Episode 2 Rip Off Britain

There's a lot we don't know about the food on our plates,

and the shops and the labels don't always tell you the whole story.

I think they encourage you to buy more than you need.

And that causes a lot of waste.

Whether you're staying in or going out,

you've told us that you can feel ripped off

by the promises made for what you eat, and indeed what you pay for it.

How do you know that it's half-price, right?

So what they've done, they've bumped the price up

and then knocked it down.

From claims that don't stack up, to the secrets behind the packaging,

we'll uncover the truth about Britain's food

so that you can be sure that you are getting what you expect,

at the right price.

Your food, your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello, and welcome to Rip-Off Britain, where this series we're

looking into something that I think it's safe to say none of us can do without. Food.

-Correct.

-Our choice of what we eat and drink is often determined by

how much it costs or how it tastes.

But something else that plays a crucial part is

whether or not we think it's good for us,

or even if it's safe.

Very good point, and today we'll be looking into stories that one way or

another bring the safety of what we're consuming into question. Now, in some cases, that's because of an

event that's made the headlines or led to official warnings.

In others, it's simply down to fears of what can happen

if we have too much. But we'll be getting to the bottom of some more

-common concerns as well.

-Yes, indeed.

It's worries that something might potentially cause us a problem, which

aren't always on a scale that they actually do make the newspapers.

But of course they can still influence our everyday behaviour.

So, as we explore the risks behind things that are fundamental to our

lives, we're also going to be seeing whether or not there's any truth to

a food-safety principle that you may well already be following in your own home.

Coming up, how hundreds of thousands of households ended up being

told they should no longer drink their tap water.

You can put a man on the moon but you can't control our water supply.

It's not acceptable for anybody to have dirty drinking water in the UK.

And the door-to-door fish scam that saw this woman

tricked into buying a lot more fish than she wanted.

And why it wasn't such a good idea to eat it.

When I looked at the receipt, it said £204.

I nearly died. I didn't know which way to turn.

Now, here in the UK we're very lucky to be able to take

our tap water almost for granted.

You pay your bills and, in return, you get nice, clean, safe water.

But, last summer, all of that was turned upside down for residents

and businesses in parts of Lancashire when

their water supplies were contaminated with a rather nasty bug

that can cause some very unpleasant symptoms.

So, how did such a situation come about and,

whichever part of the country we live in, how worried should we be

about finding ourselves in the same situation?

DOG BARKS

Annette Begg keeps extremely busy running a kennel, and filling

bowls of drinking water for over 40 dogs up to four times a day can be

thirsty work, especially over the summer months.

It's the busiest time of the year for us.

We work a 15-hour day most days, and you live on-site.

So even during the night you might be out of bed going seeing a dog

who's barking. So, it's a long day.

But, in early August 2015, something happened seven miles away

which meant that Annette's days were about to get even longer.

United Utilities say they've been doing everything

they can to make tap water safe again

after cryptosporidium was found at this treatment plant.

One of Britain's biggest water companies, United Utilities,

issued a warning after a routine test of the water being sent out

from its treatment works in Preston turned up traces of a nasty

parasite called cryptosporidium,

which can cause diarrhoea and abdominal cramps.

More than 300,000 homes across Lancashire were advised to

boil water before drinking it, in order to kill off any bugs.

So, naturally, Annette felt she had no choice but to boil

all the dogs' drinking water too.

Although we didn't receive any information as to

whether it would affect dogs,

we thought that we'd better take that precaution.

Obviously, if it's not fit for us to drink,

I wouldn't be giving the water to our guests' dogs, it's too risky.

Because of the sheer volume of water the kennel needs,

Annette ended up boiling her kettle up to 100 times a day.

And, when we filmed with her, right in the thick of it all,

it was clearly a real slog to keep up.

We're in and out every few minutes, boiling kettles,

pouring it into a watering can, bringing it outside to cool.

It's just all day long, really.

Annette says she was told about the bug by a customer,

rather than the water company itself.

But it wasn't until a few days later that United Utilities put

a leaflet through her letterbox

confirming the situation and offering advice on what to do.

It was shortly after that when we visited the kennels,

but with the contamination at that point still not sorted,

Annette was getting close to the end of her tether.

The water board should be providing us with water

if they're not supplying it. We've paid our bills,

we've paid for drinking water to come out of our taps.

It's not, so they should be providing it, in my opinion.

