Original subtitles

Look at all this lovely veg.

You know, one in eight Brits now follows a meat-free diet.

- And there are loads of vegetarian and vegan options

you can buy from the supermarket.

- And one of the most popular is the vegan sausage.

And the science that goes into producing these meat-free bangers

is mind-blowing.

So I'm heading to a factory that produces

26.5 million of them every year.

I'm Gregg Wallace.

Wow!

And tonight, I'll be following the journey of a space age sausage.

From futuristic farming...

This is not like any factory I've ever been in.

..to pioneering superfoods...

These are ingredients I've never come across.

..and painstaking production methods.

- Our little saying is that we are sausage scientists.

- I'm Cherry Healey, and I'm taking one small step...

I have climbed a perilous landscape.

Or is it one giant slip?

Oh, my God!

..to reveal the nutritional superpowers of seaweed.

It's like an aquatic multi vitamin.

- And historian Ruth Goodman... - Permission to come aboard?

- ..discovers what happens if you don't eat your five a day.

- What state would I be in if I was admitted

with scurvy?

- Maybe teeth have started falling out. - Right.

- 73,000 vegan sausages are made in this factory every single day.

And I'm going to reveal just how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Heck sausage factory in Thirsk in Yorkshire,

where they've been making vegan sausages since 2018.

The factory makes traditional pork sausages...

..but they have an entirely separate production line

dedicated to a whole host of non-meat sausage varieties.

Today, I'm learning how they make one of their best sellers,

the vegan breakfast sausage.

And the process starts with a truckload of veggies.

But this trailer seems to have lost its cab

and its driver.

Hopefully, Sean Fisher...

Sean? ..can explain.

- How're you doing, mate?

- I normally see stuff unloaded from a lorry, but this has literally

come off a back of a lorry, hasn't it? What is it?

- This is our vertical farm.

- Vertical farm?

- Yes. - You're going to have to tell me what that is, Sean.

- This is where we grow some of the veg

for our vegan sausage breakfast range.

- Really? - Yeah, you can have a look.

- Can we? - We can. You're going to have to get dressed up though.

- Mate, I'm no stranger to getting dressed up. - Go on, then, mate.

- MUSIC: Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op 30 by Richard Strauss

Hidden away inside this unassuming 312 foot shipping container...

..is the farm of the future.

Where Star Wars...

GREGG LAUGHS

..meets salad.

Wow!

If we were on our way to Mars now on a spaceship,

we would need stuff like this, wouldn't we,

to keep us supplied with fresh veg?

- It is the future of farming, Gregg.

- This intergalactic agricultural zone

is one of a growing number of vertical farms in the UK...

..that cultivate plants piled high on space saving shelves,

so less land is needed to deliver a higher yield.

And the factory is trialling this method

to provide some of the ingredients for my vegan sausages.

What are you growing?

- We're growing primarily spinach and some basil as well.

- You can buy basil. You can buy spinach, so why bother?

- We've got the nicest, freshest produce possible

where we can just harvest it in here

and five minutes later, it's in the factory.

- That's zero food miles.

And, remarkably, Sean can also control the physical characteristics

of each plant using LED lights.

It's not unlike a 1970s disco, is it?

And as resident DJ...

DISCO MUSIC PLAYS

..Sean mixes the colour and intensity

of the container's 5,400 low energy LEDs...

..to recreate the five colours of light found in sunshine,

that aid plant growth.

- We have red, blue, green, UV and far-red.

- Far-red is at the extreme end of the visible spectrum

just before infra-red

and is only dimly visible to human eyes.

But if Sean pumps up the red levels,

his plants can convert light to energy at a faster rate,

resulting in speedier growth.

And tweaking the levels of the other colours

enables him to manipulate

even more specific plant characteristics.

- We can create different tastes, different textures.

- You have captured the plant growing properties of the sunlight. - Yes.

- That is extraordinary, my furry friend.

Is there any particular spectrum of light

that would make your hair grow?

- I was bald this morning.

- GREGG LAUGHS

And the clever science continues

with feeding the plants.

- We use a system called aeroponics.

- Traditionally, green-leafed crops rely on water found in the soil.

These plants grow on jute matting.

And their exposed roots are sprayed with water and an organic liquid feed

for 10 seconds every 20 minutes.

Any excess is captured and recycled,

using 95% less water

than traditional growing methods and no pesticides.

Wow.

Today, we're picking spinach for my sausages.

- You can pass me the basket, Gregg.

And we can get harvesting.

- This is lovely, mate.

This is good work.

This is not like any factory I've ever been in.

- No.

- How much of this are we going to need for our batch?

- We need 3.5kg, so we best get working

because we've got this full row to do.

- You got a flask of coffee?

But there's no time for a break.

The other ingredients await,

and the clock on my vegan sausage production begins.

This is a very modern way of growing vegetables,

but a plant based diet is nothing new.

Cherry has been finding out how one of the first vegan

superfoods is made.

- The town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire...

Thank you so much, bye.

..is synonymous with a very special delicacy.

The famous pork pie.

But did you know that Melton is also home

to an increasingly popular meat free alternative?

Tofu.

It was first produced in China 2,000 years ago

and is used in lots of Japanese cookery as well.

We've developed a taste for it here in the UK too,

where it's grown to a £68 million per year industry.

I've come to Soyfoods in Melton.

In 1972, operations manager Paul Jones

was one of the first Brits to produce

this mysterious protein packed food.

