very fine, white foam.

Egg white is particularly good for locking in air,

because it contains a very special protein

that's great at coating bubbles, and stopping them from popping.

And that's the secret to making a nice, light filling - lots of air.

The more air, the less filling, which means less calories.

After several minutes of vigorous whisking,

the egg whites are ready for the next stage...

very carefully adding the 127-degrees' syrup.

So what's happening now

is that sugar is thickening up the egg white,

which means that it's harder for the little bubbles

to touch each other, or burst, or escape.

So ultimately, the air is locked in place.

Dr Chris then adds milk powder with barley malt extract

to create that special Milky Way flavouring.

So I'm gonna pop a bit of that in.

In fact, let's just go for the whole lot.

I like the flavour.

Then, some more whisking...

a smidge of melted milk chocolate, and then, you guessed it,

yet more whisking. WHIRRING

Oh, OK.

I think my whisk's about to give up,

but this is pretty much exactly what we were hoping for.

A nice, thick, slightly off-white, fluffy nougat.

All that's left to do now is to pop the nougat into a mould.

This is where it gets messy.

There is no way I come out of this with clean fingers.

So when this sets, you'll really start to see a difference.

That shiny texture on the surface will start to go away,

and it'll look more rough so that when you start biting at it,

you'll have all those little air pockets suddenly showing.

And here's one he made earlier.

Dr Chris's version of a Milky Way nougat.

Hm. If we're going on looks,

Dr Chris's version leaves a lot to be desired.

But a bit of a dig around reveals some similarities with the original.

Of course, you should never judge a book by its cover.

The crucial thing here is how it tastes.

I genuinely can't tell the difference.

Obviously, we'll have to take your word for it, Dr Chris.

And I've got a whole bowl to eat as well.

So does a Milky Way have fewer calories

than the nation's most popular bar, a Dairy Milk?

So the answer is... yes.

First of all, this one is smaller. Then, gram for gram,

this one has around 20% less calories than this one.

You could argue that Milky Way

is slightly lighter than other chocolate,

but I still wouldn't call it a healthy choice.

Sadly, it seems that pigging out on light and fluffy choccy

could still pile on the pounds.

Coming up, '80s icon Rustie Lee

rustles up the decade's worst diet food...

RETCH ES

Super disgusting! CHUCKLING

and the supermarket strategy that encouraged us to spend more.

BOGOF.

It sounded as if you were swearing at someone, didn't it?

DEBBIE CHAZENI It's the mid '8OS

in our trolley dash through the decade's supermarkets,

and the nation has gone diet mad.

And nowhere could that be seen more

than in our obsession with the latest weight-loss craze,

the fad diet.

I don't think up until the mid '80s

I'd really heard of anybody who'd been on a diet.

But then, there were these crazy diets,

you know, like the grapefruit diet,

the sexy pineapple diet,

the cottage cheese diet...

Whichever fad tickled your fancy,

the supermarkets had it covered.

But there was one diet which surpassed all others,

if only for its sheer unpleasantness.

The ultimate fad diet of the '80s

was, of course, the cabbage soup diet.

There were several versions of the cabbage soup diet,

but essentially, it involves eating nothing but cabbage soup

for an entire week.

My friend, who I worked with at the time went on it,

and she used to bring this cabbage soup that she'd made

into the office, and oh, my goodness me!

She had wind. She absolutely had wind.

As unappealing as the cabbage soup diet might sound - and smell-

its popularity soared, mainly due to the '80s version of social media.

One of the reasons so many people tried it

was it was shared from friend to friend by fax machine.

A fax was basically a machine that takes a picture of an image,

scrambles it, sends it over a telephone line...

HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALING

and you can unwind it and print it at the end location.

And that was technology at this time.

That was your text, that was your email,

that was your WhatsApp all rolled into one.

You received the copy of the diet on a fax

and you faxed it on to your friends.

It was kind of like the '80s equivalent of going viral.

FAX SCREECH ES

But what does cabbage soup actually taste like?

We know just the woman to help out.

It's the queen of '80s TV, Rustie Lee.

And we've mocked up a fax of the recipe, just like in the '80s.

Guess what? I've got a fax!