There's just not a great deal of information. It's been a week today

since it started and they were still saying on the news this morning that

this cryptosporidium was still present in the water.

In the end, it was a month before all of those hundreds of thousands

of homes were advised that their water no longer needed to be boiled.

And 50 miles away from Annette, in Blackpool, the outbreak had

had a similarly disastrous effect on Graham Atkinson,

who was busy running a hotel that caters for disabled guests

and their carers.

Our guests are very vulnerable. We cater for people with disabilities

ranging from dementia right the way up to autism, and we cannot afford

to have them being ill through someone else's fault.

They told us we weren't allowed to let them

have water for drinking purposes or anything like that.

The guests that Graham looks after are particularly susceptible

to contracting illness.

So, when we visited the hotel, again right in the middle of the crisis,

making sure that any water he used was bug-free was his top priority.

We are worried that one of the guests gets the bug, cos they'll end

up in hospital, and we could be at total blame for it, knowing about the issue.

Ten days into the situation, to ensure that his guests had

clean drinking water, Graham was able to get the water company

to provide some safe supplies, and from that point on his guests

were given plenty of bottled water during their stay.

But the ramifications of the contaminated tap water were

felt throughout the hotel.

Our chef, she's been washing all the salads with bottled water.

Everything's had to be boiled and boiled and boiled,

and it's really hard work because they're having to check all

the waters are on getting boiled.

Really, really been a long, long process for us, this has.

Though, like most people affected by the contamination,

Graham did manage to get by.

But he still has questions as to how the bug managed

to get into the water supply in the first place.

All the local presses are saying it's animal faeces that

have got into the water system.

I'd like to know where that's come from. That's an awful thing,

thinking we've got to drink animal faeces in the water.

Of course, water contamination like the Lancashire incident are very

rare indeed. The water that normally comes out of our taps

here in the United Kingdom is among some of the cleanest,

the safest and the purest in the world. And that's because of the

very stringent cleaning and filtering processes that it has to

go through before it gets anywhere near our homes.

So, I've come here to see what happens to the stuff in there,

in reservoirs like that all over the country,

before we ever get to turn on the taps.

-Robin, good morning.

-Good morning, Angela, welcome to Anglian Water.

-Come on inside.

-Terrific, let's go.

Anglian Water of course had nothing to do with what happened on the

other side of the country in Lancashire. But all drinking water

in the UK must adhere to the same standards that are

set out by the World Health Organization and EU legislation.

So, Dr Robin Price is going to show me exactly how this plant

makes water clean and fit to drink from the Rutland Reservoir.

So where's all the water coming from that you're treating here?

So, the water for here comes from one of our reservoirs.

We've got reservoirs, rivers, we've got boreholes right the way across

the region. And we produce on average just over one billion litres

of water every day. And this site alone produces over 1,000 litres of

safe, clean drinking water for over a million customers in the local area.

They start by getting rid of all the superfluous natural

contents of the water, like silt, soil and sediment, before pumping

what's left into this room for the next stage of the cleansing process.

Robin, what's happening in here, then? I mean, this water looks

pretty clean to me. I can actually see the pipework all the way down through.

What we're doing here is filtering it.

This is the first stage of the filtration process.

And, believe it or not, the water's actually being filtered through

sand, a couple of different grades of sand, which is the same way the

Romans did it. So this is one of the oldest forms of water treatment and

we still do it today cos it's so effective.

We've never been able to improve on it?

Never been able to improve on it, absolutely. So, if it was good

enough for the Romans, it's good enough for us.

-And where does it go from here?

-What we do next with it is, actually,

we add a dose of ozone. Ozone's a very powerful chemical.

This is the dissolved material, so dissolved things,

we blast them with ozone and then we use these carbon filters.

It's the sort of thing you'd have if you had a domestic water filter.

'Once all the particles are filtered out,

'the water is ready to be disinfected.'

What do you do when you disinfect it,

because that sounds as if you're going to leave a residue behind?

So, we add chlorine to the water.

The chlorine just makes sure the water stays safe,

stays disinfected right the way through to the customer's tap.

We then leave it in a tank for a period of time just to give

it time to work, and the water is then pumped out.

Chlorine levels are carefully controlled.

In March this year, water company Severn Trent had to warn thousands

of homeowners not to use their water after finding abnormally high

amounts of the chemical. But such incidents aren't common and, once

the chlorine has done its job, as it has here in Rutland,

that is when the water begins its final journey into our homes.