Paul! - Hi.

- What is tofu?

- Well, Cherry, tofu is the Japanese name for bean curd,

and it's made from soybeans.

- They're really, really small and really hard.

Where do these beans come from?

- Canada. - So why Canada?

- Certainly there are no Amazon rainforests chopped down

to grow the soybeans and the Canadians

produce very high quality soybeans.

- What kind of climate does a soya bean like?

- It needs 200 days frost-free.

In fact, people are growing them in the UK now

and this year we're going to start using our first European grown

soya. - Oh, wow.

OK, let's pour these beans in.

Soya beans contain nine essential amino acids,

known as the building blocks of protein,

which our bodies need for things like muscle growth

and regulating our immune system.

They're also found in meat, fish and dairy.

But for vegans, vegetarians or lactose intolerant people...

See you later, Paul!

..soya beans are a superfood.

And to start their transformation to tofu,

I'm taking a batch of 750 kilos of beans

to warehouse manager Aaron Watson.

Aaron! I've got you a bucket of beans.

My beans are hard and dry

and need to be soaked in water overnight.

But Aaron has some pre-soaked ones

so we can get cracking with our tofu production.

That's more like it.

Look, big, fat, juicy beans.

First, 15 kilos of the drained hydrated beans

are added to 20 litres of fresh water.

So how does this machine work?

- So to start with, put the soybeans into the feed tank,

goes through into the grinder, makes a soft paste.

- The ground beans' protein is released into the water

and the resulting paste then goes into a chamber

called a slurry heater.

How high do you cook it?

- So it gets up to 85 degrees to kill the bacteria off.

- The slurry is then spun in a centrifuge.

This separates out the husks of the beans, which can be used

instead of wheat flour to make gluten-free bread.

Oh, look!

And what's left is gorgeous soya milk,

just like I drink at home.

Look at that, liquid gold.

But how do I transform 100 litres of this hot soya milk

into solid blocks of tofu?

Paul's got a magic ingredient.

- We're going to curdle it with a salt called nigari.

- Is that like the table salt that I would use at home?

- It's actually an extract made from sea water,

and it's mostly magnesium chloride salts.

- Miraculous magnesium chloride salt

is found naturally in sea water...

Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

..and can be used in small amounts

as a nutritional supplement.

So the magnesium chloride is in the soya milk. What next?

- Now we're going to mix it.

- Oh! What is that?

- It's a stirrer.

Push it gently down to the bottom and now bring it slowly up.

- Oh, my God. Look at that!

- You can see it's curding. - I can, already.

What is creating this reaction?

- The magnesium is sticking to the proteins

and making them clump together.

And it's separating out the liquid in the form of whey.

- You've got curds, the solid part, and whey, which is the liquid part.

- That's right.

- The magnesium is a plant based salt,

which brings the proteins in the soya milk together

to form solid curds.

That is a cool magic trick.

I feel a bit like Little Miss Muffet,

but the texture's still too runny.

So we're taking our curds to the pressing area.

Right, Paul, what are we doing here?

- We're going to take this out

and we're going to squeeze the curds

and take some of the whey out.

- After the protein clumps together

through the clever chemistry of coagulation,

the next process is simplicity itself.

The curds are poured into a press

and three bars of pressure...

..the equivalent power of three garden hoses,

is applied to squeeze out the whey.

And my batch of tofu is ready to slice.

Ta da!

Can I try it?

- Yes, do.

- That is so good.

That lovely, beany, curdy,

almost cheesiness from the tofu.

I love that you go from a tiny, small, hard bean

to this incredibly versatile, tasty product.

Very clever.

- Back at the factory in Thirsk,

my high-tech spinach...

This is lovely, mate.

..has been harvested

and is heading to intake...

..where I'm meeting vegan production manager, Guy Dillon.

Hey! Hello, Guy. - Hiya, how are we doing?

- You got me spinach?

- Got your spinach. Looking good, yeah.

- The production line gets through a ton

of fresh leaves and veg every day,

and a whopping four tonnes of frozen vegetables.

I'm a big fan of frozen veg.

It doesn't waste.

And the reason you can't have frozen leaves is because

they go to mush when they thaw. - Exactly.

- But there's no danger of mush here because today's spinach

was grown fresh, on-site.

How much veg, fresh or frozen, goes into a batch of sausages?

So we make our sausages in 50 kilo batches.

But you haven't got 50 kilos of veg here.

So what else is it made up of?

- So we've got some sunflower seeds there.

We've got mushroom.

- Great, big tub of mushrooms. - Yeah, that's right.

- So how many sausages,

roughly, in a 50 kilo batch?

- About 900 sausages.

On a day-to-day basis, we can make 50 to 100 batches of sausages.

- Well, that's about 45,000 vegan sausages.

- That's right. It's a lot of sausages.

- That is fabulous!

For every batch of 900 sausages,

Guy weighs out 3.5kg of frozen chickpeas and frozen onions,

6.65kg of frozen tomatoes

and 13.3kg of mushrooms,

before we're ready for my freshly picked spinach.

- All right, so shall we get this weighed out?

- Sure. Want me to lift it?

- Do you want to give me a hand over there with it?

- So, spinach, how much do we need of that?

- So it's 3.3kg.

- Well, that's everything that I picked.

- That's all of yours already gone, yeah.

- Next, to add a lemony, minty flavour to our sausage,

we need 450g of sage.

Wow. I've never mixed this much fresh herbs into anything.