CHUCKLES Very '80s!

Now, on this fax,

it's got all the ingredients to make this cabbage soup.

Rustie sets to work chopping up the main ingredient,

which is, unsurprisingly, cabbage.

You need to chop this into about one-inch pieces,

like that. So that's going in the pot.

Don't waste anything, all in.

I think this is working already, this diet.

I'm working up a sweat. CHUCKLES

Next, Rustie chops up celery and shallots.

The beauty about this, though, you could make it and keep it.

That's why you make quite a lot of it.

So when you felt a little bit hungry,

instead of running to the fridge

and taking a sausage roll out, or something like that,

you'd hit the soup. CHUCKLING

Sausage roll soup! Ooh, yes, please, Rustie.

I've finished chopping those now, so that "shallot"!

Ha-ha! The old ones are the best.

Ah, the classic shallot-based humour.

Next, Rustie crushes four cloves of garlic and adds some lemon.

This is like real hard work here.

Getting those muscles up.

I need a sweatband. Huh-huh-huh! CHUCKLING

Well, Jane Fonda, where are you? CHUCKLING

Along with the prepared veg,

into the pot goes chopped tinned tomatoes,

vegetable juice, vegetable soup powder,

a stock cube, seasoning,

a large glug of balsamic vinegar and water.

Then, Rustie simmers the whole lot for an hour.

Let's have a look at this.

Let's have a look.

Oh, that looks lovely. Look at this!

Look at that!

That looks delicious, doesn't it?

Well, it certainly looks like soup.

The question is, what does it taste like?

RECORD SCRATCH ES

See this soup?

You would land up as skinny as a supermodel,

because you wouldn't eat it.

That's soup-er disgusting! CHUCKLING

It seems the proof is in the pudding.

Or rather, the soup.

TEST CARD TONE

But if you COULD cope with its grim taste,

did the '80s most unpalatable diet actually do what it claimed?

Over to food scientist, Dr Chris Clarke.

So, does the cabbage soup diet work? Well, the answer is yes... and no.

So there's nothing particularly remarkable about cabbage.

It doesn't have any special fat-burning properties,

it's just very low in calories.

If you were to consume nothing but cabbage soup for an entire week,

as the diet says, then you would lose a lot of weight.

But when you go back to eating normally again,

you'll probably end up putting most of it back on.

In fact, the only particularly special thing about cabbages

is that they're from the brassica family,

which means they contain certain sugars

that the gut bacteria absolutely love,

leaving you bloated, and frankly, quite flatulent.

So if you do plan to do the cabbage soup diet,

prepare yourself for a very windy week.

HE SNIFFS, SQUEAKY FART EFFECT

Whatever your dietary demands in the '80s,

if you wanted to stock up on a particular product,

the chances were your local supermarket

would eventually run a deal on it,

thanks to the arrival of a clever new marketing strategy.

BOGOF.

It sounded as if you were swearing at someone, didn't it?

Whoever came up with BOGOF I think was very clever,

because it certainly sticks.

Buy One, Get One Free. What a great idea!

Long before frenzied Black Friday shopping sprees hit the UK,

in the 1980s, British supermarkets were using

Buy One, Get One Free promotions

to lure shoppers into thinking they were getting a bargain.

And it worked.

If you saw a Buy One, Get One Free offer, you were in there.

Absolutely.

Everybody loves a bargain. Everybody wants something for free.

Buy a pack of Varta's Energy 2,000 batteries

and get another pack absolutely free.

No-one really knows who invented the term "BOGOF",

but it became so popular that it was actually entered

into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1985.

At the time, it may have seemed like BOGOFs

were tempting us from every aisle,

but there was a method to this discounting madness.

So, in terms of Buy One, Get One Free promotions,

you got to be careful what you do.

BOGOFs were mainly targeted at the higher-margin items,

so that when you bought the one and got the other one,

it was still a manageable profit.

You would never see a BOGOF on something like milk.

Whichever product the supermarket decided to promote,

the BOGOF itself was only achievable

by the arrival of cutting-edge technology at the checkout.

These promotions were made possible because of bar code scanning.

