All language subtitles for Inside The Factory S05E10 Cereal Bars 1080p HDTV H264-LiNKLE_track3_[eng]

The cereal bar. This portable snack
has been refuelling us for decades.

We unwrap over 15 million of them
every week.

Powering an industry worth
over £300 million a year.

Whether it's oat-, rice-
or wheat-packed,

the choice is staggering.

You know what, Greg?

I absolutely love
a dried fruit and nut combo.

In that case, Cherry,
you are going to go nuts

for the bars they make
in this factory.

Coming through!

I'm Gregg Wallace.

You can smell that toastiness.

And tonight, I'm discovering
the delicate balancing act

at the heart of each bar.

You can pour wet things over
a crispy thing and it stays crispy?

Yep, it does indeed.

You're like a cookery magician.
We are, yes.

GREGG CHUCKLES

CHERRY SCREAMS

That is fun.

I'm Cherry Healey.

And I'll be following
the astonishing journey

these nuts go on from tree...

Oh, wow!
They look like tiny limes.

..to bar.

Those nuts like to party.

And historian Ruth Goodman...

It's really simple, isn't it?
Quite basic, yes, yes.

..is on the road,

discovering the groovy origins
of these handy snacks.

It was sort of the staple food
of all hippies in those days.

Over the next 24 hours,

this factory will transform
18 tonnes of fruit and nuts...

..into 400,000 cereal bars.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This the Eat Natural factory
at Halstead, Essex.

300 people work here,

knocking out more than 90 million
cereal bars every year.

They make 22 different types.

From protein-packed
salted caramel and peanuts...

..to almond and apricot.

Tonight, we're following production
of one of their best-selling bars -

dark chocolate
with cranberries and macadamias.

Packed with nuts, cranberries,
coconut, sultanas

and coated in chocolate.

Producing these bars
on a monster scale

is a complex
and challenging process,

which begins at the intake area.

where I'm receiving
a month's supply

of one of our most important
ingredients, macadamias,

with quality inspector and all-round
nut expert, Richard Lansdown.

Is that it? Yep, that's it.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound rude,

but I'm used to dirty, great big
trucks full of stuff.

So how many nuts on there?

We've got 2,000 kilos
of macadamia nuts.

How long will that last you?

There's enough to make
a million bars there.

Oh, really? Yeah.

That's an important delivery
for you guys, then?

I guess it is.
Let's get it unloaded.

Macadamias are one of
the priciest nuts in the world,

and the most expensive ingredient
in our bar.

They're...they're chopped?

This allows us to evenly
distribute them in the bars.

If they were bigger,
they really wouldn't fit in.

Why would you use macadamias as
opposed to a hazelnut or a walnut?

Well, they have
a unique, mild, mellow,

sort of faintly buttery flavour.

Texture is crisp but soft, so it's
absolutely perfect for our product.

While these guys
crack on unloading this lot,

Cherry's exploring the challenges

of getting these nuts
from far-flung field to factory.

I've come to the lush, mountainous
region of Mpumalanga

in northern South Africa,

which provides the perfect climate
for our factory's macadamias.

South Africa is the largest producer
of macadamia nuts in the world,

accounting for over a quarter
of the global harvest.

Terry Haig is the farm manager
at Green Farms,

where they grow 100 tonnes a year
on 48,000 trees.

Hi, Terry, lovely to meet you.
Nice to meet you, Cherry.

So this is a macadamia nut tree?
Yeah.

Can I see some? I've never really
seen a nut on a tree.

There's some here.

Oh, wow! They look like tiny limes.

So this is the outer husk,
and you can bite that off.

You can bite it off?

Oh, look at that.

But that's not macadamia nut?

No, the kernel is inside
the shell.

So inside there is the actual nut
that we're after? Yeah.

Can I crack open?

You could try.

Holy Moley.

Argh, God.
That's unbelievably tough.

It is the toughest nut shell...
..in the world? Yeah, yeah.

One reason this nut is so pricey

is it can take seven years
for the trees to mature

and produce their first
commercial crop.

Harvesting and processing
is a labour-intensive process.

How do you harvest a macadamia nut?
Do you pick it off a tree?

Well, this particular variety drops
their nuts when they are mature.

The tree will let you know
when it's time to harvest?

That's right, yeah.

I'm joining one of the farm's
pickers, Julianne Makuena...

Nice to meet you.

..to lend a hand.

I'm very strong.

I feel like I'm going to be
useful on your team. OK.

OK?

Show me how to do it.

Make it low for you.

We make the sacks like this. OK.

So then starting harvesting. OK.

Oh, you are fast. Oh, you're fast!
I see, I see.

So quick. Yeah. Yeah.

How many bags
can you collect in one day?

Maybe 12 or 15.

Bags filled,
time for their weigh-in.

I'm a bit nervous about this. Yeah.

How much was your bag?

12.54. 12.54 kg? Yes.

I'm not sure I can match that.

I'm sweating so much,
and it's seven kilograms.

We empty our haul
into a waiting trailer.

One, two, three. One, two, three.
Argh, go on!

Then our tough nuts
begin a hardcore workout.

Their soft, green outer husks
are stripped off,

and the nuts are tipped
into a giant hopper.

Go!
SHE SCREAMS

Whoa! That is fun!

That is a lot of nuts.

Protected by their hard shells,

they take a roller-coaster ride
into vast dryers.

The heat makes the kernels inside
shrink away from their shells,

making it easier to crack through
that armour-plating.

In the enormous nut-cracking room,

Alex White's telling me how
they do it.

How do you crack
the world's toughest nut?

With special-designed
macadamia nut crackers.

So it just smashes
the nut, basically,

and hopefully the kernel
comes out whole.

Oh, wow! Just like that.
Oh, and there it is. Yeah.

Rotating steel rollers press
together with 300 psi of pressure.

It's like a baby elephant
sitting on each nut.

This smashes the shells open,

releasing the valuable
kernels inside.

Wow!

Those nuts like to party.

LIVELY MUSIC PLAYS

They head across a set
of shaking sieves.

Bits of shell and smaller nuts
fall through the holes,

and the bigger nuts
head on for a visual check.

Once given the final OK,
they're vacuum sealed into foil bags

and packed into cardboard boxes.

The half a million macadamia nuts
on this pallet

are now ready to go to
the cereal bar factory in Essex.

I'm not carrying them all the way.

Fortunately for Cherry,

the nuts are driven nine hours
to the port of Durban...

..where they're loaded
onto a container ship,

which carries them
round the Cape of Good Hope

on a 22-day voyage
direct to the port of Felixstowe.

Once they hit dry land,
it's an hour's trip

to our cereal bar factory.

And 20 minutes after
our nuts arrived,

they make a 300 metre hop across the
site to ingredients preparation...

..where technical manager
Lisa Conning

is checking they make the grade

before they head
into our cereal bars.

Lisa? Yes. All right? Hi.

How many nuts
are we dealing with here?

So we're going to deal
with about 260kg per hour.

That's a fair amount of nut, innit?
Yeah.

That's 260,000 nuts.

I know how to check to see
if an elephant's been in the bag.

There wouldn't be any nuts left.

Yes, true!

MUSIC: Let's Go Surfing
by The Drums

They may have travelled 8,500 miles,

but these nuts
still have a long way to go

to prove they're exactly right
for our cereal bars.

To pass muster,
each individual nut needs to be

exactly ten millimetres wide
and perfectly creamy coloured.

They queue up for inspection
on a series of conveyors

and drop onto
a four-metre-long vibrating tray

which separates them out,

before bouncing towards
a highly complex bit of machinery.

Right, what am I looking at,
a load of nuts coming down a slide?

Yeah, so this is our laser sorter.

The laser acts as the eyes.

There's electronics in there
that acts like a human brain,

to push off any nuts
that we don't want.

And you say it acts
like a human brain? Yeah.

It doesn't want to act like
my brain.

It'll just be telling
rubbish jokes all day long.

What is it discarding?

So this'll get rid of
any darker nuts that we don't want.

This sorter has a clever way
of picking out

any nuts which fall short
of the standard.

There's 64 air jets in there
that will ping them off.

It's shooting them off? Yes.

The nuts drop off the edge of
the vibrating shelf into the sorter.

They fall past four lasers
fired between two rotating drums.

The lasers check every single nut

against these
specially coloured drums.

If they don't precisely
match the pre-set colour...

..a series of air jets
fire them into a reject bin.

But it's not the end of the road
for these little fellas.

They're sent to a specialist plant,

where they're broken down
to generate electricity.

The super nuts
that have passed their test

continue through the machine.

As fast as I can see
the nuts falling,

that's as fast
as it can shoot them off?

Yes, because actually it can scan
up to 2,000 nuts per second.

Say that again.

Yeah, 2,000 nuts per second,
it's incredible.

I love this stuff,
I love this stuff.

So does this just do nuts?

It looks at nuts but it could
also look at other raw materials,

like our sultanas and apricots.

So how does that work?

How does the computer know
when you've changed it?

What we have is different coloured
drums for different products.

So, right now, that's
a macadamia nut coloured drum? Yeah.

For other bars,
there's also dark brown for almonds,

green for pumpkin seeds,
and white for cashews.

What are these people here doing?

So, even though
we've got our amazing machine,

that is 90% efficient and we still
need members of our team

to pull off the other 10%.

So they're just doing
a final visual check,

because a single nut that's
not right could affect our product.

So as clever as that machine thinks
it is, we still need humans? Yes.

Checks complete, the nuts tumble
into a 350 kilo hopper

at the end of the line.

Now it's time to turn up the heat.

Can I help?

Course you can, you can go up those
stairs and open the gates, please.

I feed the nuts into a giant
four-metre gas-fired oven.

That is a torrent of nuts.

They pass under an adjustable bar,

set to an exact 2.5 centimetres.

This flattens them down,
so each nut gets a perfect roasting.

Why do you roast them?

Why don't you just put them
into the bar as they are?

Because we want to make it
even tastier

by bringing out
those lovely sweet flavours.

Just 15 minutes
at 135 degrees Celsius

before they pop out the other end.

You can smell that toastiness.

What is actually happening to
the nuts when you're toasting them?

There's the chemical reaction
called the Maillard reaction

when there's heat being applied.

And that is just the reaction
between the sugars and the proteins,

which gives the nut
the final, gentle browning

and this lovely flavour.

I can feel a draught.

It cools at the end of the roasting

by blowing off all the heat.

Why-why do you want to cool them?

We want to make sure that we don't
get any horrible sweaty nuts

which will affect
the quality of the bar.

Yeah, I'm saying nothing.

Roasted and ready, they're packed
into to 12.5 kilo boxes.

Our nuts are prepped
and well on their way

to becoming part
of our cereal bars.

But whose idea was it
to turn a bowl of cereal into...

..well, into a bar?

Ruth is investigating
in Bedfordshire.

It may surprise you to learn
that it was not either the oatcake

or the flapjack that kick-started
cereal bars in Britain.

To find out what did, we have to
take a trip back in time...

RECORD SCRATCH

..to 1969...

MUSIC: Purple Haze
by Jimi Hendrix

..and the heyday of hippies...

..when a 20-year-old drummer
from England called Bill Jordan

was touring the west coast of
California with his blues rock band.

# Excuse me,
while I kiss the sky. #

Once he was out there, he started
experimenting with something

that all the hippies were doing.

Not drugs, but an oaty cereal
called granola.

50 years down the road,
Bill still remembers the breakfast

that changed his life,
and our eating habits.

So what did you think of this stuff
when you first ate it?

Well, I mean, if you're used to
sort of normal breakfast cereals,

this was amazing,
it was whole grains,

it was a different texture,
a lot of different flavours,

a lot of different ingredients,
it was very different stuff.

A mix of whole oats, nuts and seeds,
granola was baked hard with honey.

It was sort of the staple food
of all hippies in those days.

Young Bill was convinced there was
a market for granola in Britain.

After his year living
the rock and roll dream,

he returned home to Bedfordshire...

..and the mill where his family
had been producing white flour

for 70 years.

What a fabulous place!

Yeah, lovely old mill, isn't it?

So this is what
you were coming back to?

That's right. It's been here
since 1899, this mill.

And you brought back
the granola here, then. Yeah.

At, what, 20 years of age?

Yeah, we just thought
it was a good idea.

Liked the stuff, we got
a bit of abuse from the family.

They sort of said,
you know, "Whole grains?"

Dad said he couldn't even sell it
to animals,

and he didn't fancy our chances
selling it to humans.

The family's Victorian watermill
was struggling to compete

with new-fangled
electric-powered flour mills.

But Bill knew the older technology
was perfect

for slow rolling the wholegrain
cereals needed in the granola.

His sister, Lindsay,
got in on the act.

Well, we weren't really that keen
to start with.

We always looked at it,
looked a bit strange,

but once we started
giving people it to try,

then they loved it,
tastes delicious.

They came up with a unique
mobile marketing approach.

As you can see, it was called
Original Crunchy G.

We started off and did
the first three Glastonburys.

So you were sort of on tour, really?

Sounds much better than it was,
but, yeah, we were on tour.

RUTH LAUGHS

And, after that, we took the show
to the county shows.

I mean, that would be memorable,
if you turned up at a county show.

I mean, look at you all!

It was a while ago!

THEY LAUGH

It's a real '70s, new... Hippies.

Hippies, yeah. We were all hippies.

As well as at festivals,
their new Jordan's brand of granola

proved popular
in 1970s health food shops,

and soon they branched out
into an entirely new product.

So how on earth did you move

from making granola
to making cereal bars?

We got a lot of
distressed people writing,

saying they liked eating
granola in the car

and it got behind the seat
or down their trousers or whatever.

So what on earth did you do?

Ah. That's the difficult bit.
We tried for a lot of time,

but the job is to
try and get granola

in a sort of form where there's...

Well, as you can sort of tell
from this.

You've got the sort of fruit
and the nuts,

but it holds together.

This was the UK's first cereal bar,
and it launched in 1981...

MUSIC: Just Can't Get Enough
by Depeche Mode

..ready to ride a wave of
'80s consumerism...

# When I'm with you, baby

# I go out of my head... #

..and a health and fitness boom.

The market just went crazy
and it took us something like -

ooh, crikey - six months
to do the first million bars.

Wow! And the market grew so fast,
you know, two years later

we were doing
three million bars a week.

That is really fast! Yeah, yeah.

JAWS-LIKE MUSIC

CRUNCH!

With such rapid growth,

it wasn't long
before others joined the party.

CRUNCH!

In 1982, Quaker warned us
to watch out for squirrels

if you ate their bars.

ECHOING: Tracker... Tracker...
Tracker... Tracker...

And in 1987, confectioner Mars
used an association

with the great outdoors
to promote their version.

Today, the global cereal bar market
is worth over £10 billion.

But here in Britain, we may not
have taken them to heart

if it had not been for a miller's
son touring West Coast America

in the psychedelic '60s.

We're 48 minutes
into the production process

and the macadamia nuts
for our cereal bars

have been sorted, roasted and boxed.

OK. Come on, then.

Lisa and I are carrying them
to the mixing area,

where the building blocks
of our cereal bars come together.

What are we doing with these?

So we're going to decant them
on to here. Decant them? Yes.

Is there a special technique?
Tip them out.

Hey!

The ingredients will be combined
in five metal trollies

to make it easier to process
further down the line.

Beautiful! Ooh, they're still warm!

First up
is 30 kilos of macadamias.

Is there a reason why you don't
just tip it straight into the bin?

Yes. We like to also do
another check,

just to make sure
that they're exactly what we want.

GREGG CHUCKLES

This is great!

Macadamias will make up 6%
of our finished bar,

along with macadamia powder
from the same suppliers.

Whoa!

I'm just like a kid
in an edible sandpit.

These powdered nuts help to glue
the other ingredients together,

making sure there are no big gaps
in the finished bars.

How many sultanas do we need?

We need nine boxes,
which is 120 kilos.

These will form 16% of our bars.

Raisin' the bar here, ain't we?

Now 64kg of pre-weighed
dried cranberries join the party...

Whoa!

..to add colour
and sharp, sweet flavour.

Hai-yah!

Oof!
LISA LAUGHS

It's a real beauty

to have all these products
just out on a bench in front of you.

Look at the vivid colour.
It's lovely.

Last of all, coconut,
which makes up a fifth of the bar.

Why do we need coconut?

Cos it gives a lovely,
oily quality to our bar.

The fragrance is unbelievable.

That is floating away
on a sea of coconut essence. Yeah.

That is beautiful.

I've never been in a factory
like this.

Everything is done by hand.

It just allows us to make sure
that, at every stage,

we can make sure
that the ingredients are right.

Don't ever get a machine
for this bit, OK? No.

This has been my most enjoyable
process in any factory.

I've now got five containers
of nearly 400kg of ingredients,

so I'm letting a machine
take the strain from here.

Shall I? Yeah.

LISA LAUGHS
Ahem! What are you laughing at?

That's not very encouraging,
is it, laughing?

Do you laugh at all your trainees
like that? Yes!

I'll go to the HR department if you
laugh at me again.

That's it! Perfect.

With the push of a button,
a hydraulic lift

tips our bins of dry mix
into this giant 900-litre mixer.

Oh, look at that.

HE LAUGHS

Oh, I'm enjoying this.

The mixer gently combines them,

but I can't help thinking
there's something missing.

Right. Are we now
adding some cereal to it?

That's going to come in a bit,
when we go to the production line.

Are you sure there is cereal
in your cereal bar? Yeah, I'm sure.

You've seen the recipe, have you?
Yes!

I'll have to take
Lisa's word for it.

Our cereal-less cereal bar mix
travels along a series of conveyors

and is sealed into boxes...

..each one holding enough
to make up 480 bars.

The sultanas we've added to our mix

play a very important role
in our cereal bars,

adding both texture and sweetness.

Cherry's back in South Africa,

learning just what
makes a sultana a sultana.

I'm in the vineyards of Upington
in the Northern Cape Province,

where it's harvest time.

I've often wondered
what the difference is

between a raisin and a sultana.

I'm hoping Pieter Roos from
Carpe Diem can come to my aid.

Hi, Pieter. Lovely to meet you.

Hi, Cherry. Nice to meet you.
What a gorgeous bunch of grapes.

Those are absolutely amazing.

They're so juicy.

This variety is
the Thompson seedless,

also known as the sultana grape.

Do you just leave these grapes
on the vine

and they'll dry and - boom! -
you'll have a sultana?

No, actually, if you leave them
on the vines, you get a raisin.

You get a raisin? A raisin.

But with the same grapes,
you can actually make sultanas.

All my life, I've believed that
sultanas come from white grapes

and raisins
come from red grapes.

And that's not true at all.
No, it's not.

Sultanas and raisins
both start life as white grapes.

It's the way they're treated

that determines
which dried fruit they become.

So how do you make a sultana?

You spray it with a mixture.

We've got a mixture here
so I can show you.

On this farm,
when the grapes are ripe in March,

they spray them with a solution
of water, vegetable oil

and a baking powder-like ingredient
called potassium carbonate.

How does it turn these grapes
into sultanas?

The potassium will actually damage
the skin, forming cracks on the skin

to get the moisture
evaporating quicker

and turning it
to a golden brown sultana.

The sprayed bunches of grapes
are cut off the vines

and, just like washing,
they're hung out on a line to dry.

They lose 80% of their moisture,
which makes them sweeter,

and shrinks them by a quarter.

Just four weeks later,
they're finished sultanas.

But in the field next door,
Pieter's crop looks very different.

OK. So this is the raisins.

So these haven't been sprayed. No.

How do you start
the drying process?

So, for raisins,
you wait a little bit longer

to get the sugar content
a little bit higher.

These grapes are left on the plant
for two weeks longer,

so they're riper before they're cut.

They're not sprayed, but allowed
to dry naturally in the sun.

They're left for six weeks,
making them darker

and more caramelly than sultanas.

Is that like when you leave
something in the oven,

the longer you leave it,
the darker and crispier it becomes?

Exactly.

Both crops are harvested
and processed in the same way,

simply washed, dried and packed,
ready to be sent all over the world.

Oh, there's a reason to be happy!

Those are some beautiful raisins.
Wow.

You can really tell the difference.
You see the difference.

You really can. So the sultana
is a lovely golden brown,

whereas the raisins
are a really deep, intense brown.

Shall we have a taste test?
Yes. OK.

So sultanas first?

Kind of a zing to it.
It's quite citrussy. Now a raisin.

I think it's much more intense,
much richer. Smoother.

Smoother. And sweeter. Very sweet.

It's amazing how much difference
it makes. Yeah.

So that intensity
is really striking.

So now you've unfolded the mystery
of sultana versus raisin.

I have one more for you.

What is a currant?

Does that come from the same grape?

Do you just leave it on there
for 1,000 years?

THEY CHUCKLE

No, currants is a totally different
grape, mainly from Greece.

So this is a different grape.
Yes, yes. OK.

It's a red grape
called a Black Corinth.

It's much less sweet,
much less intense. Yeah.

I imagine that's why
it's mainly used for cooking,

for currant buns. Bakeries.
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, whichever one you prefer,

any RAISIN for a snack.

Cheers. Cheers to that.

Back in Essex, our sultanas
and other dried fruit and nuts

are ready to roll.

With no time to waste,

they take a quick forklift ride
over to the production area.

This is the heart of our factory,
where all the ingredients

will finally be transformed
into cereal bars.

In charge
of this precise operation

is production manager
Leanne Taylor.

Leanne. How are you doing?

I'm good. How are you?
Happy. Good. Right.

This is my batch. Right?
Or your batch. Our batch. Our batch.

But we do need to add
one final ingredient to it first.

Cereal? Cereal.

You're finally putting cereal
in your cereal bar? We are indeed.

Yes.

I was beginning to wonder
whether it was ever going to happen.

What is the cereal?

The cereal that we're going to add
is puffed rice.

Is that the same puffed rice
that we get in breakfast cereals?

Pretty much.

Puffed rice is made by mixing
rice flour with water and sugar.

It's then moulded
into rice-shaped pieces,

dried, and toasted till crispy.

That has got a sweet...

..breakfast cereal smell, hasn't it?

It has. Cor! I want to get
a spoon and a bowl of milk!

Why puffed rice?

So we use the puffed rice
to add some texture to the bar,

and it also
keeps the bar quite light.

The fruit and nut mix
that you've made is quite heavy.

So the puffed rice actually balances
out and keeps it nice and light.

The rice makes up 9% of our bar,

and I need 6.2 kilos
of these airy grains.

About a third of a kilo
each shovel.

You got a bigger shovel, love?

You're just slow.

I'm one of the quickest
rice shovellers in the business.

YES!

6.2 kilos on the nose.

The dry ingredients for our
cereal bars have come together.

Where's it going, boss? Mixing area.

Coming through!
Stand by, mixing area!

Round the corner.

Into the hoist.

Excellent.

Here we go.

The 14 paddles on this magic mixer
turn at 40 revs per minute,

slowly mixing the ingredients
together,

just like you would at home
with a wooden spoon.

But I can't yet see
how all these yummy stuff

is going to stick together.

That isn't bound at all. No.

So there's one more ingredient
that you need to go and get. Where?

Over there. And bring it back?

Yep. I'll see you in a bit.

To track down
my missing ingredient,

I'm meeting Harriet Gregory.

Harriet? Hello.

Is that what's going to bind
my bars? Yes.

This is our lovely honey mix.

So we've got a mixture
of two honeys, a dark honey

and a light honey,
which is a little bit more acidic,

slightly spicy, maybe.

That really is quite sharp. Yeah.

What did the bees go? A lemon tree?

And then try the darker one.

That is thick and luxurious.

And almost like a like
a chocolate bar. But quite strong.

So I think you need the two, just to
level things out a little bit.

I don't know whether people realise
that, actually, different honey

comes from different flowers,
different pollen.

It's wherever the bees go. Right?

Exactly. So this one
is where they've been having

really scented flowers.

And this one is where they've been
in woodlands and forest.

The honeys taste great to me.

But, surprisingly, Harriet's mix

also contains two-thirds
liquid glucose.

Why have we got to add glucose?

Because it helps form
a crystal structure within the bar.

And so when you bite into the bar,
that lovely crunch that you have

is caused by the crystals
of the glucose.

Without the glucose,

you just end up with something
that will fall apart.

They'd just have
a bit of a mild chew?

To be honest,
it would be quite soggy.

Why not just make it from glucose?

The bar would literally
be so hard,

it would almost break like glass
and you wouldn't want to eat it.

So different honeys give it flavour.
Yeah.

They also give the bar
a certain softness. Exactly.

The glucose actually dilutes
the honey flavour,

which is a bit too strong.
A little bit, yeah.

And also helps the bars
stick together.

Exactly. You've got it.

Oh-ho!

This honey mix will make up
about a fifth of my bar.

And I need a whole bucketful,

heated to 80 degrees Celsius
so it's runny honey.

I'm happier than Winnie the Pooh.

Do you know what
I want to do with that now?

What do you want to do?
I want a bath in it.

Oh, look at that. Ha-ha!

30 seconds of gentle mixing
sweetens this lot up nicely.

I don't believe
that's going to stick together.

Come and have a look at this.
Does that look right to you?

Oh, it looks perfect. Really? Yeah.

Don't these crispy bits of rice
now get soggy?

No. They actually work really well
to help make it nice and crisp.

You can pour wet things over
a crispy thing and it stays crispy?

Yep. It does.
You're like a cookery magician.

We are, yes.

Take it away? Take it away.

I'm telling you,
that's not sticky enough. We'll see.

An hour and 40 minutes in,

and with 55 kilos of mix
to now turn into 1,440 cereal bars,

it's all hands on deck,
quite literally.

The sticky mixture is weighed
into 920-gram portions.

What are they doing?

We are now putting our mix
into the baking trays.

1,440 bars... Yeah.

..is baked in little things
that would fit in your oven at home?

Yes.

And just like at home, each steel
tray is lined with greaseproof paper

to stop it sticking.

Is this just for me, cos I'm here?
Or is this actually how you make...?

This is how we make
every single bar.

By hand? By hand.

What's this gentleman here doing?
He's doing what we call massage.

Yes. He's massaging the product
to make it nice and even,

so that we don't get holes
or gaps in the bars.

We need to make sure it's in
the corners of the baking tray.

Are you a good
fruit and nut bar massager?

I am good,
but not as good as these guys.

Feel free to have a go.

Yeah.

Now, I love a good massage,

but I'm normally
on the receiving end.

How hard can it be?

Don't push it down, Gregg.

You want to massage it,
not compact it.

Ah! Don't push it down.

Spread it out.

Being careful
not to crush the ingredients

is a delicate business.

Sorry.

That took me 20 seconds to do one,

and there's 60 to do!

Gregg, you've only got 20 minutes
to do this. You're getting behind.

Hard work, this is.

Next up is pinning,
named after the rolling pin,

which gently flattens the mix
to 1.5 centimetres -

the exact depth of the tray.

Can I have a go at pinning, now?
Pinning looks easier.

Yep.

Oh, this is an easy job!

Easy job!

Oh, whoa! Whoa!

There we go, look.

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

That can't go on.
Why? What's wrong with it?

Look how wavy your bar is. Feel it.

If not rolled out flat,
our bars won't bake evenly.

Look at that.

How's that? Perfect.

Where do they go then? They need to
be loaded into the trolley.

180 trays an hour are loaded
onto these movable racks.

My 60 trays
take up a whole trolley.

You get there eventually,
don't you?

I mean, look, I'm actually...
Can I tell you something?

I'm actually quite proud of myself.

You should be,
that's really, really good.

A-ha-ha!

Next stop is the baking area.

MUSIC: Spinning Around
by Kylie Minogue

We wheel our trays,
trolley and all,

straight into a 2.5 metre high
walk-in oven

with a special design feature.

It's turning round!

# I'm spinning around

# Move out of my way

# I know you're feeling me
Cos you like it like this. #

Why's it turning round?

So we can get a nice,
even distribution of heat

through the trolley
and all of the trays.

The trolleys sit on a turntable
built into the floor of the oven,

which spins them a sedate
two revolutions per minute.

Some ovens, all ovens - even ovens
at home - have got hot spots,

which is why sometimes the corner
of your pie's burnt.

Yeah, so there'll be no burnt edges
on this,

because it's rotating constantly.

It's getting a nice, even bake
in there.

I like it here.

This great bit of kit
edges the temperature

up to 180 degrees Celsius.

The heat reduces the moisture
in the bars,

concentrating the sugars
in the honey mix,

changing the crystal structure,

which helps bind our ingredients
together to make solid bars.

After their 17-minute spin class,
they're nice and warm.

Whoa! Careful!

Something hot in the kitchen.

And he's carrying some bars!

Time for them to chill out.

Really? Yep.

You just stick it in front
of a wall of fans? Yes.

And that's it?

But these are no ordinary fans.

These six industrial beasts

turn at an impressive
1,330 revs per minute.

Whoa, it's...!

Whoosh!
LEANNE LAUGHS

Whoosh!

That was great.

It will take just ten minutes
for our trays to cool down

from 75 degrees Celsius
to room temperature.

Of course, cereal bars are just one
way of keeping us fuelled on the go.

Ruth has been delving
into the history

of one of the original energy bars.

I've come to the wild moors
and rolling hills

of the Lake District.

A hiker's paradise and home to
Kendal Mint Cake -

super-sugary, super-minty.

Why is it so synonymous
with mountaineering and explorers?

To find out,
I'm meeting Mollie Hughes...

Hello!

..who researched the history
of this sugary snack

while preparing for
her successful ascent of Everest.

On top of the world!

So what's so good about
Kendal Mint Cake, then?

So, Kendal Mint Cake
has all these compact sugars.

Really high energy and, especially
on Everest and at high altitude,

your body finds it hard
to digest food,

so these kind of simple sugars
are really great.

And I guess I know
from my own expeditions,

you burn so many calories -

like, between maybe 6,000
and 7,000 calories a day...

Wow! ..as you're heading
to the summit. Crazy amounts.

So this kind of thing,

this high-energy,
easy-to-eat food is great.

It doesn't freeze
in low temperatures.

It doesn't even melt in the sun.

So it's really great for
these high-altitude expeditions.

Kendal Mint Cake
was invented in 1869,

in the town that gives it its name,
by confectioner Joseph Wiper.

I'm going to Romney's - one of
the top producers of the bar -

where managing director
John Barron...

John, hi! Hello, Ruth. Hey.
Pleased to meet you.

..is letting me in on the secrets
of this sweet treat.

What's in Kendal Mint Cake?

Basically, sugar.
Sugar with glucose and water

and then we add peppermint oil,
obviously,

to get the mint flavour, yeah.

That's really simple, isn't it?
Quite basic, yes, yes.

Basic it may be...

OK, so we'll get this poured out.

..but this sugary bar is the
success story that nearly never was.

How Kendal Mint Cake came about -

somebody was actually
trying to make a clear mint.

And what they've done is they've
taken the boiling off too early,

and then stirred it and it went
cloudy and they poured it out

and thought,
"Oh, dear, this is no good."

But, when it set, thought,
"Hey, we've got something here."

The cloudy mixture
is ladled into moulds.

I'll make sure it goes to
the corners. There you go.

So nice and liquid.
That's it. Self-levelling.

After just ten minutes,
the solid cake is turned out

and broken into bar-sized pieces,
and wrapped.

Although the first bars were sold
locally to Victorian tourists,

they quickly established
a reputation

as the explorer's
energy snack of choice

when, in 1914, Ernest Shackleton

took mint cake with him
to Antarctica.

But one event cemented its place
in mountaineering history.

So Kendal Mint Cake's most famous
moment came at 11:30am

on the 29th of May, 1953.

And this was when Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay,

they reached
the summit of Mount Everest.

This was the first time
anyone had succeeded

in reaching
the highest peak in the world.

So Tenzing Norgay
is quoted on the packet.

He says, "We sat down in the snow

"and looked out at the country
far below us.

"We nibbled the Kendal Mint Cake."

So how much Kendal Mint Cake
did Sir Edmund Hillary take?

I've actually got
the original order here with us.

It says, "We would like
to incorporate it

"in our special
high-altitude rations.

"We will require 300 such bars."

This was a big ask.

Sugar was still in short supply
after Second World War rationing

had restricted distribution.

But it made all the difference
to them,

and to the popularity
of mint cake.

So we know that Edmund Hillary
had quite a large stock.

We know that they were eating it
on the summit.

And then that information is part
of the advertising and marketing

for Kendal Mint Cake for years.

Yep, absolutely. I think any
mountaineer and hiker in the UK

knows Kendal Mint Cake
and has eaten it

at one point or another
on a mountain.

This is the original
British energy bar.

And 150 years after it was first
invented in the Lake District,

it still provides a high-energy
boost to hikers all across Britain.

In the flatlands of Essex,

our chilled-out trays
of baked cereal mix

are ready for the next leg
of their journey.

Right.

I am as chilled as the bars.
Yes, you are.

What are we going to do? So now
we need to cut the baking tray.

So this is the point our bars
really start to look like bars.

Fantastic.

Yeah. At last. At last.

Is this the cutting machine?
It is, yes. Right.

Can I do it? Yeah, you can.
So take a baking tray out.

That was complicated, wasn't it?

Very technical.

Slide it underneath.

Both hands on the thing.
Do I have to slam it?

No. Just bring it down
nice and gently.

With this fancy cutter,

the factory can chop 360 trays
an hour.

Behind the safety guard,

a dozen blades apply 12 tonnes
per square inch of pressure

to the mix,
cutting it into 24 tidy bars.

There they are. There they are.

All packed full of nuts, bar none.

Exactly. I've got other 59 trays
to cut, right? You have,

and you've got ten minutes
to do that

and that'll be our 1,440 bars.

My bars are nearly complete,

but they're looking
a bit underdressed.

Tipped out from their trays,
they're lined up like soldiers -

nine across - on a conveyor belt.

Again, by hand? Again by hand.
Are they ready now?

Are they ready
to get wrapped up and gone?

No, we've got one final ingredient
to add -

a little bit of indulgence.

It's the chocolate, innit?
It's the chocolate.

So I need you
to go and get me some chocolate.

No way! Yeah. A bucket of
chocolate?! A bucket of chocolate.

I might be a while. No, you won't,
cos I'm coming with you.

The dark chocolate
which will coat our bars

arrives at the factory
in giant button form

and is melted to 45 degrees Celsius

in huge 2,000-litre tanks.

13 kilos is just enough
for our batch.

I got to taste the honey.

Do I get to taste the chocolate? No.

But maybe later on a bar.

Sorry. Come on, let's go.

Whoa-ho-ho!

Ho-ho-ho!

It's 3 hours, 42 minutes since

our macadamia nuts
arrived at the factory

and it's time for our bars
to have their finishing touch.

Some jobs you do
that are an absolute delight.

Yeah.

My melted chocolate
pours straight into a small tray

on this enrobing machine.

That'll do lovely.

Yeah? Yeah.

Look at that. Oh. Clean.
You kept your hands clean, too.

Well done.

It's pumped into a heated reservoir

and a series of rollers
feed it up towards a wire conveyor.

As the bars march across
this melty chocolate sea,

the rollers push the chocolate up
through the wire conveyor,

coating my battalion
with nine grams of the lovely stuff.

It takes just six minutes
to have their chocolaty bath.

But they need to cool off quickly
before they're wrapped up.

They've got chocolate on the bottom.
Where are they going now?

What's this? So this
is a cooling tunnel. Ah. Yeah.

So is this just
one big refrigerator?

Pretty much, yes.

That bottom cooling -
which is where the chocolate is -

will be around five degrees.

And we've a top cooling,
which is around eight degrees.

So what's it for -
just to set the chocolate?

Just to set the chocolate. Yeah.

In their final push,

my troops are paraded through
this 18-metre fan-cooled tunnel.

3 hours and 48 minutes since
our nuts arrived at the factory,

my bars are complete.

That's it, right? That's it.

That's our finished bar. It is, yes.

Honey mix, dried fruit,
toasted nuts and a bit of chocolate.

Perfect. And I've had a hand
in every single little bit.

Nice little bar, that.
It is, yeah.

While they form an orderly queue
for the next stage,

Cherry's delving
into the secrets of the nuts

at the heart of them
down in Cornwall.

I've come to this balmy biome
to unravel a botanical puzzle.

Because it's harder to spot a nut
than you might think.

And, to kick things off, I've got
a cracking game for the visitors

at the Eden Project.
It's called Nut Or No Nut.

Hazelnut.

Cashew nut.

And peanut.

The rules are simple -
is it a nut or not?

All three are nuts. Really?

Really. You sure? Quite sure.

I know that's a nut. Yes.

Cos I grow them at home.

Nut. Nut?
Don't want to phone a friend?

No, no, I'm convinced
all three are nuts.

What kind of nut? Not sure.

They're nuts. Peanuts. Hazelnut.

They're nuts. Cashews.
But they're not.

Game over.

Time for the results.

Did you know that
only one of these is a nut?

I didn't know that, no.

That's right.

We may call them all nuts, but
only one is a true botanical nut -

the hazelnut.

# Nuts, nuts to you! #

So if our other two nuts
aren't nuts, what are they?

Horticulturist Catherine Cutler
has brought me to a cashew tree

to help me understand.

Why is a cashew nut
not an actual nut?

It's not actually a nut,
because it's a drupe.

So... What is a drupe?
A drupe. It's a botanical term.

Perhaps, as a layperson,
you'd normally use the word fruit.

But it's like almonds, walnuts -
they're all fruits,

which have got a seed inside.

And so this we call a cashew apple,
or cashew pear.

That is the weirdest-looking thing.

The cashew drupe is clearly visible

below the yellow, swollen stem
of the plant.

Walnuts, almonds and pecans
are also drupes,

and some consider the macadamia
to be one, too.

They all have a fleshy outer layer.

And what about
my other nutty impostor?

Peanuts form under the ground.

So peanuts aren't true nuts, either.

This a much more closely related
to beans and to peas.

So what are they, then?
They're legumes.

Legumes form in a pod,
just like the garden pea.

So even its name is a lie.

It's not a peanut.
It's a pea legume.

The hazelnut, by contrast,
is defined as a true botanical nut,

because its hard shell doesn't
release the seed inside naturally

when it's ready to be picked.

But however these nuts,
drupes and legumes grow,

the one thing they have in common

is that the nutty part we eat
is the seed of the plant.

I'm meeting dietician
Azmina Govindji

to uncover what that means
for their nutritional value.

Foods that we commonly consider
to be nuts are broadly similar

in nutritional breakdown, because
a nut is the seed of the plant

that's responsible for reproduction.

So the nutrients and the energy
that's in that tiny seed

is enough to make it grow
into a brand-new plant.

And it's this that makes them
such dietary heroes.

I've always thought that nuts
were healthy. Is that true?

Yeah, they're great.
They're low in sugar.

They're mostly high in fibre
and they're high in fat.

All right. So that's a hazelnut.

Right. And more than half of
the weight of that hazelnut is fat.

That seems like a lot of fat.

That's surely not that good for us.

Well, you're right. Excess saturated
fat isn't good for us,

Cos it's been linked
with high blood cholesterol.

But the good news is that
the type of fat in nuts

is polyunsaturated
and monounsaturated,

and these types actually help

to maintain
a healthy blood cholesterol.

I'm going to have one right now.

Can I do a pick and mix?
That's the best, because, actually,

although they're similar
in nutrients,

there are variations between
different nuts.

So, for example, cashews... Yeah.

..have got twice the carbohydrate
as hazelnuts and much less fibre,

but they're a good source
of iron and zinc.

But if you after fibre
and its healthy gut benefits,

the hazelnut
is one of the best options,

while peanuts
are packed with protein,

making them
a perfect post-workout snack.

However,
Brazils are the king of nuts.

So Brazil nuts are the richest
dietary source of selenium.

What is selenium?

Selenium is needed to maintain
a normal immune function.

Just by having one Brazil nut a day,
you get your daily selenium needs.

So even though not all nuts
are technically botanical nuts,

they are, in their own way,
really, really good for us.

Absolutely.

At the factory...

..my cereal bar soldiers

have reached the last stage
of their journey

and are lining up
for a final inspection.

What am I watching here -
high-speed bars?

This is the last point
we get to have a check of the bar

before it goes into the wrapper.

After all that handcrafting,
it's about to get fully automated.

This nifty scanner
uses three laser sensors

to check our bars as they zoom past.

If they're broken or stuck together,
they won't make it past this point.

Any rejects are blown off the belt

by a super-fast,
six-millisecond jet of air.

But they do get a second chance.

The rejects are sent back through
the scanner one last time,

with less than 1% going to waste.

So if I was a bit mischievous here,

and I put one bar on top of another,
would it notice? Yeah.

Excuse me.

I can't resist a challenge.

GREGG LAUGHS

Scanner wins.

My little squadron
has made the grade,

and this lot needs wrapping up now.

And, with no time to lose,

they hurtle on
towards a hi-tech wrapping robot.

The bars are separated by 2.5cm

and a wrapper is folded
around each one.

They're then sealed
and cut at each end.

Well, this is the fastest-moving
thing in the factory, this is.

It is, yeah.

My wrapped little beauties

channel, nine at a time,
into a slotted conveyor.

It's almost as if
they're loading up a gun belt.

That's what we call our turbo train.

A synchronised robot arm with nine
suction cups gently lifts the bars

and places them in threes
on another conveyor.

It takes just seven minutes
to wrap and box my 1,440 bars.

I see lots of packing, but I still
think it's my favourite bit,

cos everything happens so quickly.

It's great to watch, innit?
It is. It's fantastic. Thank you.

You're very welcome.
I had a lovely, lovely time.

I've had so much fun. It's been
great. Thank you for your help.

At the end of the line,

my boxed-up batch
joins 5,760 other bars on pallets

and the whole pile
is wrapped in cellophane.

The pallets are driven
from the production area

100 metres down the road
to distribution.

After just four hours of sorting,
roasting, mixing and cooling,

our cereal bars are ready

to be set free in the world.

Company co-founder Praveen Vijn
is overseeing the operation.

Praveen.

Hello, my friend. How are you? Good.

Listen, my batch. 1,440 bars. Yeah.

There's more than that
on there, surely?

Got 115,000 on that vehicle today.
Is there really? There is, yeah.

And how many of these trucks
leave the factory every day?

About five to ten go out every day.

So how many bars leave the factory
every week? 1.9 million.

Serious amount of bars.
It's quite a bit.

Where's the furthest you go?
One is in Tahiti.

And also we have this beautiful
little post office

in northern Norway.
It's just inside the Arctic Circle.

So these little bars from Essex
basically go all over the world?

From Halstead to the world.

37 countries across the globe
take delivery of these bars.

But their biggest fans
are in the UK,

where Londoners eat the most.

Well, this isn't one of the biggest
factories I've ever visited,

that's for sure,
but it is one of the friendliest.

What surprised me
is a lot of the ingredients

are added to the bar by hand,

and I can clearly see them
through the wrapper.

But, most of all, do you know what?

I've had a lot of fun.