Original subtitles

[music playing]

Hot soup on a cold day--

you can't beat it.

It's like a cuddle in a cup.

No wonder we get through more than 600 million

bowls of it each year.

Stick all that in tins, and it would fill more than 10,000

of these lorries.

And to see how it's done, I've come

to this soup-per-sized factory!

[music playing]

What we're doing at this point is checking that the cans--

Whoa!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'm Gregg Wallace.

GREGG WALLACE: Everything about this is just breakneck speed!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Tonight,

I'm following the un-pea-lievable production--

It was like a load of glowing red molten lava!

- GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): - -of this family favorite.

There shouldn't be that much engineering in a tin of soup!

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm Cherry Healey.

Oh!

There we go.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'll be

discovering the hunger-busting secrets

behind this simple meal.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Historian Ruth Goodman--

[laughter]

- -dishes up the surprising origins

of this one-bowl wonder.

Quite an exotic flavor, isn't it?

Exotic-- that's precisely the word I was looking for.

[laughter]

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: Over the next 24 hours,

this factory will produce two million tins of soup.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[music playing]

This is the Heinz factory on the outskirts of Wigan.

The team here on this 54-acre site

produce more than one billion tins of food every year.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): That includes baked beans, spaghetti

hoops, and macaroni cheese, along

with different varieties of soup, from big and beefy

to carrot and coriander.

[machinery running]

Today, we're following production

of their classic vegetable soup in 400-gram tins.

Each one contains tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beans,

pasta, onions, swedes, and peas.

The peas arrive here frozen.

But, of course, they don't start out that way.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'm heading two

hours east to the Vale of York.

Here, one farm devotes 77 square miles to growing

this vibrant green crop.

Hartleys produce 1,000 tons of peas a year for our soup.

There are 4,400,000 plants in this field alone.

So harvest time from June to August

is especially busy for pea operations manager Paul Saxon.

Paul!

Good morning, Gregg.

Pleasure to be here, mate-- a bit of fresh air.

So what makes the perfect pea for a tin of soup?

Well, you want a standard garden pea.

And it needs to be quite mature-- a little bit firm,

which then helps when it goes through the production lines

and through into the cans.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Peas are actually the seeds

of the plants or vines.

These are so crunchy and sweet.

They're lovely.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): When ripe,

they only stay in peak condition for two days

before they start to go tough and starchy.

So Paul has to be quick to bring in the crop.

GREGG WALLACE: I used to grow peas.

If you can't get these on your plate within 24 hours,

- don't bother-- - Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: --which is why you freeze them, right?

That's right.

These have got to go from the field

to the factory in under 150 minutes.

You've got to do it in two and 1/2 hours?

We certainly have.

Does that keep you awake at night?

Uh, it just gives me a few headaches now and again, yeah.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Paul's

harvesting team works around the clock, whatever the weather.

Whoa!

That's a-- back up!

Back up.

That was a monster, isn't it?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): These 24-ton state-of-the-art

giants are called pea viners.

They might move slowly but only take around an hour

to pick this 11-acre field.

This seems too big for a delicate thing like a pea.

How does this work?

So what we have at the front here-- it's like a giant comb.

The fingers rotate and strip 95% of the vine

up onto a conveyor, which it takes up

into the back of the machine.

A giant comb--

basically, it's just like vigorously

brushing the hair of the field.

That is not what I expected at all.

Nice piece of kit.

A very nice piece of kit.

Come on, Gregg.

Let's go for a spin.

[laughter]

GREGG WALLACE: It's space age, isn't it?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Paul drops

the giant comb into position.

The plants are scooped up, and production begins.

[music playing]

As each pea viner swoops over the ground,

its comb claws in the plants and breaks off the pea pods, which

are sent into a revolving drum.

Inside there, soft blades like spatulas knock the pods open

and release the peas.

GREGG WALLACE: Ah!

Those are now the peas entering the hopper.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The stalks, pods, and leaves

are dropped to the ground.

How much weight in there once that hopper's full?

It holds between two and three ton.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Over 24 hours,

each harvester collects 60 tons--

around 85 million individual peas.

It's all about speedy peas--

getting them into the trailer and away as quick as possible.

Here he is.

PAUL SAXON: Now we'll lower the hopper.

GREGG WALLACE: Ah!

It's like a little drawbridge.

Wow, look at the speed!

[laughter]

Look at that!

They are flying off of there!

