Sugar Incredible Edibles: Gutbusters

I'm Stefan Gates and I'm a food adventurer.

I love cooking food,

I love eating food, but what I really love is blowing it up

and now it's your turn because this is Incredible Edibles: Gutbusters.

CHEERING

Here in Gutbusters HQ I have a group of adventurous

food-heads who are dying to road-test their taste buds

and here they are. Give them a big hand.

CHEERING

That's what I like to hear, but it ain't no fun without you lot

watching at home so here is what we've got coming up for you.

Ever wondered what the phrase "sugar rush" means?

Find out when we power a rocket using just a single

cube of sweet stuff.

Our taste testers see up close where wild meat comes from.

This is a mallard duck.

But will they come unstuck when they tuck into a duck?

And will today's mystery meal prove to be a taste sensation or

a monstrous mealtime?

Hear this. Today's show has a special theme.

ALL: Whoo!

I thought about doing a whole programme about eating eyeballs.

-Would you like that?

-ALL: Yes!

I bet you would.

But then I thought how about we see how many Brussels sprouts you

could eat in an hour. How about that?

-ALL: No!

-Good job -

they make me a bit windy. But then I wondered about sugar.

-Do you like the sweet stuff?

-ALL: Yes.

We are often told not to eat too much sugar, which is weird because

loads of food have sugar added to them to make them taste better.

To find out what I'm talking about

please welcome Finlay, Ellen and Jamal to the stage.

-OK, guys, do you like sweet things?

-Yes.

Everyone likes sweet things really don't they?

Here are a range of foods which all have some sugar inside them.

All I want you to do is arrange them

with the food with the least amount of sugar at this end

and the food with the most amount of sugar at that end.

So we're going to give them five seconds. Ready?

-And...stop! Do you think you got it right there?

-No.

Do you want to change anything here

-or are you're going to stick with what you've got.

-Swap those.

-Stick that there.

-Maybe the bagel, swap the bagel.

-What do you reckon? Do you think they've got it right?

-AUDIENCE: No.

No? Well, it's a bit hard to tell.

The thing is lots of food has sugar that's been added to it

because it isn't naturally there. Let's see what you've got here.

Let's start with the food that you think has the least sugar in it.

This is coleslaw. Coleslaw has two teaspoons of sugar in it.

That's kind of average.

This portion of bran flakes has three teaspoons of sugar in it.

That's quite a lot of sugar.

-You might put sugar on top of your bran flakes.

-Yes.

-Yes, they don't taste sugary, they taste bland.

-That's right.

It's odd there is so much in there. Crisps.

These have two teaspoons of sugar. Again it's crisps.

-Would you expect to find sugar in them?

-No.

It's a bit strange, isn't it? OK.

This bagel has one teaspoon of sugar in it.

You can kind of understand that. It's quite a sweet bread I suppose.

Now, ice cream has three teaspoons. Compare ice cream to bran flakes.

-How much sugar have they got?

-The same amount.

-The same amount.

-The same amount as bran flakes. Would you expect that?

-No.

That's like really sweet and that's quite healthy.

It's really strange isn't it?

Let's have a little look at tomato soup. Five teaspoons of sugar.

Would you expect to find five teaspoons of sugar in this?

-No way.

-I wouldn't think that much.

Let's have a look at the big guy. How much in cola?

Nine teaspoons of sugar

in one can of cola. Is that a lot?

-ALL: Yes.

-It's a huge amount, isn't it?

It's right up there at the top

so you've got it in the right place.

It's recommended that we eat no more than 60 grams of sugar a day

-and that's 15 teaspoons. Looks a bit like this. Is that a lot?

-ALL: Yes.

It's quite a lot in quite a little.

Drinking just two cans of cola would use up all of that,

meaning you haven't got any spare for a treat like sweets or

chocolate or a slice of cake.

We need to watch how much sugar you eat -

it can rot your teeth, it converts easily into fat in

your body, but most importantly it contains amazing amounts of energy.

But listen, I could give you a really boring

lecture on carbohydrates and energy consumption, which would be fun,

maybe, or we could blow something up.

ALL: Blow something up!

-Let's get dangerous.

-ALL: Whoo!

What I've got here

is one ball of ice cream

with one and a half teaspoons of sugar in.

Here I've got a very special blowtorch.

In this chunk here we've set one and a half teaspoons of sugar.

Out here is a little fuse to start the reaction going.

I've got a big canister of oxygen.

I'm going to use these to see if I can make a little flame.