We've got about 40,000 miles' worth of pipes between...across our whole

region, and that's enough to go from London to Sydney and back again.

This is tested continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nationally

across the whole of England, it's about four and a half million,

heading on for five million tests are done on drinking water.

So you really can be assured

that you're drinking safe, clean drinking water at all times.

But if the system is so robust, it does rather raise

the question of how exactly things went so wrong in Lancashire.

And, when we put that question to United Utilities,

the company responsible, it couldn't give us an answer, saying,

"The matter is still being investigated by the

"Drinking Water Inspectorate, with the results yet to be published."

But, in the meantime, United Utilities told us that it

wanted to apologise again to customers,

and to thank them for their patience and understanding.

It said that the boiled water notice was...

..issued following consultation with the authorities,

and that every aspect of how the incident was reported

and communicated with customers was carried out in accordance

with the correct procedures.

The water company went on to say that

during the time it was working hard to remove the bug

and distribute bottled water to vulnerable customers,

it kept customers informed...

..as well as by setting up...

in the affected areas,

and taking on extra call-centre staff to deal with inquiries.

And it added that it...

..at a level set following discussions with

the Consumer Council for Water, with business customers advised

that they could make a claim for any additional losses.

And back at the kennels, Annette did exactly that.

United Utilities gave her £500 towards the cost of the extra staff

that she took on during the crisis,

as well as £60 towards her household costs.

But she says that that has still left her out of pocket,

as well as wondering if the situation might reoccur.

It shouldn't have happened this time so, unless they find out what's

gone wrong and fix it, there is a chance that it could happen again.

It just causes so much work for us.

Meanwhile, Graham too has had his confidence shaken

in a commodity that we're usually lucky enough to take for granted.

You can put a man on the moon but you can't control our water supply.

It's not acceptable for anybody to have dirty drinking water in the UK.

Since our last film looking at sugar,

I really have been following all the news coverage about our love

of the sweeter things in life with great interest.

Sugar is very rarely out of the headlines,

and while many manufacturers have taken steps to reduce

the amount they add to their foods, there's been one area where, quite

astonishingly, over the last few months, we've found some companies

that have bucked that trend. So, if you hadn't already guessed,

the section of the market we're talking about is breakfast cereals.

So why is it that some big names have been

so resistant to cutting the amount of sugar they put in what they sell?

Especially when so many of their products are aimed at children.

Whether it's talk of a sugar tax,

or continued concerns that we're having too much, sugar is big news.

Health campaigners have long been saying that the amount

of sugars added to all sorts of everyday foods is simply too high.

And they've been calling for a big reduction,

especially in some types of one particular food, breakfast cereal.

Now, since we first looked into sugar in cereals a couple of series

ago, some manufacturers have worked hard to reduce

the level of sugar in their cereals, but not all of them.

And even those who are cutting sugar levels aren't always doing it

with the brands that contain the most.

It's something that the campaign group Action on Sugar has been

carefully monitoring over the last few years.

Jenny Rosborough has been leading the research.

So, Jenny, you've been looking at cereals for the last three years

or something like that. So what have your findings been?

So we compared data between 2012 and 2015,

and we found that actually the cereals containing

the highest amount of sugar had done little to change the amounts.

So they either stayed the same or actually increased in some cases.

The research carried out in 2015 showed that some cereals had

significantly reduced their sugar content,

most notably the rebranded Honey Monster Puffs,

once known as Sugar Puffs, and Simply M&S Cornflakes.

However, many of the sweetest cereals on the market,

easily identifiable because the traffic-light labelling

on the front of the packet is red to show the sugar content is high,

haven't reduced the amounts at all.

And there was even one, Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Honey & Nut Clusters,

that had actually seen its sugar levels go up.

But, whatever your own views on the topic might be,

few would argue that given all the current hoo-ha around sugar,

it's perhaps very surprising that manufacturers don't appear

to be reducing its levels at a faster rate,

particularly in those cereals that contain the most of it.

What I don't understand is why, when I look down the aisles,

I see chocolate being added, even little sweets being added,

and honey being added.

And, I have to say, because I've been watching my sugar levels,

it really, really drives me insane.

So, manufacturers will say that it can be down to

consumer preference, so people like the taste of high-sugar cereals.

But the problem is, the more that we have these high-sugar cereals, the

more we want them, our taste preferences change.

Equally, if we reduce the amount of sugar in it,

then we will adapt our taste preferences to that as well.

So it needs to be done slowly.