[music playing]

Brilliant!

That didn't take long.

Everything about this is just breakneck speed.

- But it's got to be, isn't it? - It certainly has.

It's got to be.

The clock is ticking.

Paul, thank you.

That's been an education.

It really has.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Just 20 minutes after being picked,

10 tons of peas cascade into a lorry,

ready to go off for freezing.

[music playing]

In Britain, it's believed we were

eating these ap-pea-ling vegetables

even before the Romans came.

But when did our love affair with soup begin?

Ruth investigates.

500 years ago, people in England were

eating something like this--

a sort of broth of meat or fish packed full of vegetables

and thickened with grain or pulses.

And they called it pottage.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): The word

pottage came from old French and simply

meant something in a pot.

There was no recipe as such.

You just tossed whatever ingredients you

had to hand into a cauldron.

I mean, it certainly looks similar to soup.

But when exactly did it stop being called pottage

and become soup?

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): To find out, I'm in Sussex,

at the grand ruins of Cowdray House, where

food historian Glyn Hughes is working on some clues

to this soupy mystery.

Glyn, nice to see you!

Hello, Ruth.

Marvelous to see you.

So when exactly does pottage change into soup?

Interestingly, we can trace the origin of soup

to the 17th century and, particularly in England,

to this man, Robert May, who was a master cook.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Robert May

trained in Paris before working in noble English households.

This is his kitchen in Cowdray House which, astonishingly--

Is still here.

- -is still here.

And he wrote this wonderful, wonderful book,

"The Accomplished Cook," published in 1660 with dozens

of recipes for soup.

It's the first time we've actually got it written down--

As to what a soup is.

- -as, actually, what in a soup is.

And it's spelled S-double-O-P, soop.

And there's one in particular-- a soop

of buttered meats of spinach.

RUTH GOODMAN: We've gotta try this.

This just sounds--

GLYN HUGHES: Yes, we have.

- -so interesting.

GLYN HUGHES: We take fine young spinach

and give it a warm or two.

Wilt down the spinach, basically.

So we're putting in some.

Yeah, well, that looks like some spinach.

It looks like some spinach to me.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Hundreds of years ago,

cookery books often didn't give quantities or a lot of detail.

GLYN HUGHES: We have to mince it small.

[laughter]

RUTH GOODMAN: Mince it small.

GLYN HUGHES: Mince it small.

Now we want some sliced dates.

They were expensive, so I think that must be plenty.

GLYN HUGHES: Next is some butter.

RUTH GOODMAN: Some-- a knob of butter, perhaps?

I would've said a knob and a 1/2.

[laughter]

And it's got some white wine.

Oh, good stuff.

Do you reckon more?

Of course, I reckon more.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): We also add cinnamon and currants.

Special, costly ingredients like these

meant this recipe would only have

been for the upper classes.

And some sugar.

RUTH GOODMAN: I think we ought to treat this like a spice,

shouldn't we? GLYN HUGHES: Yes, absolutely.

RUTH GOODMAN: So one pinch of sugar.

GLYN HUGHES: And you've now got to stew them well together.

In it goes.

[music playing]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): After five minutes' simmering,

this slightly sweet and fruity mixture doesn't look

much like a modern soup.

[music playing]

And the recipe has another unusual aspect.

So I noticed it said, serve it upon sippets.

Yes, it said serve it sippets finely carved, which

is decorated pieces of bread.

RUTH GOODMAN: I'll have a bit of that on there.

This is certainly not what we would call soup these days,

is it?

It's not, is it?

[music playing]

Quite an exotic flavor, isn't it?

Exotic-- that's precisely the word I was looking for.

[laughter]

You don't like it, do you?

Um--

No.

No.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It's rather strange, soggy spinach.

The earlier pottage is much closer to what we know as soup.

I think what's probably happened

is the word starts off in the aristocratic houses first.

And then people go, ooh, that's a bit posh, that.

We'll start using that name for our stuff,

just like we've stopped calling egg pie, egg pie.

And started calling it quiche.

Exactly.

So I think that's the same thing that happened here.

That the word soup has come to cover

many of the older pottages.

So it's a renaming in a way.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah, that sounds very real.

- It's very reasonable. - Here's to-- here's to soup.

Here's to soup.

Yeah, absolutely.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): In Yorkshire,

our 10-ton pile of peas is racing

to this processing plant.

They've been freezing veg here for nearly 40 years.