For you guys watching at home sugar and flames can be a ridiculously

dangerous combination so don't even think about mixing them unless

you're a superhero from the planet Varg

or you have hands made of titanium.

Which would actually be pretty cool.

Anyway, sadly, none of that applies to me

so I'm going to wear some ridiculous eyewear

and some massive gloves.

So this is just one and a half teaspoons of sugar,

so I don't know why we're going to such a lot of effort,

but let's give it a go.

We'll get some air going and then get the flame going.

Ah-ha-ha!

Woo-hoo! Woh-ho!

ALL: Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!

Woo-hoo! Ha-ha!

CHEERING

I bet you know what I'm thinking.

That's the damage one

and a half teaspoons of sugar can do in a blowtorch.

What if we could set this off in one go.

It could probably blow a hole in the floor

and maybe we could launch this, yes?

What do you reckon?

CHEERING

Yeah! Stick around because later on we'll see

whether or not we can use sugar to blast off into space.

CHEERING

Sugar! It comes in all shapes and sizes and colours and forms.

-MUMBLING:

-You can turn it into sweets that stretch to extreme lengths.

You can mix it with gas and feel it explode on your tongue.

CRACKLING

You can turn it into an edible yo-yo.

But did you know you can even turn it into an edible work of art?

I've come to Yorkshire to learn the tricks of the trade

from the king of confectionery creation,

sugar sculptor Colin Martin.

-Come in.

-How are you doing?

-Not so bad thank you.

Colin has one of the coolest jobs in the world

and now he's going to show me how to make edible artwork.

Wow!

So this is what a sugar sculptor's workshop looks like.

Look at these things. They're amazing.

-These are all just made out of sugar?

-Just made out of sugar.

Wow! Are they edible?

-Yes.

-I could actually just take her head off and chew it?

-Yes.

-How do we start?

-This is ordinary granulated sugar.

The sort of stuff you put in your tea.

It goes into here, which has got some water in.

Bring that to the boil. Once you have boiled it up

you put some glucose in it.

That will stop it from crystallising.

-Can I have a little taste?

-Yeah.

-Clean finger.

-Just tastes like sugar.

-It's sugar.

The solution is then boiled to 155 degrees before it's laid out

to cool down.

Wow, it's got this amazing texture, doesn't it?

It's somewhere between plastic and water.

It's like a piece of glass but just a little bit sloppy.

What's the next stage?

-We need to pull it now.

-It's just so beautiful.

The further you pull it the more shiny it gets.

-What shall we make?

-I think we'll just do a fish.

-Just a fish(!)

We'll just knock off a fish out of sugar like it's really easy! OK.

-What's the first stage?

-We have to blow it.

What I've got here is just a little pump,

a bit of hose going into the ball

of sugar, so we're just pumping air into the middle of a ball of sugar.

-Yes, you'll see I'm changing the shape.

-It's got a life of its own.

Give us a bit of air. Give us a bit of air.

Looks like an angry fish. More like a dolphin than a fish!

It's going to be a shark not a fish.

Colin, what have you got there?

So Colin's taken a break to show me what we're supposed to be making.

This is what it's supposed to look like.

Like that. Currently...

It's not that far off is it? It's not that far off.

'OK, it is far off but I'm still amazed that we are making

'a fish out of sugar. How bonkers is that?'

That's for the tail at the end.

'I had no idea you could mould sugar so easily and it seems

'there's no end to the amazing stuff sugar can be made into.'

So here we are making an underwater fart for the fish.

'To be fair I have no idea what a fish fart looks like.

'Nor did I ever think I'd be wondering how it tasted.'

After a while of playing with it you understand how it works.

You can't yank things around.

You can't push them into the shapes you want them to be.

You have to tease them into it. I could really get into this.

'Finally, food colouring is used to add the finishing touches to

'the masterpiece.'

-What do you think?

-Good.

-Let's have a little look.

There is the Colin true masterpiece,

but I think we've got something special here with the

Incredible Edibles version,

with a moustache, flatulence and everything.

-It's pretty cool.

-Brilliant.

I'm amazed that you can do something so extraordinary out

of food, out of stuff we just eat every day and you can create this.

The only thing is, I'm not sure how long this is going to last

on my mantelpiece.

When you're having your tea when does the sweet course usually come?

ALL: Afters.

After. It's always afters, isn't it?

The rules are that we have sweet things for afters,

but here on Incredible Edibles we like breaking the rules

because sweetness can be brilliant in main courses too.

I need three people to help me play with my food

and they are Finlay, Priyanka and Tobias.

Give them a round of applause.