And sugar is a taste that can be very hard to give up.

Professor Jane Ogden is a psychologist who specialises

in branding and diet. She says from a young age,

we're brought up wanting sugar for breakfast.

What happens with sweetened cereals is that there's a whole

marketing process which tells us that these are nice foods to eat,

that they will get us awake in the morning, that they will give us

energy throughout the day. So, on top of a very slight preference for

sweet foods, we then have all that learning, all that meaning and

interpretation that goes into it, which then means that we then

go and buy them and then we eat them.

But are we eating sugary cereals just out of habit,

or do we genuinely prefer the taste?

Jane wants to know if we're particularly drawn to cereals that

have the most sugar, or whether in reality we can't tell the difference.

So we asked some of the students from the University of Surrey

to take part in a little experiment.

They'll be trying three different brands of the same

type of cereal, frosted flakes.

Now, each is from a different supermarket,

and each has a different sugar content.

Bowl B contains the flakes with the most sugar,

bowl A has slightly less, and bowl C has the least sugar of all.

In fact, bowl B has nearly 30% more sugar than bowl C.

So, spoons at the ready, and we're off.

Hmm, that one's quite sweet.

We want to know which of the three cereals these students said they preferred.

So let's see if it was the one that was the sweetest, bowl B.

-B was the nicest, that was the most tasty.

-I liked the middle one.

-The tastiest I thought was B.

-I prefer B.

I kind of like B cos it's not too sugary.

In fact, of the ten students we asked,

seven said they preferred the taste of cereal B, the highest in sugar,

which does seem to back up what manufacturers sometimes say in

defence of their sweetest products, that customers like the taste.

But the choice seems to be an instinctive rather than

conscious decision.

To be honest, I don't even look at the boxes,

I kind of just stick with a brand that I know.

Really, you actually just...there's no way to tell.

And what genuinely stood out from this little sample was that,

when we asked the students which of the three cereals they thought

was the sweetest, they didn't necessarily go for sugary bowl B,

the one they'd previously said they'd preferred.

In fact, the one that half of them chose as the sweetest was

actually the one that had the least amount of sugar.

I thought it didn't taste like sugar.

That's interesting, I wouldn't have expected that one.

That one didn't taste as sugary, but that one was, like...really sugary.

So overall, the most important thing to come out of this, I think,

is that people cannot tell how much sugar is in a cereal

and whether the cereal has full sugar or lowered sugar.

And that's particularly striking, because our sweetest bowl, B,

contains so much extra sugar that if you ate it every day for a year,

you'd have consumed a full 9kg more sugar than

if you'd had bowl C, our least sweet bowl of flakes.

Yeah, you can tell that has more sugar in, but I didn't think

that much more sugar. That's really odd, to hear it like that.

So although this is by no means anything more than a snapshot,

and the taste of course is very subjective,

it does suggest however that we can't always tell which products

contain the most sugar and which don't.

Which is why checking those red traffic lights on the front of the

packets is the only way to be sure exactly how much you're eating.

But with so many of those staying so firmly in the red,

it does once again raise the question of why some manufacturers

are not making more progress in bringing sugar levels down.

And it can't simply be that they're worried how that might affect

the taste, because the manufacturer of Honey Monster Puffs, Halo Foods,

who recently announced a further cut in the cereal's sugar levels, says

that over the last decade, it has slashed the amount of sugar in the

product by 50% without, it insists, compromising on taste or flavour.

Well, when we asked Kellogg's why the sugar content of its

Crunchy Nut Honey & Nut Clusters cereal had actually slightly

increased, rather than coming down, it explained that it was an

unintentional increase due to...

Pointing out that the increase was...

..the company insisted it's committed to adapting its recipes to...

..with an ongoing...

..that's already seen sugar levels come down in other products

such as Special K and Bran Flakes.

And the Association of Cereal Food Manufacturers was keen

to stress the health benefits of cereals such as vitamins

and minerals and fibre from the wholegrains they provide.

It said that, overall,

the amount of sugar in cereals has reduced over the past five years,

and pointed out that, with so many varieties available, there is...

Meanwhile, campaign group Action on Sugar has been

turning its attention to other products as well.

In February, its research on sugar levels in high-street coffees

made the headlines after the discovery

that some of the big-chain products contained the equivalent of up

to 25 teaspoons of sugar!

The companies concerned insisted they had plans

to significantly reduce their sugar levels by the year 2020.

But as far as Action on Sugar is concerned,

only more intervention from the top will have the necessary impact.

The Government need to come out with a strong plan to make

a consistent level playing field with sugar reduction targets

for manufacturers to really see any kind of impact across the board.

And we also need a much stricter monitoring system to be able to see

exactly what is going on, so we know which companies are making changes,

which ones aren't, and which ones need to be pressured to do that.

Well, the Department of Health told us that it's looking at all of this

as part of its childhood-obesity strategy,

which is due to be published in the summer of 2016.

It will examine what can be done by all sides to tackle the issues that

contribute to the obesity epidemic, including sugar.

In the meantime, when it comes to breakfast cereals,

remember that there are plenty of varieties that have a fraction

of the sugar that you'll find in the ones that hog the headlines.

And simply adding a bit of fruit on top will just as effectively

give them that sweeter taste.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain,

you've heard people talk about the three- or the five-second rule

when they drop food on the floor.

But is there any science behind how long it stays safe to pick up?

So, Anthony, three seconds or five seconds?

It really depends on what you drop and where you drop it.

I'm sure you've been in this position yourself,

but door-to-door salesmen can try and talk you into buying all sorts of things.

And while there is a chance that you might sometimes be interested

when the less scrupulous and more pushy ones come calling,

it can prove very hard indeed to politely say no

and get them to leave without either losing your temper or some

cash in the process.

Well, when the couple we're about to meet answered a knock at their door last year,

they ended up with an unmanageable amount of food that they just

didn't need, as well as seriously out of pocket.

And with Trading Standards right across the country issuing

warnings about exactly this kind of operation, it's clear that what's

going on is much fishier than might appear when you first open the door.

It's a particularly nasty scam that starts with a simple

knock at the door.

And it's one the authorities say especially targets older people.

Just like Marion and Alan Johnson from Lancashire.

I'm 85. And my husband's 88.

We've been married for 65 years. And counting.

But after some health problems in 2015,

Marion relies on her children to help her out.

I am not as mobile as I used to be.

I was in hospital in February.

With pneumonia.

Two of my daughters come down every week.

And my son comes regularly.

So when there was a knock on her door in October last year,

Marion initially thought it was someone calling to check up on her.

And even when he began his sales pitch,

she had no idea his intentions were far less charitable.

This fella said, "Would you like some fish?"

So I said, "I'm not a great lover of fish, but...

"I'll have some if you like."

I said, "I only want a bit," you know.

He said, "All right, I'll make you a little parcel up."

But thinking it was easier just to agree to the man's offer,

and unable to stay on her feet too long, Marion left

the fish seller to it and went to sit down again in her living room.

I left the door open for him so that he could come in.

I just asked him, "Do you mind putting it in the kitchen for me?"

And he said, "No, of course not."

Marion says she was told that the fish would cost her £24,

and that she could pay by bank card.

But she made the mistake of not checking the amount or indeed the receipt.

And that was about to lead to a very unpleasant surprise.

So I left the receipt, I never looked at it,

and then, after he'd gone, I went to put the fish away

and I thought, "I've never seen so much fish in my life."

There were about 30 packets of fish,

each with five pieces of fish in.

So I thought, "I've nowhere to put this!"

So I thought, "It's a lot, that, for £24."

So when I looked at the receipt, it said £204.

I nearly died. I didn't know which way to turn.

It was more than a week's pension for her. Gone.

It was a nightmare.

I never slept that night. It was horrible.

I thought, "What am I going to do with all this fish? Where am I going to put it?"

Marion called her bank to try and stop the payment, but as

she had paid by debit card, she was told that nothing could be done.

I felt sick, really.

I've had a bad year this year with illnesses and whatnot.

And hospital appointments. And so it...

It just made me feel worse. I kept waking up at night seeing fish.

Fish for evermore.

Realising she'd been duped, Marion got in touch with

Lancashire Trading Standards to see if they could help.

And it was then she was told that they'd received another 29 complaints about

door-to-door fish sellers in the area over the last couple of months.

In fact, with a few more similarly fishy tales subsequently

added to the tally, they've had seven times as many

complaints on this as in the previous year.

Dawn Robinson is leading the investigation.

What type of complaints have you been receiving?

The sort of complaints we've got are about aggressive,

high-pressure selling,

so people, say, agreeing to buy perhaps two evening meals' worth

of fish, and then before they know what's happening, they've

handed over their credit card and paid £300.

The suspect traders that you've been describing,

what do we know about them?

We think they're salesmen rather than actual fishmongers.

They generally tend to go to wholesalers up in the north-east,

so the fish will be fine when they buy it.

They'll load it into a van.

They will then drive down and start selling the fish,

and they're targeting the suburbs.

They're targeting areas with lots of older people's bungalows -

places where they think they'll find people in during the afternoon.

It's not just the unsavoury sales tactics that

Trading Standards are worried about.

It's the fish itself.

With most of it unlabelled,

there's no way of knowing how old it is, where it's come from

and how it's been stored,

or even if it really is the type of fish the salesmen claim.

But after hearing from so many other people who've been talked into buying it,

Dawn and her team have been able to assemble quite a collection.

These are consumer samples.

These are things that they've purchased from the doorstep.

These packs of salmon were sold as one-and-a-half pounds

when actually they weigh 400g, which is less than a pound.

So that's trying to show people they're getting a bargain.

Also you can see the labels have been taken off.

-People do not know what they're buying.

-So really this whole thing is misleading.

-Yes, it is.

My concern here as a consumer, if I had bought this at the door,

is the fact that there is just nothing at all on it to say

"sell by", "use by", "packed by", which fishmonger...

-There's nothing to come back on with this.

-No.

So how do you know, if you eat it three days later, if it's still fit to eat?

How do you know what the use-by date is on the day you buy it?

If you buy from somebody that you don't know,

then you have no idea how it's been stored in the van.

We have seen unrefrigerated vans selling this fish.

You don't know what species of fish you're buying.

You don't know the weight you're buying. You don't know the use-by date.

You don't know who's packed it.

You don't know if it's been line-caught or farmed.

You know absolutely nothing about this fish.

But this isn't just confined to Lancashire.

After warnings of the same kind of suspect fish sellers

right across the north-east and north-west of England,

with cases reported further south in places such as Wiltshire,

Trading Standards has set up a national task force,

Operation Arwen, to tackle the problem.

So the big question is "What is Trading Standards doing?"

We've put out a lot of publicity, and then we have a

national operation where information from all around the country is being

collated to see where the problems are, who the

problem traders are, and decide who is best to tackle that.

They also tested some of the samples of fish they'd collected

and found that many of them were completely different

types of fish than the customers had been told they were buying.

So people who thought they were buying sea bass were actually

buying saithe, a cheap type of pollock.

Others believing they were buying wild salmon were actually buying

farmed salmon.

And however it was described or labelled, the fish was

usually found to be poor quality and frequently unfit for consumption.

So as far as the consumer's concerned, what advice would you give them?

Well, our first and most important piece of advice is don't deal on

the doorstep when you're cold-called by somebody that you don't know.

There are lots of local fishmongers who deliver.

There's no reason to deal with somebody that you know

nothing about the history of.

As for Marion and Alan, who, like plenty of others,

found out too late that they'd been charged over the odds for

more fish than they could ever imagine eating - indeed,

over the first few days they did try

and struggle through it at lunch and at dinner as well.

But after spotting an article in the local paper,

warning about the same door-to-door seller,

which made clear that his fish was unfit for human consumption,

they simply threw the rest of it away.

After such a costly reminder of the perils of doorstep selling,

they've taken steps to make sure that they don't get

taken in by anything like this ever again.

Since that happened,

I've now put a notice on my front door to warn people.

I just tell everybody to beware of people knocking on your door,

and get a notice put on your door like I have.

As we saw earlier in the programme,

the UK's water companies spend millions ensuring that the

water that gets to our taps is in sparkling condition.

But how can we make sure that it stays that way

when it comes out, and that it tastes as good as it possibly can?

Well, Anglian Water's Regional Water Quality Manager, Dr Robin Price,

says we have to do rather more than just turn on the taps.

One of the simplest things we can do is to clean our kitchen tap.

Particularly important if we've been washing vegetables, raw meat,

or if we've let any of our pets anywhere near it.

We all wash our kitchen side, we all wash the kitchen top.

How many of us remember to wash the tap itself?

In most homes, it is still recommended that, for drinking water,

we take the water that comes out of the tap in the kitchen,

rather than having a glass from the bathroom.

The water that comes out your bathroom tap is mains water,

but often it will have been stored in a tank in your attic or loft.

It's absolutely essential that you keep an eye on that tank -

make sure it's covered, nothing can fall in.

Perfectly fine to clean your teeth with the water from the tap,

but if you want a glass of water,

we'd always advise you go to the kitchen tap for that.

And don't panic if the water from your taps comes out cloudy.

It is still perfectly fine to drink.

If, when you run a glass of water, it comes out looking a bit cloudy,

that's really nothing to worry about at all.

It's millions and millions of tiny air bubbles, and, believe it or not,

that can be caused by something as simple as your hot and cold water pipes

just being a little bit too close together.

If that happens, just simply insulating your pipes will cure the problem for you.

One reason why some people prefer to drink bottled water is because they

think that they can taste chemicals in the stuff from the taps.

A common worry that people have is that they can taste or smell

chlorine in their water.

This is perfectly normal.

We add chlorine as part of our water treatment processes to make sure the water's safe to drink.

So if you can smell chlorine, you can be reassured that the water's safe.

To get rid of that taste, leave a jug of tap water

in the fridge for a few hours and it'll soon go away.

But don't leave it any longer than a day, because removing the chlorine

means that the water is no longer protected from bacterial growth.

Finally, there have been concerns that water pipes

made from lead can be dangerous for pregnant women and children.

Homes built since the 1970s have done away with them.

So how can you tell if your water pipes are lead?

It's easy to find out if you have. Simply take a look under your sink

and just have a look at the colour of the pipes.

Lead pipes tend to be a kind of dull grey colour,

as opposed to these, which are the bright orange copper.

If you are in any way unsure, simply ring your water company

and they'll be able to come out and test your water for free.

And if you do have lead water pipes, the advice on making

sure that the water is OK to drink couldn't be simpler.

If it turns out you have got lead pipes, then you might like to talk

to your local water company about getting your pipework replaced.

In the interim, there's a very simple thing you can do, which is -

if the water's been sat in the pipework, for example overnight,

simply run it for a few moments before you use it.

Now, imagine this.

You're just tucking into your lunch

when you manage to drop some of it onto the floor.

So, what do you do now? Just pick it up, dust it off and eat it?

Or, for fear of any germs it might have picked up,

do you just chuck it in the bin?

Well, it seems most of us think that a few seconds on the floor

isn't really enough to make us throw food away.

In fact, some of us follow what's called the three-second,

or sometimes the five-second rule,

and that, as the name suggests,

is the time within which we think it's OK to pick up food and eat it.

But is there any science behind that?

Well, I've been to a food hygiene lab to find out.

A whopping 87% of people who took

part in research by Aston University said that,

if they dropped their food, they do still pick it up and eat it.

And if there's one group in particular who'd cheerfully

admit to that, if they could only articulate it

for themselves, of course, it's this lot.

But some of their more hygiene-aware parents may have rather

different ideas.

-Your young man here is thoroughly enjoying his lollipop.

-He is.

If he was to drop it on the floor, what would you do about

whether you'd decide to pick it up, or...give it back to him or what?

I would throw it in the bin. Don't like dirt and germs.

So I'd tell him, "Sorry, your thing's in the bin," and I'd always have a spare.

If it's somewhere where it's really clean.

And is there a sort of time limit involved in your mind or not?

Erm... Three seconds? Five seconds? Something like that. A short amount of time.

Have you heard of the three-second and five-second rule?

-Yes.

-And what's your understanding about it?

If you drop something, it must be picked up within five seconds.

Because?

Because of the bacteria, the germs,

infection and...various other things that can pass on.

The majority of the parents and grandparents I met said they would

pick up food that's been dropped onto the floor, although in most

cases that really does depend on how long it's been there.

But is there any genuine scientific

basis to the old three-second rule?

Well, to find out

and see just how quickly germs can get onto our food,

I've come to meet microbiologist Anthony Hilton at Aston University.

So, Anthony, three seconds or five seconds?

Well, there's quite a regional variation as to

whether it's three seconds or five seconds, or even if people add other

little bits like blowing on it, or even blessing it, I've heard, as well.

It really depends on what you drop

and where you drop it as to what the potential risks might be.

In 2014, Anthony and his team put the three-second rule through

some rigorous lab tests to see whether it stands up to scrutiny.

His team dropped foods with different textures, sticky or dry,

onto floors that were contaminated with up to 25 million samples

of E. coli and staphylococcus aureus, both of which can cause

diarrhoea, stomach cramps and fever.

They compared the results from three different types of floor -

carpet, laminate and tiled.

Anthony's team found dry foods picked up only a minuscule

fraction of the germs.

Well, transfer onto toast and onto biscuits was practically negligible.

We're talking 50 bacteria went over, which is a fraction of a percent of the transfer.

Sticky foods didn't fare quite as well.

As you might expect, there was slightly more, but even then it wasn't very significant.

It's probably about 1,000 bacteria.

The floors in these tests were contaminated with a lot more

bacteria than you'd find in the average kitchen,

and, overall, even the stickiest foods didn't pick up enough

to create a likely risk to health.

But the results did vary depending on what type of floor

the food was dropped onto.

When we dropped food onto laminate floor or onto tiled floor,

the longer it was on there the more bacteria it picked up.

On carpet it didn't.

I suppose if you imagine that,

because of the carpet fibres you've got here and the food is

on there, it doesn't have that same kind of additional contact point.

It's standing up on the fibres.

So the actual transfer onto carpet was negligible.

But the real question, of course, is whether three,

five or any number of seconds makes any difference to the

level of bacteria on the food, however negligible that may be.

In some cases, Anthony thinks it does.

The food picks up bacteria upon impact. We can't influence that.

So this interpretation that picking it up quickly means that the

food is going to be completely clean is wrong.

But what we found with moist foods, like the sticky sweet,

is that the longer you leave them, the more bacteria they pick up.

So if you're minded to pick it up more quickly,

you're actually picking up fewer bacteria.

So there is... In other words, we should all be practising our knee-bends, shouldn't we?

-Absolutely. The quicker you can get down...

-Getting down there...

-If it's a soft food,

the quicker you can pick it up, the less likely it is to contain bacteria.

So Anthony's team discovered that

when sticky foods like pasta

were dropped onto hard surfaces,

not only were they likely to pick up more bacteria on impact,

the longer they spent on the hard floor, the greater

the number of additional germs that they picked up.

So time was an important factor.

But sticky foods on carpets

picked up very few bacteria,

and dry foods dropped

onto either hard surfaces or carpets

picked up hardly any germs at all,

no matter how much time they spent there.

But whether you follow the three-second rule or not,

there are some places where common sense should help you decide

whether that dropped food really is worth eating.

If you're in an outside environment or you're

standing in the toilet at the time, my advice is don't eat anything.

If you drop it, then let it go and it's gone.

If you're in your own home

and you are aware of the hygiene status of that environment,

so that you know you've cleaned regularly, and you drop

a piece of toast on the floor, I would just pick it up and eat it.

Or if you have a child that is wandering around with

a piece of toast and you see them drop it,

I wouldn't get overly anxious about taking it off them,

because at the end of the day the transfer from indoor

surfaces onto dry foods like toast is negligible.

The amount of bacteria in people's homes that could cause harm is negligible.

Taking those two together, I think it's probably OK.

But of course, if you have animals in your house,

then it's always best to throw all dropped foods

straight in the bin, unless your pet gets there first, that is.

So, armed with Anthony's advice, it's time to test my own resolve.

So, Tony, I've got a nice, dry ginger biscuit here.

I'm going to drop it on the floor, and...

-you're going to see how long it takes before my nerve breaks, basically.

-OK.

-OK.

-Off you go.

-Here we go.

Well, I finally picked it up, not after three or five, but 60 seconds,

because, basically, by that point I couldn't resist it any longer.

Mmmmmm.

-Absolutely delicious.

-Oh, dear.

-You want one?

-No, thank you, I'm fine.

Well, as we've seen, concerns over food safety can take many, many forms.

It could be a major scare or a worry in your own neighbourhood,

or it might be fears over the amount of something that we eat

too much of, for example like sugar.

Or it might simply be fretting about whether it's OK to pick

something up from the floor.

Although I have to say that doesn't seem to bother my friend too much, does it, Julia?

Well, I'd like to say that all that dirt has made me

the woman I am today.

But seriously, as I saw in the lab,

it does rather depend on what you drop on what kind of surface.

So even I've got to admit there are some things I would draw the line at.

-Glad to hear it.

-Just a few.

You can find more information on the stories we've been

investigating throughout the series on our website.

Or you can share your own tips and advice on our Facebook page.

But I'm afraid that's all that we've got time for today,

so if you have got something that you would like us

to look into on your behalf -

food-related or anything else, really - then please do let us know,

because we really do appreciate every e-mail

and letter that you send.

And we will be back to investigate more of the things that you

have asked us to look into very soon.

But until then, from all of the team,

thanks very much for watching us. Bye-bye.

-Bye-Bye.

-Goodbye.