This is the 13th load of the day,

and it's being guided in by pea processing manager Sam Madden.

Nice to meet you, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE: How often do you get a load come in?

Every hour.

No way.

Yeah.

There's not that many peas in the world!

SAM MADDEN: There is in Yorkshire.

And how old are we unload them?

Because that's a delicate load.

We just do it like this.

Whoa!

That is coming out a lot faster than I thought.

Two minutes later and they're all

on their way to join the party inside the processing plant.

But first, they need washing and then salting

inside a kind of wind machine.

Mate, I'm getting smothered in peas!

It's raining peas.

This is blowing air into this chamber

to separate the bits of broken peas away from the full peas.

So the broken piece come to the side here.

And then the peas fall down here.

As you can see, we've got bits of still-full pods

here coming from the field.

So we have grids which the peas will fall through.

And the pods will continue all the way out to the end

and come out the other side.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): An hour and 42 minutes since they

were harvested, these millions of little fellows

begin their adventure.

It's like a pea water park.

[music playing]

They shoot down a flume, whoosh through a tunnel,

and ride down some rapids.

Then cameras inspect them and disqualify any bad-uns.

Only the best are sent on for processing.

This is where we blanch the peas.

GREGG WALLACE: They're not going to get frozen straight away.

SAM MADDEN: No, not yet.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): First,

they're blanched with steam.

Then they're sprayed with near-boiling water.

Now, if I plant something at home like a vegetable--

like a carrot-- quickly in and out of hot water--

Yeah.

- -just to soften it before I roast it.

But why do you blanch peas?

We're doing the same process, but

we're doing it to denature an enzyme,

stopping it from working.

Deactivating it?

Deactivating it.

What is the enzyme?

It's called peroxidase.

But this enzyme will still degrade the peas,

even whilst they frozen.

I've always thought that once we freeze something,

it's going to stay in that same state.

No.

Incredible.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Left alone, the frozen peas

would last eight weeks.

Deactivating the enzyme will lock in their color

and nutrients for 18 months.

I love peas.

You could say I'm a bit of a pea-nut.

A pea-nut?

Our blanched peas, right?

Yeah, that's correct.

Oh, they're cool.

Absolutely.

- You put them in cold? - Yeah.

And that's the stop them cooking.

Yes.

They're softer.

Yeah.

But the taste is virtually the same.

Well, it is the same.

Exactly.

GREGG WALLACE: Are they now ready for freezing?

SAM MADDEN: Absolutely.

The peas are now being transported

to where they'll be frozen.

I almost feel sorry for them.

Yeah.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): It takes eight

minutes for the peas to travel through the 12-meter blast

freezer.

Well, that is cold.

How cold is that?

That's minus 35.

They're bouncing up and down!

Mind you, if I was in there, I think

I would bounce up and down.

Yeah.

So, basically, we have fans inside that'll lift speeds up

into the air so that the cold air

can get all the way around the peas

to make sure they're frozen to the core.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The fully frozen

peas are ready for packing.

They shuffle down into drop pans.

And when the weight hits 10 kilos,

they're poured into plastic bags.

These packs of peas are a bit bigger than the ones

I buy for my dinner.

Sam, thank you very much for showing me.

Thank you.

GREGG WALLACE: Thank you.

Well, that's one of the six veg for our soup sorted.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Peas are more

delicate than lots of other fruit and veg

which can be stored fresh for longer.

But which is better when it comes to keeping in nutrients?

Is it frozen or fresh?

Cherry's at Chester Food Market to meet nutritional

biochemist Dr. Sohail Mushtaq.

Hi, Sohail!

Hi, Cherry.

Nice to meet you.

I've always thought fresh is best.

If you want all of the nutrients, go fresh.

It's not that simple, Cherry.

If you're talking fresh as in pick

from your allotment or your garden,

then fresh is definitely the best.

But supermarket fresh is something entirely different

because they harvest their vegetables.

Then they'll end up in transit and in the warehouse.

And all of this time, they're losing

some of that nutrient content.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): To get the numbers

on those nutrients, Sohail's brought me

to the University of Chester.

CHERRY HEALEY: Ooh, look-- lovely.

Peas, sprouts, carrots.

How would you compare the nutritional properties

between fresh and frozen?

So we're going to look at the vitamin C content.

It's a very important vitamin that supports our immune system

and keeps us healthy.

It's a very good indicator of overall nutritional content.