CHEERING

-Are you ready for this guys?

-Yes.

Excellent. Listen up. Some meats go very well with sweet fruit.

-Pork and apple sauce, ever had that before?

-No.

OK, well look, some meat comes from my animals like rabbit

and deer or duck goes especially well with sweet fruit.

-Ever had any duck?

-No. I have duck and strawberry.

-Duck and strawberry. That's pretty good.

-I threw up after I ate it.

-You threw up after having duck?

-Yes.

-OK. We'll give it a go anyway.

Now I think a lot of us never give a second thought to the animal

we are actually eating but all that changes right here, right now.

Are you guys prepared to face the meat that you eat?

-I'm prepared for everything.

-Yes, get in there! I'm liking it.

I have to warn you that we are going to be looking

at some dead animals now.

If you're squeamish this will be a great time to go away

and think about cakes.

OK. Here I have two very different types of duck.

ALL: Eugh!

-This is a mallard duck. There you go.

-It feels quite tickly.

You can think of it alive and living and free

and now you've seen it shot.

It's quite sad, but have you guys ever eaten chicken before?

-Yes.

-Yes?

Well, a chicken was a live beautiful animal as well. OK, I've got

another duck here that I want to show you.

Here is a farmed duck, much, much bigger.

It's a big duck.

It's like a cuddly toy with caramel in it.

You can definitely see how it is a lot fatter.

The head is just massive. That one looks very slim like it

would be out in the wild.

This one looks like it's about to be boiled up.

I kind of feel guilty for eating it because it's like a really

nice creature and it looks like it's been nicely looked after.

Let's have a look at them after they've been plucked

when they're ready to go into the oven. Still gruesome.

-ALL: Oh!

-Oh yes.

This is a mallard with all of the feathers plucked off.

It looks really tender and yummy.

-Ugh!

-Ugh indeed.

This is a wild animal so it's been hunted and shot.

-This is where the bullet's gone in.

-Nice. Cool.

There's a big difference between this little fellow

and this guy here.

-That is the farmed duck.

-I like the first one. This is heavier.

But I just don't get why they have to shoot it before it dies.

Why can't it just die by itself?

If you want to have meat to eat you need to make sure it's

died very safely, so being shot sounds really dramatic,

but it happens very quickly.

The bird has a life in the wild and then suddenly it's stopped.

We're going to wash our hands and then see

if you can tackle tasting these things when they're cooked.

-Cool!

-Yum!

-Not yum!

OK, guys, so this is the real thing to tackle.

-Are you prepared to eat the meat you just saw?

-Definitely.

All right. Here's the first fish. This is...

Cool.

AUDIENCE: Whoo!

Knives and forks out. Dig in.

Cut a little bit off and tell me what you think.

You've got the sweetness there from all of those cherries.

It tastes like chicken.

I like the sweetness. It's very tender and there's no fat.

Having something sweet with that powerful meat,

do you reckon that's a good idea?

I don't really like duck

so it takes your focus away from what it actually tastes like.

-Tobias, you can get enough of this, can you?

-It is brilliant.

Before it didn't have the sauce I don't think it would have

tasted as good as it is now. I think I want to try this cooked at home.

It's brilliant.

You love that. Fantastic. OK. Let's try the next dish.

This is...

AUDIENCE: Oh!

Oh, yes!

There's quite a lot of sugar that goes in with this.

The buns are very, very sweet buns and there's ketchup in there to go

-with the duck burger.

-I think it's quite horrible.

It is good meat and it's been turned into this kind of sweet bun-ish

thing smothered in sweet sauce and it completely destroys the flavour.

-So too much sweetness?

-This is junk food.

I do agree that the sweetness has taken over the taste,

-but I do prefer this to that.

-You like the burger.

I think it's really nice but it isn't as good as the mallard,

which was really good, but this is quite amazing as well.

There you go.

Sweetness in food is one thing, but most importantly I think that if you

eat meat it's incredibly important to know exactly where it comes from.

I know it's tough facing the reality of food

so I think these guys have been unbelievably brave.

Give them a massive round of applause. Well done, guys.

Today we're devoting the whole show to sugar.

'So far we've seen the secret sweetness in some familiar foods...'

Nine teaspoons of sugar in one can of cola.

'..and savoured some surprising sweet meats.'

This one looks like it's about to be boiled up.

Later on find out what happens

when you convert a sugar cube into rocket fuel.

But first it's time for my Mystery Meal.

So up on stage we have Emma, Tobias and Priyanka.

Show them your appreciation.

CHEERING

Emma, you're looking pretty bold up there.