Before the advent of the bar code,

if supermarkets DID want to introduce a discount,

they would have to do it manually and change the prices at the shelf.

Bar codes were first trialled in the late '70s in the UK,

but by the mid '80s, they had evolved

to do far more than simply pricing a tin of beans.

The bar code technology was a huge technology jump for retailers

that enabled them to manage

transactions through the till quicker, more accurately,

it enabled better stock control

and it enabled electronic-type promotions.

The clever thing about that system

was the computer could use those bar codes to detect the items,

and in its database, join those items together

to then be able to offer you a discount.

These days, BOGOF promotions are few and far between.

The rocketing price of food has meant shoppers are more choosy

about what they spend their money on,

and gimmicky promotions are fast becoming a thing of the past.

Ancl it's very successful in its time.

But it burnt bright, and it burnt quickly.

Still to come,

the cheesy '80s snack that almost everyone loved.

Why would you take something gorgeous from France

and beautiful from Italy,

and make something so horrid?

And the diet drink that changed the world.

Well, sort of.

Even the words "Diet Coke" sounded a lot more appealing

and kind of sexier than "low-calorie cola".

DEBBIE CHAZENI It's the mid '8OS

in our saunter through the decade's supermarkets.

And while much of the nation was limbering up in Lycra

and enjoying low-calorie ready meals,

not everyone was quite so obsessed.

Many of us were more than happy

to sit down with the omnibus of Dynasty

and work our way through the snack cupboard.

And when it came to naughty nibbles,

the supermarkets had plenty to offer,

including one cheesy treat we all went gooey over.

Pizza really took off,

and I remember my pizza experiences vividly.

But the ranges were very limited.

We also didn't have the range of names.

So a ham ancl pineapple wasn't called Hawaiian then,

cheese and tomato wasn't called a Margherita,

and a pepperoni was Italian sausage.

Of course, not everyone had access to takeaway pizza in the mid-'80s,

so the supermarkets came to the nation's rescue

with a brand-new product that could go from freezer to table in minutes.

And we Brits loved it.

Crunch! A big welcome to the latest French bread pizza,

from Findus.

In the '80s, my guilty pleasure and my favourite sort of snack

was a French bread pizza.

I'm not sure why people wanted pizza toppings on French bread,

but it was hugely popular.

You'd get the sort of crunchy French bread,

you'd get the sort of squidgy doughiness

and all that lovely, gooey melted cheese.

New Italian-style sausage! CRUNCH

With tomatoes, freshly melted cheese,

courgettes, red peppers, sweetcorn

and Italian-style sausage! CRUNCH

OK, we get the idea. Italian-style sausage.

How it worked was you just took it out the freezer,

popped it in the microwave or under the grill,

three minutes later, lo and behold, you've got yourself a pizza.

The only thing negative I can say about it

is the sort of last bit would get sort of drier and harder...

CHUCKLES ..by the end of it.

SIGHS: A lot like life, then.

Of course, not everyone was a fan.

Why would you take something gorgeous from France

and beautiful from Italy,

and mash them together and make something so horrid?

Findus French bread pizzas...

OPERATICALLY: ♪ Success on a plate

♪ For you! ♪ APPLAUSE

With the wide range of fresh and frozen pizzas

now available in every supermarket aisle,

what will today's shoppers think about the '80s go-to snack?

Oh, my goodness, what a flashback.

Look at that.

Wow. French bread pizza. This...

Looks pretty yummy to me.

This is bringing back a lot of memories.

It smells good. It does.

It's sauce, it's cheese.

Lovely (1)

I'm excited. I haven't had this in 23 years.

First impressions seem to be good,

but now the crucial crunchy taste test.

Cheers.

Actually really, really good.

This is one thing from the '80s that I would eat again.

It takes a bit more chewing than regular pizza.

It's abysmal. THEY LAUGH

Ancl I'd like to say that it's worth it,

but I'm not sure it is.

I can't think of too many positives.

I think it's very delicious. I like it. Hmm.

Negatives, apart from the taste,

the flavour, the comm and the base...

I don't like it.

So it's mixed reviews

for the supermarket-bought French bread pizza.

But what's the secret to making a good one?

To help us find out, it's Rustie Lee.

Today I'm making French bread pizza.

Tres bien!

Ancl because it's the '80s, I'm making Hawaiian pizza.

That's pineapple and ham.

A lot of people don't like it. I love it.

LAUGHS

A controversial choice, Rustie.

You might think that's a bit easy for a world-renowned chef like me,

but I'm going to make it a little bit challenging

by making my own sauce.

Well, that should secure the Michelin star.

Rustie starts her pizza sauce by frying chopped garlic

in a little olive oil.

She then adds a tin of chopped tomatoes

and simmers the mixture.

I'm going to add a little bit of sugar to it.

That'll just enhance the flavour.

Next into the pot,

dried oregano and basil

for that authentic '80s Italian taste.

Ooh, it smells lovely.

Ancl it's coming along nicely.

I'm allowing this to reduce down

so that the sauce is nice and thick when it goes onto the bread.

Because nobody wants a floppy baguette.

RUSTIE GIGGLES You said it, Rustie.

Once the sauce is cooked,

it's time to assemble the pizza.

I've got some French bread here

which I've brushed with garlic-infused oil

and toasted it so it's all ready to go.

Now I'm spreading my mixture

nice and thick on this bread.

Now, don't get worried about your baguettes getting soft

because it's already toasted,

which has given it a nice base for the sauce to be on top of.

Oh, that looks lovely.

Finally, the controversial toppings.

I'm putting pineapple on mine,

but you can put anything you like.

Mushroom, pepperoni -

just go wild. CH UCKLES

Next goes on the ham.

Ancl now I'll put some more cheese on it.

Next, the whole lot goes under a hot grill for a few minutes

until the cheese is melted and the edges are crispy.

Here goes.

Ooh.

Mmm!

"Pizza" cake. Do you get it?

CACKLES

I'm not very good, am I, with jokes?!

Pizza cake? I would actually eat that.

Although French bread pizza

will never fall into the diet food category,

back in the '80s,

you could at least mitigate some of those excess calories

by choosing a diet drink to go with it.

But up until 1983,

the supermarket shelves weren't exactly groaning with choice.

Compared to the USA,

who'd had all manner of diet drinks available

since the early '60s,

the UK was really lagging behind in the '80s,

with hardly any options available.

All the supermarket offerings at the time

were called "low calorie", not diet.

In all honesty, were they so flavoursome? No.

Did they sell well? Not really.

But then in 1983,

American giant Coca-Cola launched a game changer.

When Diet Coke was launched,

we hadn't seen anything like it.

It was American, it was cool,

it was a far cry from the very boring,

low-calorie drinks we'd seen.

Even the words "Diet Coke" sounded a lot more appealing

and kind of sexier than "low-calorie cola".

The roll-out of Diet Coke hit the '80s diet trend perfectly.

But Coca-Cola's newest addition had another agenda.

It wasn't as if Coke woke up in the '80s and thought,

"We need to have a diet drink on the market."

They already had Tab,

which had been selling in the USA since 1963.

The fact is, by the '80s, Coca-Cola was a bit in the doldrums,

and they needed something to sort of reinvigorate the brand.

So they looked at how they could reduce production costs,

and with a product like Coca-Cola,

the most expensive ingredient after the can itself was the sugar.

If you take away the sugar, you'll save yourself a fortune.

And that's just what they did.

Using the much cheaper artificial sweetener aspartame,

Coca-Cola reduced both production costs

and the drink's calorie content.

Diet-conscious Brits lapped it up,

and the company's canny move helped secure its future.

The '80s obsession with low calories and looking good

wasn't just limited to our bodies.

People had aspirations for their homes, too.

In 1980, Margaret Thatcher introduced the Housing Act,

which meant people in council homes were allowed to buy them,

and therefore people became obsessed with DIY

because they wanted to own their homes

and they wanted to create something great.

It was the first time we really started caring about our houses.

And so, a DH boom was born.

There was an explosion of interior decor in the '80s.

Everybody was doing their house up.

We thought we were the bee's knees because all of a sudden,

all this choice was available.

Lots of texture.

So, you'd have Anaglypta,

which is wallpaper embossed with a texture.

Then you had wood chip.

Artex came in. Of course!

The swirly Artex, the stippled Artex.

If I'm being brutally honest,

the 1980s was the sort of time that taste forgot,

and I don't think any of us want to repeat it.

Despite the nation's questionable taste in decor,

Britain's supermarkets were quick to catch on.

The supermarkets in the 1980s

introduced a lot of those core, basic DIY products

into their shelves.

So you'd see tins of paint, brushes, rollers and paste, etc.

But one chain saw an even bigger opportunity.

In 1981,

Sainsbury's opened its first branch of Homebase, in Croydon,

successfully demystifying DIY

by blending supermarket know-how with customer accessibility.

What Sainsbury's did

that the other supermarkets weren't doing

were applying their retail expertise in the food market

to the DH market.

WOMAN: Combining high quality with low prices,

a vast range of goods,

with a wide choice of brands, colours and designs.

As well as your sort of hard base building materials,

you had all the soft furnishings

beginning to be brought in to that mixture.

So, wallpapers, curtains, hanging frames,

lamps, lighting.

Choice was growing, and the world was about to change.

The supermarket DIY partnership

became a major household name throughout the '80s and '90s,

with Sainsbury's finally selling off Homebase in 2001.

But the brand is still going strong,

with over 140 stores throughout the UK.

Still to come...

Britain's obsession with low-fat spreads.

In the '80s, we started thinking of our arteries.

Butter and lard was the enemy.

And Dr Chris brings out the big guns

to reveal the secret to making marge.

I've got this bad boy here.

This is significantly more powerful than your average home mixer.

DEBBIE CHAZEN: It's the mid-'80s in our Lycra-clad frolic

through the decade's supermarkets,

and it wasn't just our bodies we were starting to care about.

In the '80s, everyone was talking about

a thing called the new greenhouse effect.

It had gone from a consciousness of zero

to everybody's conversation.

Somebody said to me that hairspray was going to affect the ozone layer,

and I was mortified because I love hairspray,

and I was really worried about not being able to use hairspray

for my big hair.

With the size of the nation's hairdos in serious danger,

something clearly had to be done,

and Britain's supermarkets stepped up to the challenge.

Long before it was good PR for the supermarkets to be super-green,

they did listen.

They started replacing the chemicals used in aerosols,

and they changed their fridges.

So, Iceland kind of led the way here.

As well as selling frozen food,

you used to sell a lot of fridges and freezers.

Ancl part of the demands that they made on the manufacturers then

was to supply them with fridges and freezers for retail

that were more CFC-compliant.

And some of the big supermarket names

went even further with green initiatives.

So, two of the big steps that Sainsbury's took at this time

was to reduce the packaging, which made a huge difference.

And also, they introduced a range that we called Greencare,

which was environmentally friendly.

We sold loads of it, and it was a really trusted brand.

Although as a nation, we were slowly waking up to environmental issues,

what we were putting in our bodies in the name of health

was still rather wide of the mark.

Doctors had been telling us since the '70s

that the saturated fats found in animal fats

were linked to heart disease.

But it took a while for it to sink in.

In the '80s, we started thinking of our arteries.

We started thinking of our cholesterol level,

and everything had to be low fat.

You can't have fat because fats are really bad for you.

Butter and lard was the enemy.

Everybody wanted low-fat yoghurts,

sausages, milk.

And the demand for low-fat spreads started to go through the roof.

We went margarine-mad.

In fact, margarine was nothing new.

It was invented more than a century before by a French chemist

as a cheaper, long-life alternative to butter.

The only difference in the '80s

was where the fats in the margarine came from.

MOOING

Back then, margarine was still made using animal fats,

and vegetable fat was added,

but mainly to make it more spreadable.

But by the '80s,

supermarkets and food manufacturers

were mainly moving away from animal fats

to use much more vegetable fats.

All of the margarines seemed to be made

with vegetable oil or sunflower oil.

So overnight, everybody became aware of sunflower oil,

and everybody wanted sunflower

instead of what they'd been eating before.

Sunflower oil is low in saturated fats,

so on the face of it, was the perfect ingredient

for a healthier option to butter.

My mum loved a low-fat spread.

But I didn't, and I never liked the taste of it.

Awful!

To this clay, I hate them.

But health concerns trumped taste.

Sunflower spreads became the shopper's choice,

and a popular brand, launched by US giant Kraft in 1983,

was Vita lite.

♪ Wake up in the morning Wanting some breakfast

♪ What am I gonna spread On my toast?

♪ Ohhh, ohhh

♪ Vitalite... ♪

I remember the commercial vividly, and it showed

a lot of very smiley sunflowers dancing to the rhythm of this song

based on the Desmond Dekker song The Israelites,

which was my mother's favourite song.

♪ Vitalite... ♪

The fact that it was sort of using

happy, jolly, smiley sunflowers dancing in the sunshine

made it look really vital and really healthy for you.

Come on, y'all. ♪ Vitalite. ♪

Yeah! Good night.

Sunflower oil may arguably be a healthier option,

but the process used to artificially harden low-fat spreads

meant they ended up containing something

that was very far from healthy.

Back in the '80s, of course,

a lot of these products were using hydrogenated vegetable oil

because it was technically unsaturated fat.

What they didn't realise, that it was a trans fat,

which are about the worst type of fats going.

These days, the manufacturing process for Vitalite

and spreads like it has been changed

to ensure the levels of trans fats are minimal.

So, how are margarines made?

Over to the man who can, um, spread the word.

OK, so, margarine.

It's essentially a mixture of oil and water,

and a few other bits and bobs to make it taste nice.

But you do not need a Nobel Prize in science

to know that oil and water do not mix.

So, let me show you what I mean.

Here, I've got some oil and some water,

and when I try to add those together...

we find there is no mixing whatsoever.

What we need is to find a way to get these to mix together

and stay mixed.

The trick is to add something called an emulsifier -

in this case, a substance called lecithin

that occurs naturally in our bodies,

as well as red meats, soy and egg yolks.

So, hopefully, if I mix my lecithin with my oil and water,

I can get the two to stay mixed.

So, as we can see,

the lecithin is stopping the oil and water from separating out.

What we need now is something that can make it more spreadable.

And for that, we need another fat.

This... is palm oil.

If we mix this

with the sunflower oil, water and lecithin

and mix it up really vigorously,

then we should be able to create a margarine,

something that's semi-solid - so, nice and spreadable.

But combining these ingredients quickly and efficiently

isn't something you can do at home.

It requires industrial muscle.

For this, I've got this bad boy here.

This is significantly more powerful than your average home mixer.

In fact, it's a whopping 2,000 times faster

than your average home mixer.

So take it steady, Dr Chris.

In go the two oils and the emulsifier.

And as they're being mixed, the water is carefully added.

So, already we can see that it's changing colour.

It's going lighter.

That shows that the fat and water are being broken up

into tiny little droplets.

It's also starting to thicken up quite nicely.

It takes just over a minute for Dr Chris's bad boy mixer

to transform the oil and water mixture.

I think we're about there.

That's looking pretty margarine-y, but it doesn't look very buttery.

Now, to get the extra-buttery colour that I want,

we can add a little bit of a yellow colouring,

which is what they do in industry.

One last spin, and the margarine is almost done.

But it still doesn't look like anything

you'd want to spread on your toast.

At the moment, it's still quite runny,

but that's because a lot of those fats that we melted

still haven't had time to resolidify.

So we're going to cool it down a bit and allow them to set,

which will give us that spreadable consistency.

The ultimate test is a spread test.

So, the moment of truth.

Oh! So you can see that that's spreading really nicely.

Even consistency, and much easier than butter.

I'd say that's a resounding success.

But let's have a bite anyway, to be sure.

Hmm.

Could do with a few more flavourings, mainly salt.

But it's definitely margarine.

If you say so, Dr Chris.

I still prefer butter.

Next time, how the late '80s saw Britain boom.

It was the era of the yuppie.

Showing that you have money and you plan to make more.

And how the supermarkets responded with the fancy...

There was nothing more posh and up to date

than a glass of Chardonnay, darling.

The lavish...

Nothing tasted like it, nothing looked like it,

before or since.

And the outright bizarre.

This is like something from Mars. It's very big.