So if there's a loss in vitamin C,

there's generally a loss in all the other nutrients.

Exactly.

So grab some sprouts.

I'll grab some peas.

And we'll go and do the analysis.

Let's do some science.

[music playing]

Oh!

There we go.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Helping

us prepare the samples--

Smash, smash, smash.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): --is food scientist Stuart Crofts.

It's definitely whizzing around.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): A centrifuge removes the solids

and leaves just the liquid fruit and veg.

We put a sample of each one into a chromatography machine, which

separates out the vitamin C.

So we've got all our samples-- the Brussels sprouts,

the peas, the carrots, the raspberries, the onions.

We'll put it in here.

Exactly.

Now it's going to come through here into what

we call a spectrophotometer.

And that shines different wavelengths of light

into the sample.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY: So it's going to tell us

which has more vitamin C, the frozen sample

or the fresh sample?

Exactly.

So the results are in.

We'll start with carrots.

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh.

SOHAIL MUSHTAQ: There's not very much in it

between the fresh and the frozen--

pretty much of a muchness here.

Onto the next one-- onions.

The frozen is almost double the amount

of vitamin C than the fresh.

Oh, that's so interesting.

I really thought that it would be the same.

And for peas, the vitamin difference is even greater.

Whoa!

Frozen is a winner!

Look at that!

Absolutely-- almost six times more vitamin

C than the fresh variety.

The producers must be very peased with that result.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): And these frozen sprouts

do better still--

about eight times the vitamin level of the fresh.

CHERRY HEALEY: I had no idea that there

was this much difference.

The fresh version in this case came from South Africa.

So there's a long transit time, and they're

possibly losing some of their nutrient content

in the journey.

Whereas the frozen were probably frozen

fairly soon after harvesting, therefore

locking in the nutrients.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY: What's next?

Raspberries.

Oh, the tables have turned.

SOHAIL MUSHTAQ: Fresh has got double the amount

that frozen has.

Fresh for the win!

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): These results

are for summer raspberries.

But when they tested them bought in winter,

they found the opposite, with frozen easily beating fresh.

Why are the results so different?

I think the answer to that is seasonality.

The raspberries-- in the summer, they're in-season.

And they get to the supermarket fairly quickly.

And, in the winter, when they're not in-season,

they're probably imported from other countries.

So if you want your raspberries

to have that full nutritional punch,

you want to eat them in the summer.

Exactly.

But, out of season, maybe go for frozen.

Absolutely.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Two hours

north of where the peas were frozen

is our Monumental food factory near Wigan.

It's nearly three times as big as Buckingham Palace.

Well, it is one of the largest soup manufacturers in Europe.

Three hours and 35 minutes into production, the frozen peas

are heading into the 1700-square-meter

open-plan kitchen.

Every can of soup starts off in the preparation

area, where I'm meeting process coordinator Ian White.

Ian.

Hello, Gregg.

All right, my friend, how many peas

have you got on that pallet?

About 900 kilos.

Nearly a ton of peas.

Will they all go into soup?

Yes, in vegetable soup today.

And how many tins of soup would that make?

About 64,000 tins.

GREGG WALLACE: How big is my batch?

How many tins?

IAN WHITE: About 10,000 tins.

All right, come on. Come on.

We've got work to do.

[laughter]

IAN WHITE: All of these ingredients

are going to go in this container.

So what's in here already?

We've got fresh carrots.

Right.

IAN WHITE: If we can get stuff fresh from the supplier,

we will.

But, generally, this time of the year, what we can get supplied.

So what are we putting in there now?

You're gonna put six bags of frozen onions into them.

[music playing]

I dropped a couple.

I'm not bad at dicing onions.

But 20 kilos?

All right, now what, Chef?

We need 14 bags of frozen peas.

This is hard work!

My hands are frozen!

Ah!

[laughter]

Are you keeping count?

No, I thought you was doing that.

Yeah.

One more.

Now we've got the fresh swedes.

How many Swedes?

10.

10-- that's like 2 and 1/2 [inaudible], isn't it?

[music playing]

So a lot of vegetables there, Ian.

We're going to sweat these all down now in a massive saucepan

with a bit of butter.

We've still got the haricot beans to go in next.

Ah!

They're just naked baked beans.

That's right, yes.

They've already been blanched.

GREGG WALLACE: All right, how many are in there?