-Are you feeling confident?

-Yeah.

OK, we'll see if we can iron that out.

Tobias, what would be the weirdest thing you've ever

-eaten in your life?

-Kangaroo burgers.

That's pretty adventurous. I like that.

Priyanka, if I was going to give you your worst nightmare on a plate

-what would it be?

-Duck.

-Duck.

To make this a complete mystery

we're going to put blindfolds on them. There we go.

Put those eyes away. How many hands am I holding up here?

-None.

-Very good. OK. That'll do.

I'm going to come and show you guys what they're going to be eating.

I'm scared.

It's under here.

I think this one might be a little bit alive still so watch out

because it can nip your fingers. Agh!

-Steak.

-Chicken.

-Looks like chicken nuggets.

-Does it looks scary?

-No.

-Sheep brains.

-Sheep brains.

-Oh. It's getting a bit more adventurous here.

-Intestines.

Intestines.

-Chicken balls.

-Chicken balls.

-Fried chicken.

-Fried chicken.

Well, do you know what? I guess it doesn't matter

because you don't have to eat them, they do.

-Somebody said brains, somebody said intestines.

-No.

-Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

-Cool.

-Cool.

-Bad.

What's this all about then?

Sometimes you can be put off eating food

because of how you imagine it will taste,

but remember somebody had

to be the first person to experiment with turning sugar into sweets.

Where would we be without sweets? Nowhere.

Who knows what we'll discover if we keep our minds open.

I can reveal to you guys at home what's today's Mystery Meal is.

It's this.

-Are you ready guys?

-Yes.

-No.

-Here we go.

Emma is slightly hyperventilating here, which I see as a good thing.

It gets your taste buds ready, doesn't it? Here we go, Emma.

-Here is the first one.

-Oh!

-OK, Tobias, are you ready?

-Yes.

OK. Hold them out there. Ooh!

-What is that?

-Have a little squeeze.

-It's squishy.

-It's squishy.

-It smells kind of like burgers.

-It feels like chicken.

I can't tell you what it is yet, but I can tell you they are

extremely popular in some of the best restaurants in the world.

I absolutely love them. OK. I'm good to taste it with you.

I think all of these are dead now, so you can have a little taste.

-Chew it.

-Mm.

-Sounds pretty good.

Emma's popped the whole thing in there.

-Eugh!

-And Emma's has come back out again. Wow!

I think it's time for you to take off your blindfolds

and look at what you've been eating.

-Cool.

-You've been eating these fellows.

-Maggots.

When have you ever seen a maggot that looks like that?

-Is it some part of a cow?

-A very good guess.

-A goat?

-A goat.

OK, well, you've been eating...

Sounds nice, doesn't it? Sweet breads. Sweet and bread.

Well, sweet breads are lamb's innards.

Cool.

Yes, they're are funny little gland deep down inside the animal

and when they're raw they look a little bit like this.

Awesome!

AUDIENCE SHRIEKS

Now you've seen what they are, would you like to try them again?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Yes.

There are some that are in breadcrumbs

-if you want to try those as well.

-Delish.

-Brilliant.

That is fantastic. Guys, they are so brave.

Give them a massive round of applause.

Down here. There we go. What is it? It looks like a pile of sticks.

Well, these are what you might know of as these. Uh-huh.

These are liquorice.

These are liquorice sticks.

The idea is you're supposed to chew

them and get the flavour out of them.

I've never tried this before. They look very strange.

Let's give it a go.

Wow. That's really powerful.

There is an amazingly strong sensation of liquorice

but also it's really sweet.

There's a sugar inside here, which is 30 to 50 times more

sweet than sucrose, which is the sugar that you

have on your kitchen table. Which is all very well

except there's only one flavour in the entire world that

I can't stand and it's liquorice.

Frankly, if I could ban it I would.

Now it's time for the part of the show where celebrities get

their taste buds tortured for your amusement...

actually, no, in the name of medical science,

as we play Incredible Or Inedible.

Let's meet today's celeb. It's CBBC star Ben Hanlin.

CHEERING

How are you doing, mate?

-Thank you for coming.

-Thank you.

It's a commonly-held belief that stars like you just eat gold

and silver and survive on nothing else. Do you ever eat a chip?

I have the occasional chip, the occasional burger,

-the occasional pizza.

-What is your favourite food?

My favourite food is chocolate. Big chocoholic.

-Nobody here likes chocolate, do you?

-ALL: Yes.

What's your worst nightmare in food? What do you hate?

My mate Hacker likes meat paste and I hate meat paste.