And finally, for a light, slightly bitter taste,

we weigh out 1.9kg of parsley.

- So all the other ingredients are ready for us.

So we'll take it over to the bowl chopper. - The what?

- The bowl chopper.

- Now that is a super-sized mixer...

That actually looks like the propeller on a motorboat.

..designed to dice the veg perfectly.

- Our vegan sausages, we want to have a nice, chunky texture.

- Why chunky?

- We're going for the more traditional Cumberland texture.

- So the big blade doesn't chop our veg too much,

the refined ingredients are added first,

and we start with some very clever powder.

- This is citrus fibre.

- And what is that?

- It's basically the pith from oranges and lemons.

- What does it do? - So it absorbs

water like nothing else.

It can take up to 80% of its own weight in water.

- This sponge-like citrus fibre soaks up any water released

into the mixture by the frozen veg

so we don't end up with a soggy sausage mix.

- Also in there, we've got methyl cellulose.

- Cellulose is what gives strength and structure to plants and trees,

and it's extracted for use as a natural, plant-based

thickener in foods.

- And to activate it, we add our frozen veg.

And then that basically turns it into something

like a vegan egg white.

- What, makes it all sticky and thick?

- Exactly.

- The reaction only takes place when the methyl cellulose

drops below four degrees Celsius,

so adding 33.5kg of frozen veg

should do the trick.

Time to flex the muscles of this mighty mixer.

I'm beginning to realise the strength of that blade.

I can now clearly get the sweet smell of vegetables.

The frozen veg reduces the temperature of the mix

to minus six degrees, activating the methyl,

which dissolves the cellulose and creates a paste.

- That's acting as your binder, which means that your sausages,

when it comes to forming them, aren't just going to be all crumbly

and falling to pieces.

- What a crazy thing. - I know. - Wow.

These are ingredients I've never come across.

- Science in sausages.

- And a strongly bound mix allows the factory

to add even more texture.

Sunflower seeds provide a crunch,

while yellow split peas absorb more moisture from the frozen veg

and with some seasoning...

- So we'll add these into the mix.

- ..all that's left to add is my fresh spinach, sage and parsley.

That binds perfectly, doesn't it? - It does, yeah.

- You are a clever little sausage.

- I am.

Come on. - Our veg mix is ready to be made into 900 sausages.

Helping to meet the ever growing demand for vegan food.

Today in the UK, around 7 million people follow a meat-free diet.

But when did this lifestyle choice first become popular?

Ruth's gone in search of the answer.

- I'm in Salford in Greater Manchester to meet the Chief Executive

of the Vegetarian Society,

Richard McIlwain, who's a hands on historian

when it comes to the origins of the movement.

Richard, hello! - Hi, Ruth, how are you?

- Lovely. Oh, this looks great! What we doing? - Fantastic.

We're doing winter vegetable soup, would you believe?

Shall we chop some veg?

- Why are we making soup?

- Yeah, it's a very good question.

Yeah, it was actually a tactic deployed by a preacher in the 1800s.

He was using it as a means of converting people

to a vegetarian diet,

and his name was William Cowherd.

- Cowherd? Oh, dear.

That's a bit ironic, really, isn't it, for a vegetarian? - It is.

- A Cowherd! - Absolutely.

- With his trailblazing pro-veggie preaching,

Cowherd tried to persuade the wealthier members of his flock

to abstain from their love of meat.

And he wanted to convert the poor too,

whose diet was mainly bread, broth or gruel,

and seafood

like eels, cockles and mussels.

Why does he feel this need to convert people

to vegetarianism then?

- It's part of his faith.

He has his own church, the Bible Christian Church,

which he sets up in Salford in 1800.

He doesn't believe that God is up in heaven,

looking down from on high.

Actually, his belief is that God is in all of us,

but not just in us, in animals, too.

And so hence, of course... - Oh, right.

- ..if God is in animals...

..thou shalt not kill animals.

- I mean, that must have been quite ground-breaking at the time,

and most people would have been very suspicious

of a vegetarian diet in the early Victorian era.

- Very suspicious.

- So what happened with the soup itself?

- It would be given out free to working people in the community.

- Free soup!

Come and get it! - You didn't have to be a member of the congregation.

- Oh, well, that would draw people in.

A free meal was a free meal. - A free meal was a great advert.

He didn't force people to join his congregation,

but the soup, clearly, was a good conversation starter.

- Good morning, ladies. - Morning. - Hiya.

- Many of the poorer members of Cowherd's congregation worked

in local cotton mills and iron works.

- Winter vegetable soup?

- They would have been glad of a hot meal,

even if vegetables wouldn't have been their first choice.

- Unfortunately, William Cowherd dies in 1816, but his legacy

lived on through a member of his congregation.

- The man who took up Cowherd's cause was Joseph Brotherton,

who had made a fortune from his family's cotton mills

and become Salford's first MP.

In 1847, he joined with like-minded people from around the country

to found the Vegetarian Society.

And Richard has brought me to its headquarters.

Ooh, goodness! So, what have we got here?

- So, this is the meeting on the 30th of September 1847,

which was the very first meeting of the Vegetarian Society.

- Right. - And here, you can see... - The founder members.

- ..the name of Joseph Brotherton, who's aged 64.

- Member of Parliament. - "He has abstained from meat

"for 39 years!" - 39 years!

- So, this is where they start to go out and spread the word.

They're issuing pamphlets.

Joseph Brotherton's talking about it in Parliament.

This society is very much about actually taking

the message to the outside world. - Yeah.

The Society also published and circulated a magazine

containing veggie recipes

and recommendations for a new phenomenon -

the vegetarian restaurant.

By the turn of the 20th century,

there were 52 operating across Britain,

paving the way for the first shops,

which by the 1990s were selling mass-produced vegetarian foods...

..all from humble beginnings in Manchester.

And, thanks to trailblazers like Joseph Brotherton

and William Cowherd, the vegetarian movement had begun.

- Back at the factory, we're 1.5 hours into production.

We've made our vegan mix, but there's one thing missing.

- Before we turn them into sausages, we need to make the casings.

- Oh, of course, you can't have animal casing. - No.

- So, we're heading to the mixing room.

# I've got you under my skin... #

So, what do we have here? - So, this is our alginate mixer. - A what?

- Alginate mixer.

So, we use alginate sausage casing for our vegan sausages.

So, traditionally, for a pork sausages, you'd use the intestine.

We don't want to use an intestine, obviously, for vegan sausages,

so we use alginate. This is it in its powder form.

- And what is it? - So, it's seaweed, dried and milled.

- This powder starts life as brown kelp,

which grows in shallow, nutrient-rich sea water

and turns white when dehydrated.

Does it have a kind of salty, seaweedy flavour?

- It doesn't have any flavour, actually, no.

And then, it has a special property where it turns to a gel

when it's hydrated. - And that will turn into a clear skin?

- Into a gel, exactly like you'd expect a sausage casing to

look like. - You clever fella! Go on, let's get it in. - No, it's your job.

You pop it in. - Really? - Yeah. - OK. Bucket of seaweed. - Yeah. - Right, OK.

- Pour away.

- To make my seaweed sausage skin,

into the mixer, churning with 93 kilos of cold water,

we add seven kilos of dehydrated alginate powder

for a 100 kilo batch of gel,

enough to cover 30,000 sausages!

I used to live by the sea. I could have brought you some over,

if I'd have known. - Ah, you should have done.

- After mixing and thickening for 90 minutes,

the alginate is poured out, ready to make our sausage skins.

That's it, is it? - This is our gel that we've made, yeah. Have a bit of a feel of that.

- That's not unlike silicon. - Yeah. Yeah, that's right, actually.

- You can actually mould that into shapes.

That's going to become a clear skin?

- That's going to become a sausage casing, yeah.

- That is not what I expected at all. - Amazing, eh?

- Yeah, that's incredible.

GREGG LAUGHS

- Funny stuff. - That's brilliant!

100 kilos of rubbery alginate...

Whoa!

..is loaded into a hopper...

Wow! Look at that!

..ready for the start

of the vegan sausage production line.

But before we can get sausaging,

I need the mix I made in the bowl chopper.

I love, like, the whole chunks of veg and herbs in there.

That is very appealing, even in this condition.

- So, next step is to tip this into there.

That's your job. You like pressing magic buttons.

- Nothing gets me more excited in these factory programmes

than pushing a button.

- And there she goes. So it's going to tip that into our hopper.

- The container holds 150 kilos of veggie mix,

enough to make 2,700 sausages.

Whoa-ho!

I didn't expect it to come out in one big mass!

I thought it might drip, bit by bit.

With my veg mix and alginate loaded,

the production line is ready to roll.

- Time to make some sausages!

Give that a tap.

And away they go.

- And there we have it. We are under way!

It's funny, I cannot actually see that skin going on.

Normally, with a sausage machine, you'd have the skin

constantly coming and the filling going into the skin. - That's right.

So, what we have coming out the other end is a tube in a tube

and that's coextrusion.

That's where it's wrapping that gel around our sausage mix.

- From the hopper at the start of the production line,

the alginate is vacuum pumped into the filler machine

and is gently pressed down through the pipework,

where it waits in a chamber.

The vegetable mix is then pushed into a tube that leads to

a coextrusion nozzle, where the

sausage is coated in a 0.05mm layer of alginate.

Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Why have you got water dripping on it?

- That's a calcium brine and that's what sets our alginate gel.

- When the brine, water containing calcium chloride, is poured

over the alginate coated sausage, something remarkable happen.

- So, I can show you how it works with a bit of our alginate gel.

I just want you to hold it underneath this tap here

and see what it does to the gel.

- The calcium chloride is a salt

extracted from limestone that's soluble in water.

Making it go even harder! - Yeah.

- It absorbs moisture and acts as a drying agent.

Wahey! That is fabulous!

It's like mine's got a plastic coating. - Yeah.

- In basic terms, how is that making the skin set?

- So, it's a bit of sausage science again.

The cells in the calcium

are replacing the nucleus within the alginate gel

and the cells of the calcium are a lot harder,

and that makes a tougher skin.

- It's actually firming it up. - Yeah. - Absolutely brilliant.

My miraculous seaweed coated sausage has been formed.

But it's too long for a frying pan,

so it moves along the conveyor to be brought down to size.

- And then they're hitting this belt here, which is our cutter belt.

- This is a big cutter.

Unlike traditional meat casings,

alginate doesn't need to be twisted to seal the sausage.

It sticks together at the end on its own, when cut.

- It's got knives in there which are basically going along

and cutting the sausages into these. These are 12.5 centimetres long.

- 500 sausages a minute are sliced by seven blades that

rotate on a belt, running at one metre per second.

Can I take one off the line? - Course you can. Try and grab one.

- There's your vegan sausage.

And encased in its own little protective casing.

That's really clever.

I love the science behind this vegan sausage!

Seaweed may seem like an unusual ingredient for a sausage,

but it's making waves in the food business.

Cherry is off to see why.

- I've travelled to the most northerly coast on the UK mainland, in search

of a nutritious crop that grows in these crystal clear Scottish waters.

The Shore Seaweed Company

has had a licence to forage for seaweed here since 2016.

I'm meeting company founder Peter Elbourne.

Peter, I have climbed a perilous landscape to come and chat to you!

Oh, my God!

What is seaweed? - Seaweed is a type of marine algae.

Seaweeds have been around for over a billion years.

It's one of the earliest forms of life

and there's over 600 species of seaweed in UK waters.

- Can I eat all of them? - Some taste better than others.

There's a lot of variety in taste and texture.

- In Asian countries like Japan and China,

seaweed's been a big part of the diet for thousands of years.

Peter and his team hand-pick ten different kinds of seaweed here,

including knotted wrack and spiral wrack,

which are good for making umami-rich seasonings.

Have you seen it becoming popular recently? - Yeah, so, absolutely.

I think there's a real interest at the moment with health foods

and also sustainable foods,

and people care about where their food comes from now.

- Seaweed flourishes here because the water is full of nutrients,

like potassium, calcium and magnesium,

brought in by the cold Atlantic currents.

So, is it really healthy? - So, it's really good for fibre, really great

for gut health, and in particular, it's a really good source of iodine.

- Why do we need iodine? - For brain health, for energy and for growth.

- So, it's like an aquatic multivitamin. - Absolutely.

We call it our local superfood.

- OK, so what are we looking for? - We're after dulse.

- How can you tell which is dulse?

- Dulse is a gorgeous red colour... - Oh, is this it?

- ..and lovely and shiny. - Look at that.

Dulse contains red pigments, which can absorb light at low levels,

enabling to grow in very deep water.

So, how do you harvest dulse? - So, dulse grows like a palm of your hand

and so, what you're trying to do is cut it

so you're leaving some of those fingers behind to grow back from.

- I see. Can I give it a go?

Like that? - Yeah, that's fine.

We can cut very carefully to allow for regrowth and check for quality.

And then, that protects the habitat.

It requires no fertilisers, no pesticides, no land,

no freshwater, so it's an incredible crop for the 21st century.

- Well, our bucket is full and the tide is getting pretty close.

- Let's head up the shore. - All right. It was a good day of foraging.

To put my crop to good use,

I'm visiting a seafront cafe to meet award winning chef Jim Cowie.

Hello, Jim. - Hi.

- A superfan of seaweed, Jim's preparing one of his favourites,

sole fried with dried dulse-flavoured butter.

Oh, that's a great sizzle!

We're adding the dulse butter at the end of cooking, so it doesn't burn.

Jim, it's looking pretty good, I would say. Is it butter time?

- We're there now, yes.

- Oh, it's sizzling away.

Do we need to put any salt and pepper on this fish?

- We don't need it.

It's come from the sea, it's got the saltiness of the sea.

- Seaweed contains 85% less unhealthy sodium than salt.

And as well as boosting your iodine levels, it's a

great source of antioxidants, iron and vitamins.

- Every time I eat and use dulse, it reminds me when I was a kid

and my father used to take dulse home

and roast it in our fire in the sitting room. - Oh, wow!

- So, every time I taste it and use it,

it just gives me that memory back.

- But how does our fish with seaweed butter taste?

Wow! That is such a clever ingredient!

It packs a really intense umami flavour,

without overpowering the delicate flavour of the fish.

It's like a multivitamin. You can use it in replacement of salt.

I mean, everyone should have it in their kitchen.

- I couldn't agree with you more!

- At the factory in Thirsk, we're three hours

and 50 minutes into production.

It takes some serious science to make my vegan sausages,

and I want to get under the seaweed skin of these bangers,

so I'm following my nose to meet head of R&D, Calum Smith...

Good to see you, mate. That smells good, even through the visor.

..who runs the inner sanctum of sausage skin research.

I'm guessing you are doing something important,

not just cooking a big breakfast! - Well, they tell me that.

- What are we doing? - We're going to test the texture of the skins.

- But this isn't a taste test, this is the thickness of the skin.

- Absolutely. So, you want the same...

..similar bite, reminds you of a sausage, when you were a kid.

We haven't got the protein structure that you have with meat, so

we're trying to replicate something that gives you a nice mouth feel.

- What would be the problem with having it slightly thicker or slightly thinner, seriously?

- Well, if it's too thin, it can cook off in the pan,

so you don't get a skin. - And if it's too thick?

- If it's too thick, what happens is the calcium that was being run over

the sausage, that doesn't penetrate right the way through,

so it's still gel underneath. It'll be rubbery and slimy.

- I see. How do you test the thickness of a sausage skin?

- So, we use this machine, called a texture analyser.

- This highly sensitive piece of kit,

a bit like a super-sharp biting machine, will detect exactly

how much force is required to break the skin on the sausage.

I'm a basic fella. Why don't you just bite it to tell? - We do,

but I do that every day. I'm trying to lose some weight, Gregg.

But also, there are very subtle differences

and we're looking for a difference of maybe two or three

newton-metres between different thicknesses. - Newton-metres?

- Newton-metres. - You haven't just invented that? - No, it's a measure of force.

- One newton-metre is equivalent to just 0.1kg of force.

In this case,

the force is the push of the machine's bite on the sausage skin.

- We're going to try three different thicknesses,

so this one we've got with a thick skin,

this is the one in the middle, and then, we've got one that's thin.

- This is interesting.

What kind of newton-metres are you looking for in the perfect sausage?

- So, we're looking around four to five newton-metres

of pressure for the skin.

- MUSIC: Ride Of The Valkyries by Richard Wagner

Time for the sausages to be subjected to the texture detector's

lethal guillotine blade,

which will measure how much force is required to break through each skin.

First for the chop is our thick-skinned banger.

Any last requests? Anybody you want to say goodbye to?

- Right, so we're going to run the machine. Are you ready?

Here we go.

- The 1.2 millimetre blade slowly cuts through the sausage.

Not quite as dramatic as I'd hoped, if I'm honest!

I thought it was going to come down like a guillotine.

Cut its head off.

- The thick skin has taken about six newton-metres of pressure.

- We are looking for newton-metres of between four and five. - Yes.

- Next up, the thin-skinned sausage is on the block...

Very slow. You'd never have cut Marie Antoinette's head off with that,

would you?

..which takes just four newton-metres of pressure to crack.

And finally, the medium-skinned.

Waiting with bated breath here!

- About five newton-metres.

- The differences are so, so small.

The real test here, of course, is if you let me taste all three of them.

- Yeah, go for it.

- Let me first try a thin one.

I do love my job!

It doesn't feel right.

It's almost like the texture of like a mashed potato. - Yes.

- The skin is not noticeable at all. - No, it's not there.

- Now, for the thick one.

I don't mind this fat one at all,

but you can clearly see how thick that skin is. - Yeah.

To the point that it almost becomes two separate products.

It becomes a mix and a skin, rather than one thing.

- Right, now, let's try the one in the middle.

You can bite through it, but it instantly dissolves on your tongue. - Yeah.

- I particularly like the crunch of the nuts and the seeds in it,

but it's got a herby, peppery feel, like a pork sausage.

- That's what we were going for.

- Wow!

I would never, ever have imagined the skin would have been so important.

- Our little saying, we've got it in the factory,

is that we are sausage scientists.

- These days, we know that getting your five a day is good for you,

but 300 years ago, they were a lot less enlightened.

Ruth's been investigating how that changed.

- For centuries,

the British Navy was overwhelmed by a fearful killer disease.

Scurvy.

It killed millions of sailors

and remained an incurable mystery to the medical profession

until a Scottish doctor came up with a rather unlikely cure.

HMS Victory in Portsmouth is the world's oldest commissioned warship.

Launched in 1765, it was a cramped and poorly ventilated home

to more than 800 men, often for years at a time.

I want to understand what happened onboard ships like this,

when sailors became seriously ill at sea.

Permission to come aboard? - Absolutely. Welcome.

Mind your head.

- Ship historian Andrew Baines is showing me the ropes.

- If you just want to come round to your left, we'll head aft.

- So, how big a problem was scurvy for men on ships like this?

- Scurvy was a huge problem.

In the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries,

it's estimated that it kills two million men.

- Not only was scurvy deadly, for sailors inflicted with

the disease, it had some horrific symptoms.

- Welcome to the sickbay.

- Can I have a go?

- Have a go.

- Well, okey doke. One, two, three. Oh!

Oh, it's... Oh!

So, what state would I be in, if I was admitted with scurvy?

- Well, by the time you get here,

the real telltale sign is going to be probably on your shins.

You've started with some red and black spots

and that is the signal that, yes, it's definitely scurvy,

and you're probably looking at someone next to you who is

a little bit further along than you are.

Their gums are going to have swollen,

maybe teeth have started falling out,

they're bleeding, black, rancid, blood,

and then they start haemorrhaging.

The body is quite literally falling apart.

- Horrified by the number of men dying, in 1747,

ship's surgeon on HMS Salisbury, James Lind, began to investigate.

Initially, he suspected the rapid spread of the disease was

due to the cramped conditions.

- 450 men would sleep on this deck. - This is just extraordinary!

Can you imagine trying to get up in the night for a wee?!

You're so crammed in! I mean... Wow! - Yeah.

- And then, of course, everybody's breath is in the air.

In line with his airborne contamination theory,

Lind's first plan was to improve the ship's hygiene.

- So, making sure that the hammocks are washed regularly,

the clothing is kept as clean as it possibly can be.

- So, he addresses hygiene, but men are still dying of scurvy. - They are.

- Desperate to end the suffering, Lind had an idea.

He took 12 men suffering from scurvy,

divided them into six pairs and gave each pair a different treatment.

This was one of the first recorded clinical trials in medical history.

Lind was ahead of his time,

but the six medicines at his disposal were not.

So, these are sort of like the wives' tale remedies.

- These are the remedies that have been tried over years

and used over centuries, but there's no evidence for it,

so that's why the experiment's important. He wants evidence.

- First was a daily quart of cider.

Second was elixir of vitriol.

- Nowadays, we call it drain cleaner.

Probably best not to try that one. - No!

The third cure he trialled was vinegar.

- So, you can see there's an idea here.

These are all things that are quite acidic.

Acidic might have something to do with it.

And then we have these herbal pastes.

- A mixture of mustard seeds, radish and garlic,

believed to make you sweat.

So, it might be about, like, driving poisons out of the body. - Absolutely.

- The fifth remedy was sea water.

- It's cheap, it doesn't cost the Navy anything.

- And then, finally, what have we got? - And finally, we have citrus.

A lemon every day. - Right. - And after six days,

they find that the two men who have been given the citrus fruits are

well enough that indeed one of them

is helping to care for the other ten people in the trial. - Good gracious!

- This has worked well. - So, they know it works, just don't know why.

And nobody isolates vitamin C until... What, early 20th century?

- Absolutely. Lind doesn't know why it works,

but the reason it works is because they contain vitamin C.

But that's the ingredient that is allowing these guys

to regain their health.

- Vitamin C is found in fresh fruit and vegetables and is

vital for healthy bones, skin, blood vessels and the immune system.

So the sailors' usual diet of salted meat and starchy grains

would have resulted in a serious deficiency, leading to scurvy.

But lemons, packed with vitamin C, proved a cure.

The simple lemon saved countless lives

and Dr Lind is remembered as a pioneer of clinical testing.

- LOUD SIZZLING

Back at the vegan sausage factory,

my vitamin-rich vegetable mix has been wrapped in a seaweed skin

and passed the all-important bite test. This is good!

Now, it's time for me to lend a hand with packing,

so I'm meeting Georgetta Iclodean.

Hello! - Hello. - I'm Gregg. - Nice to meet you. - Good to meet you.

Tell me what happens on this stretch of your production line.

- I am taking care of the line to make sure nothing is broken,

nothing is unsealed, everything looks OK.

- How long have you worked here? - Five years.

- And if something is going to go wrong, what is going to go wrong?

- The sausages can be underweight or overweight

and they will not fit inside the tray, see?

So, somebody have to take care of this.

- So, how many sausages are going through here?

- 1,200 sausages per minute!

- That's a lot of sausages.

I would only do two packs. You know why? - Why?

- Because "2Packs" is a good rapper.

- It's a joke? - Yeah. Very nearly. Very nearly.

Well, you can't win 'em all!

What is going to happen to these vegan sausages when they go in here?

- They will be sealed.

- Once Georgetta has checked the sausages, a shelf picks up

four packs at a time and lifts against a reel of plastic film.

Heat pads on the top sealing machine then press the film

onto the packaging.

- It's lifting them up and it's heating them on 200 degrees.

- But not enough heat to cook the vegan sausage?

- It's not cooking them. - Good to know.

This is brilliant! Boom!

Come on! Show me the rest.

My vegan sausages are sealed,

but there's still a tricky task to tackle.

- This is the packing area. - I like it here.

- This is where the hard job is making. - Why is it hard?

A whopping 17,000 packs of vegan sausages arrive here every day.

And each one needs a sleeve, so Georgetta's putting me to work.

What do I have to do?

- Take the sleeves from there. Put them on your waist.

- Oh, like this? - You press on them, yeah? - That one's stuck. - No.

It isn't stuck. You broke it. - What do you mean?

What do you mean, I broke it?

- One more time. - So, you press here? - Yeah.

- All right, this is very complicated. - OK.

- Something tells me I'm not impressing my new boss very much.

Like that? In like that?

- You're pressing too strong.

- Well, I have big muscles. - Yeah. - I can't help it.

Unfortunately, it takes more than brawn to pack a sausage.

This job's all about speed.

So, how fast am I supposed to do this?

- Usually, they are doing one pack per second.

- No way! - Yes. - 60 a minute?

Wow! This is really hard work.

What do you think about when you're doing this? Do you think about your holidays?

Do you talk about MasterChef and stuff?

- I'm watching MasterChef Romania, very sorry!

- Once my sausages are slipped into their sleeves, they're boxed,

four packs at a time, before the final process.

This is the good bit. No, no, no. It needs a special kind of touch.

This is the job for me. - Yes.

- Each box of vegan sausages is sealed

using a box tape machine, which gets

through 1,256 metres of tape a day!

Who says I can't work fast?

We've run out of sausages. Come on, you have to be quicker than this.

- Oh... - I can do this. I can do this. - You can. Yeah. - Brilliant.

We've done it! We've done the batch.

I am really tired. That is hard work.

You have to work fast, you have to concentrate,

you need precision. I am exhausted.

- Then you shall need a rest, yeah? - Thank you. Thank you.

I may need a lie down, but my vegan sausages just keep coming.

On one day alone,

the workforce here can pack a staggering 15,502 boxes!

Whether it's packaging for food or fragiles,

manufacturers are always on the lookout for something

more environmentally friendly,

and Cherry's on the trail of a solution from Mother Nature herself.

- Nowadays, we receive more items through the post than ever before.

- DOORBELL

- And that can only mean one thing...

Hello. Thank you so much.

..more packaging.

Delicate items need protection, but the materials used,

like polystyrene, can be really difficult to recycle.

Single-use plastic packaging accounts for nearly

70% of our annual plastic waste.

But what's the alternative?

I'm visiting a company that uses a surprising material

to make more sustainable packaging.

CEO Paul Gilligan is going to let me in on the secret.

So, I need an alternative to this rather squeaky, unpleasant plastic,

that takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, if at all.

- And we have the solution here. Shall we swap? - Ooh!

OK. Wow! I mean, it looks and feels

quite similar to polystyrene. How is it different?

- It's biodegradable at home in 45 days.

Even if you put it in the ocean or water,

it will be biodegradable within 180 days.

- What on earth is this made out of?

- Well, Cherry, believe it or not, this is made out of mushrooms.

In fact, let me show you how. - Intriguing.

Mushrooms are a type of fungus.

There are more than a million species of fungus,

from mould and yeasts that help food production

to woodland mushrooms and truffles.

Paul's taken a delivery of a fungus he needs

to make his sustainable packaging.

Paul, I don't want to be rude, but where are the mushrooms?

- It's a good question.

We're working with mycelium, which is...

Imagine the roots of mushrooms.

- Can we have a look? - Course you can. Yeah.

- Oh, wow! It looks like a mixture of, like... - Yeah.

- ..wood shavings, or cereal.

These living mushroom roots, or mycelium,

are cultivated locally by specialist growers

and have been mixed with chippings of hemp stems, a woody plant

once used to make ropes, which adds strength to this product.

- You can't see it with the human eye,

so I'm going to show you on the screen.

- What are we looking at here?

It looks like fibres from a woolly jumper.

- This is sped up footage of the mycelium

making its journey across the forest floor.

- Magnified 1,000 times,

each of these filaments is one of a mushroom's thread-like roots.

So when I see a mushroom on the forest floor,

actually, what's going on underneath in the soil is that,

this kind of fibrous structure.

- That's it. And sometimes they can be very, very large organisms,

going to thousands of acres.

- Unlike plants, which get their energy from sunlight,

mushrooms get their nourishment from plant and animal matter in the soil.

The mycelium roots produce enzymes that cause a chemical reaction

to break down organic matter into nutrients to help it grow.

So, if there was an insect, a dead animal, leaves, anything,

it would cover them...

- Yeah. - ..and slowly digest them. - Yeah.

- This white part, is that the fungus? - That's the mycelium working.

It's binding the materials together.

- It's like nature's glue. - Exactly what it is.

- To transform the mycelium and hemp mix into packaging, first,

we add a generous helping of flour.

- Do you want to feed it this...appetiser?

- Hang on, everyone! It's party time!

This activates the fungus

by giving it something easily digestible to feed on.

Ooh, there she goes!

Once active, it's more able to break down larger organic matter,

like the hemp chippings already present in the mix.

After churning for 20 minutes,

it drops into custom-made moulds,

designed for specific products.

What are these trays made out of?

- Plastic, but it's recycled plastic called ABS.

We'll use these over 200 times.

- And you can recycle them afterwards? - Yeah. - Fine. OK.

- And they'll become new trays.

- The mix is compacted to remove any air bubbles that could

compromise the strength of the final product.

The filled trays are then covered with a plastic jacket

to retain the temperature.

For the next four days, the mycelium continues to feed on the hemp

and grows to fill the mould.

- These have been in the pod for four days. - Ooh! Can we open it?

- Yeah, let's unzip it. - OK.

And this is the almost finished article.

So, this has gone from almost a dust to a solid form. - Yeah.

- It's very malleable. Look, it's very squishy.

When the still flexible packaging is removed from the mould,

the mycelium continues to grow over the top of the hemp chippings,

covering the outside with a fine white layer of threads.

The packaging then spends six hours in a kiln

and the 92 degree heat deactivates the mycelium.

Altogether, it takes six days from woodchips and fungus roots

to a complete, bespoke packaging.

- We've been working on this all day. This is a perfume brand.

- So, is that what we've been working on?

Look at that, snug as a bug in a rug!

And the potential for this fungi-based packaging doesn't end there.

- This is for a printer. This will replace polystyrene.

We have gift boxes for alcohol.

This is a gift box for cosmetics. - The sky is the limit.

- It really is, and you're only limited by your imagination.

- So, when you next unwrap a delivery,

the packaging could be even more interesting

and better for the planet than what's inside.

- At the factory, my vegan breakfast sausages have been speed-packed

and boxed, and are arriving at the distribution centre.

Hello, Calum. - Hi, Gregg. - You all right? Should I follow you out with these?

He may be an expert on the thickness of a sausage skin,

but does Calum know how many sausages the factory makes?

- So, we're going to get this lorry loaded up. - Lovely. I like this bit.

I do. And I'm going to check you on your numbers. Are you good? - Hit me.

- You have got six sausages in a pack. - Yup. - Four packs in a box.

- Yep, that's right. - Is that right? - Yeah.

- How many boxes on a pallet?

- So, we're getting 250 boxes on each pallet.

- How many sausages on a pallet?

- So, that's 6,000 vegan sausages on the pallets that we send out.

- And how many pallets can you get on a truck, then?

- So, we send out 20 pallets of vegan sausages a day.

So, that's about 120,000 vegan sausages

that are going out the door.

- How do you explain the success of a non-meat sausage?

- People are reducing their red meat and white meat intake.

And having a product that works the same as what they're used to,

normal sausages, has just slotted right in there

and people are finding it an easy way to change.

- Makes sense. It does make sense. This is nice. That looks good.

Very proud. A lot of hard work went into there.

Four hours and 55 minutes after the start of production...

..my vegan sausages are heading to stores throughout the UK

and Ireland.

They travel as far as the United Arab Emirates

and are even bunged on the barbie in Australia.

Before I visited this factory, I'd never imagined what it takes to

create the right texture and flavour for each and every vegan sausage.

After space-age spinach picking...

Wow!

..seaweed skinning...

Making it go even harder! - Yeah.

- ..and super-speedy packing...

We've done it! We've done the batch.

..I'm ready for a sit down and a sausage.