There's 41 kilos of haricot beans.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The factory

developed this soup recipe in 1930,

and it's barely changed since then.

[music playing]

So what happens to this lot now?

We're gonna start cooking it.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We're following our nearly 1

ton of chopped veg to the cooking area.

That's a fine looking thing!

Isn't it?

There's your five a day right there.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This container

full is just for our batch of veggie soup,

one of 70 they're making today.

Could you shut that gate for me and press the close button?

How dangerous are those peas if they

have to be kept behind a cage?

Hey, there it goes!

Where's that veg going now?

Down a chute to a big pressure cooker beneath our feet.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): It's 466 times bigger than the one

I have at home.

We're just softening it and precooking it.

How are you doing that?

We do that with a very hot water and a mixture of steam.

GREGG WALLACE: Is that it then?

No, we did another addition of veg, which is potatoes,

and some pasta as well.

Why do they go in last?

Well, if they went in too early,

it would just turn into a mush.

- Well, come on then! - OK.

There's people at home waiting for their soup!

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The veg is in for 12 minutes

before we add 350 kilos of dried pasta and diced potato.

Then cornflour goes in to thicken the mix.

And four hours 37 minutes after we started production,

the whole mix is precooked.

IAN WHITE: Here we've got too much of a batch.

GREGG WALLACE: Well, that's a lovely mix of veg.

That's our garnish.

You call this garnish?

That's right.

No, no, no, no, no.

Garnish is a wedge of lemon or a sprig of parsley.

That's the heart of your soup.

Yeah, but that's what we call our garnish.

GREGG WALLACE: Now, that is really, really thick.

So that obviously doesn't go out like that.

So what happens to that now?

We've got to add the sauce to that.

This is very, very different to making

a vegetable soup at home.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They're keeping their veggies

separate from their stock or sauce,

which, naturally, we're making in a special sauce pan, one of

eight they have in the kitchen.

They're so big.

They go all the way through to the floor below.

So what goes in it?

These are our spices and extract.

GREGG WALLACE: What are they?

Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you.

Is it a secret?

It is a secret, yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: There's obviously pepper in there.

There must be salt in there.

And I think they might be cumin in there.

And there is a sweet pickley smell like you

get at an Indian restaurant.

Anyway, it's quite a powerful mix.

Wow!

I normally only put a couple of teaspoons in mine.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We're tipping in three boxes of herbs

and flavoring.

That is industrial-scale seasoning.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And that's

only the start of the sauce.

We'll get a mixture of water, flour, and tomato pulp

coming in next.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 152 gallons

of tomato pulp are mixed with 300 gallons of water,

along with sugar and yeast extract.

I could see tomato going in there!

I can smell it as well!

It's really fruity!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The factory

has bred its very own variety of tomatoes

which they've developed for firmness and flavor.

The level's rising.

Ah!

Close that now before we decorate the place.

[laughter]

I liked that.

It was like a load of glowing red molten lava--

Yeah, it's great.

- -only closer to the surface.

Ian, my friend, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'm leaving

this tomato sauce to be heated to 91 degrees

to fully develop its flavor.

[music playing]

The factory produces so much food in tins,

they make their own.

And 10,000 of them for our batch of soup

are heading towards Canning Operations

Manager John Broccoli.

John, you're the man to explain the next stage

of soup production.

I am, yes.

GREGG WALLACE: The whole world would recognize these things.

Why is a tin can so successful?

JOHN BROCCOLI: A tin can can hold food perfectly fresh

for about 2 and 1/2 years.

But why is it called tin?

Is it made of tin?

The actual can itself is made out of steel.

And then it's coated on the inside and the outside

with tin plates.

If it was just a steel can, then it would start to deteriorate

what's inside it.

You also make beans.

Is that exactly the same cans as the beans are in?

No, this one isn't.

This one's got a thicker tin coating because the acidity

of the product that we're putting in

can also make a difference to the shelf life.

Is our soup slightly more acidic than the beans?

This one is, yes.

So we need more tin on the inside?

We do, yes.

Is that right?

It is, yes.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The steel

is for strength, and so are the corrugated ribs

that make the can more rigid.

GREGG WALLACE: You've got the top on the can,

but you haven't got the bottom on it.

We let the ring fall on first in can-making.

And then, when we come to fill it,

we actually put the bottom on second.

- You fill it from the bottom-- - We do.

- -with the top already on.

Correct.

This I want to see.

Come on.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The machine

is constantly refilling 63 pistons with 175 milliliters

of our hot vegetable mix.

It's squirting into the cans.

Yes.

At about 900 comes a minute, it will

take about 11 minutes to use all of that batch

that you made upstairs.

10,000 times in 11 minutes.

Yes.

[music playing]

We fill them in two stages.

We put the vegetables in first.

And then we put the sauce in second.

So we've got, basically, 1/2 a can of soup.

So that is your vegetables, your pasta--

And then you're going to put the sauce on?

And we're going to put the sauce in next.

How long has this factory been making soup like that?

At least 30 years.

All right, fair enough.

Can I see the sauce going in, please?

Yeah, of course.

Come on.

That's an unusual way of doing it Are

you sure you've got this right?

JOHN BROCCOLI: I'm sure.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cans dash

along to the next turntable where, this time,

it's rich hot tomato sauce pumping in.

Right.

There's the sauce.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The same amount

of sauce as veg goes on top.

So we now have all our ingredients but in two layers--

a kind of soup sandwich.

So we must not mix together, and you've

got no bottom of your can.

Correct.

How does that happen?

OK, so the can ends come down the chute

into the machine behind you.

This is going to place the actual bottom of the can end

onto the actual open can.

[music playing]

So, basically, we place this on top.

And the can roll takes.

And the series of rolls roll the metal of the actual

can end into the actual body of the can.

Oh, yeah!

So it's like that?

Interlocking, yes.

GREGG WALLACE: And how fast is it doing that?

JOHN BROCCOLI: Around 900 cans a minute.

On the actual inside, we have a food-quality rubber.

And this helps just provide the air-tight seal for when

we actually close the can.

It's recyclable, right?

When it goes through the recycling process,

that rubber will just be burned off.

I think that's ingenious.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cans rush

along a maze of conveyors and drop

through a wiry snake called a twister.

This rotates each one by 180 degrees,

which has a magical effect on the contents.

The garnish and the sauce-- it's mixed together.

Yes.

GREGG WALLACE: And even though it's had lots of heat,

all of the veg has kept its color and its shape.

Yes, of course.

GREGG WALLACE: Very impressive.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We're making our veggie soup

on a massive scale.

At the factory, we've prepped, precooked,

and filled 10,000 cans with it.

Those are now moving into a second cooking area.

I'm here with Operations Manager John Broccoli.

I feel like I'm in the belly of the beast.

I love these cans coming down here.

Yep, have a touch.

That's hot.

They're really hot.

Yeah, they're 80 degrees C.

Right, OK.

So what do you do to them now down here?

We're actually going to shoot the product inside the can.

One minute, one minute--

it's already been cooked upstairs.

It's been partly cooked.

It's very important now for us to make sure that that product

is perfectly safe.

And the only way to do that is actually to cook

the product inside the can.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They're

making this soup so fast it's still hot from its precook.

Heating it again will kill any possible bacteria.

And being in a sealed can guarantees its food safety.

How do you cook them in the can?

Well, firstly, we need to change it

from an upright position, knock the can

over, and lay it on its side.

I can actually see them being knocked over.

Yeah, that's right.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cans

are pushed end-to-end into carrier

bars, which hold them tight.

This stops the soup moving around and the veg breaking up.

They're going up into a cooker which is above our heads.

You've got a cooker above us?

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 16 cans at a time disappear

slowly up into the darkness.

Go on in. Show me.

OK.

[music playing]

OK, Gregg, this is where we're going

to cook our soup in a can.

Yeah, where?

There.

[music playing]

Now, what? The thing with the fire escape--

all of it?

All of that is a cooker.

[laughter]

No, you don't do things by halves here, do you?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cooking tower

is 27.4 meters tall.

And they make so much soup here, they've got two of them

back-to-back.

Whoa!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Of course, there's no lift,

is there?

Keep going.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It's unnerving, isn't it?

[music playing]

So this little tin--

that massive cooker.

JOHN BROCCOLI: Yep.

How many tins are in there?

Around 110,000 at any one time.

Well, it's scale is just mammoth.

Yeah.

And is this running all the time?

This is a continuous cooking process.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cans head into a series

of cooking chambers.

They're already a toasty 80 degrees,

and they heat up further to cooking steam

at 123 degrees Celsius.

Then, on the last three loops of this roller coaster ride,

they cool down.

How long does it take?

About two hours 40 minutes.

Two hours 40 minutes to cook a tin of soup?

JOHN BROCCOLI: Yep.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Two hours

40 minutes later, at the base of the tower--

Beautiful-- that's a lovely sight.

- GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): - -10,000 tins of soup

are tumbling out of the cooker.

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah, that's no longer hot, is it?

JOHN BROCCOLI: Nope.

GREGG WALLACE: No, it's like room temperature, isn't it?

JOHN BROCCOLI: It is.

So is that it now?

Are these cans finished?

That's our soup cooked.

JOHN BROCCOLI: Completely cooked inside the cup.

Thank you so much.

That's been amazing.

You're welcome.

Absolutely brilliant.

[music playing]

The contents of these cans makes a quick and easy meal.

But could soup also be the answer

to staying fuller for longer?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Cherry

is on a mission to find out.

[music playing]

Whenever I can, I try and have a healthy lunch.

But I must admit, I do struggle to find something that's going

to keep me full up until dinnertime

and stop me raiding the biscuit tin.

Thank you.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Dr. Miriam Clegg from

the University of Reading--

Hi, how are you?

- CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): - -is an expert

in hunger and nutrition.

Can you help me to stop snacking in between meals.

Yes.

CHERRY HEALEY: How do I do that.

MIRIAM CLEGG: Well, a solid meal--

a mixture of carbohydrates, fat, and protein,

plenty of vegetables.

These types of meals can help you to stay full.

Other things that can help you stay full are things like soup.

But this looks like it's so much more

filling than that bowl of soup.

It's, like, solid, and it's a proper meal.

Well, why don't we go find out?

Ooh.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Dr. Miriam has invited volunteers

to take part in an experiment on a riverboat restaurant

in Reading.

[music playing]

In the kitchen, the chef is cooking up a lunch of chicken,

rice, and vegetables and also making

a soup from the exact same ingredients.

Smells nice.

Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): We're serving

one group of diners a plate of food with a glass of water.

The others are having the soup and the same amount of water.

But theirs is blended into their meal.

Are you happy or sad that you've got the solid food?

I'm actually happy.

Yeah?

What would you generally go for, solid food or soup?

I always say solid food.

Solid food, definitely.

CHERRY HEALEY: Why?

I feel I'd be hungry again after soup.

CHERRY HEALEY: Yeah.

WOMAN: Get the results.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): We ask our volunteers

to assess their hunger levels every 15

minutes for the next two hours.

Hello, to help you pass the time,

here is an excellent version of Snakes and Ladders.

With the volunteers distracted--

Yes, that's my face.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): --Dr. Miriam explains how the way

we prepare our food can make a difference.

OK, so imagine this is your stomach.

Let's put the solid food in here.

CHERRY HEALEY: This is gonna get messy.

MIRIAM CLEGG: Chomp, chomp, chomp.

CHERRY HEALEY: Chomp chomp, chomp.

Nom, nom, nom.

Now let's pour the liquid through.

CHERRY HEALEY: OK.

Yeah, all of the water's there.

OK, so solid food has stayed in the stomach.

But all the liquid has emptied out.

Right.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Now for the bowl of soup.

CHERRY HEALEY: Goodness.

Almost none of it is going through.

The soup has primarily stayed within the sieve,

and this is exactly what would happen in the stomach.

Why is that important?

MIRIAM CLEGG: Because this causes there to be a bigger

volume of soup, which causes the stomach

to be distended or expanded for a longer period of time.

So, with the soup, the stomach stays bigger for longer.

MIRIAM CLEGG: Yes.

So it's a bit of a hack.

It's making your body feel like it's

fuller whilst, actually, you're consuming exactly

the same amount of food.

Yeah.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): All good in theory, but does

it stack up in the real world?

Two hours after their lunch, we tempt our diners

with some digestive biscuits--

Yay!

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): --to see which table is hungrier.

Dr. Miriam collates the results of their surveys.

And, in a slightly less scientific way,

I count the number of biscuits eaten by each group.

So both teams, the so solid crew and the soup group--

you were both given identical calories,

identical ingredients, identical water,

except, for the soup group, it was

blended up like a big smoothie.

Oh, so you gave us less water because you

put that water into the soup.

MIRIAM CLEGG: Exactly.

So what we were trying to do is to look at how full

you were feeling and how much you were likely to eat.

So those scales that you filled in throughout the study--

the overall finding from that was

that the soup group were 5% less hungry than the solid group.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): And there's

even more difference when it comes to the biscuit test.

The soup table are 13 biscuits, but the solid food group

nibbled 21.

So the soup group actually a 38% less biscuits.

So the soup group were much fuller for much longer.

[music playing]

I must admit, I always thought it was solid food that would

keep me fuller for longer.

It turns out, if you want to avoid snacking,

smooth soup really is super.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): At the Wigan factory,

we've reached the labeling hall.

It's a 4,500-square-meter temple for tins.

Today, they'll label and pack almost

a million cans of veggie soup.

[music playing]

My shiny batch of 10,000 are ready to be transformed

by Operations Manager Michelle.

- Rigby. - Hello.

Michelle?

Hi, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And I've heard it's a special day.

John told me it's your birthday today.

It is.

Happy birthday!

Thank you, Gregg!

I haven't got a cake.

Oh.

OK, so we've got a naked can.

It looks all right like that.

But you don't think people would buy if it looks like that.

Well, they don't know what it is, Gregg, because it's

not got a label on.

Good point!

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Each tin

is stamped with a special number that indicates

it contains vegetable soup.

This is our camera system.

It's taking a picture of the bottom

of the can to make sure it's the right soup in the can.

The next thing we're gonna do is put four blue spots on the can.

So boop, boop, boop, boop.

Does it really make that noise?

No, that was just me.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'd say it's more

ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba,

ba because these are like glue machine

guns hitting an incredible 550 cans a minute!

The next part of the machine is where the labels get put in.

As it's turning, it's wrapping itself around.

There are soft brushes behind the cans.

MICHELLE RIGBY: Yeah, that's making sure that the label

goes around the can correctly.

And as we put a final blue stripe,

then the label sticks to itself.

[music playing]

Right.

What are we doing here?

So this is our last quality check before the cans

go out to the customer.

So what we're doing at this point

is checking that the cans--

Whoa!

Whoa!

Was that supposed to happen?

Well, it's obviously not a good can.

It's a bad can.

Hang on a minute.

Go on.

As you can see, if the can moves,

it means that we've not got the correct vacuum in the can.

The bottom of the can should be concave.

So it should be also sucked in, meaning we've got

a good vacuum seal on the can.

So that means no bacteria can live in here.

Yes.

And this machine can tell any bad can.

MICHELLE RIGBY: It can.

Can we give it a name?

I want but call it Dan--

Dan the bad can.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Running through two machines

means it takes just nine minutes to label

and check the entire batch of 10,000 tins of soup.

[music playing]

That is impressive.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Oh, bless you.

It was a pleasure.

Bye!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The big crowd

of smart red cans queue up politely as they head

in to be wrapped 24 at a time.

Then they're stacked on pallets 12 layers high

and transported into the factory's

massive dispatch warehouse.

[music playing]

It's a whopping 13 stories high and covers

31,000 square meters.

That's four football pitches.

Inside, it's packed with tinned food

which their automated system moves into position.

The rollers carry the pallets of soup

straight to the Senior Logistics Manager, Mike Thomas.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: Mike?

Gregg.

How many have you got there.

MIKE THOMAS: There's 26 pallets here ready to go out.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This lorry is being loaded

with 59,904 tins of soup--

enough to feed every one in West Devon.

How many trucks are leaving here daily?

110.

But in the peak season, we'll be doing 150 vehicles a day

out of here, 24 hours a day.

GREGG WALLACE: Listen, this might be a stupid question.

But is soup seasonal?

Yes.

The sales increase in September and October

when the weather changes and it goes cold.

Really?

We go to soup season.

For every one degree the temperature drops, we see

an increase in sales of 3.5%.

The colder it gets, the more soup we buy.

My friend, thank you for your time.

No, thank you.

I'm going to go away and scratch

my head over those numbers.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): It's only taken eight hours

21 and 1/2 minutes of production time

since the peas in this lorry load of soup were harvested.

Now these cans could be heading as

far away as Malaysia and Oman.

Closer to home, the soup is sold across Europe.

But 98% of it stays in these islands.

After London, the areas that eat the most

are the Midlands and Lancashire

I've loved my visit to this factory.

And what I found really interesting

is that peas and the other vegetables go into the can

separately from the sauce.

And then they're all cooked inside the can.

But what amazes me is the sheer speed

and scale of this production.

You know, we obviously love our soup.

[music playing]