-Do you like meat paste?

-ALL: No.

OK. We have three dishes for you to try.

Yes.

You taste them and then you get to decide

-whether you think it's incredible or inedible.

-All right.

Here are some of the things we've tried before.

We've had some lamb's brain, dung beetles, duck tongues,

that kind of thing.

Let's bring on the first dish. Oh yes. Thank you very much.

Ta-da! It doesn't look too bad. It does look quite pretty, doesn't it?

-Kind of. It's in the shape of a fish.

-It's blancmange.

"What could be weird about blancmange?", I hear you cry.

The basic ingredients of blancmange are egg yolks, milk and sugar.

It's often flavoured with fruit or vanilla and had as a dessert.

That's what you're thinking.

Yes, but that doesn't look like any blancmange I've ever had.

That's because this is ancient blancmange.

It contains ground up dried fish and almond milk.

It was like a meat paste, actually,

the thing that I said that I didn't like.

It's as if you somehow knew that.

It was a paste of fishy flavoured weird mush, like a really bad mousse.

But you could have made it a lot worse

so it actually wasn't that bad.

OK. What do you reckon? Incredible or inedible?

-ALL: Incredible.

-Really?

Here? Here? The middle. The middle. Here.

-ALL: Yeah.

-Well done.

That's fantastic. Let's have the second dish. Thank you. OK.

-This is ice cream.

-I like ice cream.

-That's good.

-Dig in.

-It's not going to just be ice cream though, is it?

-It's going to be something else.

-This time we're messing with your mind.

What we've got is chilli and cinnamon flavoured ice cream

with steaming hot peppermint flavoured custard.

-You're getting a bit of the chilli there?

-That's actually all right.

It has got a kick actually. I do like a spicy dish. I like a curry.

Maybe tuck into the custard to cool down a bit?

It tastes a bit like a weird mint choc chip kind of ice cream.

-I like it.

-Even though it's different it's pretty good?

-Yes, definitely. I like that.

-It's your decision.

-Incredible or inedible?

-ALL: Incredible.

It's got to be an incredible.

Dish number three, bring it on. Thank you very much.

Are you ready for this?

Yes.

AUDIENCE: Eugh!

These are pretty big fellows. Look at these, guys.

-Oh yes! Would you like some of those? Are you up for this, Ben?

-OK.

You don't have to finish all of them.

As long as you've eaten most of them ones that's fine.

You have a little taste. Wow! What a man.

What we have here is mealworms

dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar.

Crunchy and cracking.

Tastes like bark.

That was very dry, basically like taking a handful of dirt that used

to be an animal and putting it in your mouth and just not good really.

-I wouldn't recommend it.

-Are sweet mealworms incredible or inedible?

ALL: Inedible.

Middle?

SHOUTING

Say what?

SCREAMING

-Inedible. Incredible? In between.

-There we go.

-Wow!

That was absolutely brilliant. Guys, Ben has been so brave.

Give him a massive round of applause.

Here on Incredible Edibles we like to do something that will

-make you shout...

-ALL: That's incredible!

Earlier on we looked at the surprise sugar in everyday foods

and just how much energy is contained in one ball of ice cream.

Was that cool?

-ALL: Yes.

-You bet your life it was.

But if you harness the energy in that sugar

what wildness can you achieve?

We're going to find out using this.

-ALL: Whoo!

-Yeah!

I've had a real life rocket scientist make a rocket

and challenged him to see what he can do with the power in just

this one cube of sugar. Do you think it'll take off?

-All: Yes.

-Who knows?

There's only one way to find out. We certainly couldn't do it inside.

We need to relocate

to the Incredible Edibles launch site outside.

Let's go.

Now, we relocated to the launch pad and we're almost ready to go.

I'm going to let you into a secret. We've had to inform air-traffic

control of what we're doing

just in case the rocket does actually take off.

Now, rockets are very dangerous

so unless you are a qualified rocket scientist or you are actually

an astronaut, please don't try this at home.

Ben has unbelievably brave.

-Well done, Ben.

-Thank you.

-You get the big shiny red button to press.

-Are we ready, guys?

-All: Yes.

-Come on!

-Ready.

ALL: Five, four, three, two, one, blast off!

MUSIC PLAYS

LAUGHTER AND WHOOPING

-OK, here we go. Ugh!

-Come on! Come on!

-It's not coming out!

LAUGHTER

What you think of that?

CHEERING

Thank you so much to Ben, to our audience,

and to you guys at home from watching.

Join us next time for more Incredible Edibles.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd