Episode 6 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, for what you pay for it.

How do you know that it's half price?

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.

Now, in this series, we're investigating everything to do with what we eat,

so that you can feel confident that the food you buy is exactly what you

think it is. But as you'll see today, that isn't always the case,

and we've been looking into some quite shocking occasions when that

actually doesn't happen.

In fact, you could call it food fraud,

and it certainly raises the question of whether enough is being done to

stop certain meals being made with ingredients that shouldn't be there.

It's a really serious issue when you think about the consequences,

especially for people with allergies, say,

or maybe religious beliefs that forbid the eating of particular foods.

Well, alarming as that case may be,

it's not the only surprise on its way today,

because we're going to be exposing the truth about what you might call

posh nosh.

You know, those food treats that we would like to splash out on,

and I think you may be surprised to discover that not everything that

you're paying those extra pennies for is as authentic as you would hope.

But don't worry, because we'll have everything you need to know about

how to stop you buying something that is not what you expect.

Coming up...

We test the takeaway curries that aren't what they seem or

what we ordered.

With even the lab astonished at what we found,

could you have been eating an entirely different meat

than the one you asked for?

The results have been quite shocking.

We've seen problems with substitution of meat from takeaways before,

but never quite on this scale.

And, with foods once considered expensive luxuries now regularly appearing

on our supermarket shelves,

could we sometimes be getting a poor substitute and not the real thing?

We suspected that the truffles in our jar may have been potato that

had been sculpted, which completely horrifies me.

I think it's fair to say that we Brits love our takeaways.

Do you know that over the last year, between us we've spent an incredible

£6.5 billion on them?

Well, one of the most popular takeaways is curry,

first served in the UK way back in the 1700s,

and in recent years pretty much adopted as our national dish.

But I am sorry to say that sometimes what we're eating may not be what we

think it is, because some curries billed as containing a particular meat

might in fact be made with a different one altogether,

which can cause rather more serious problems than simply concerns over

taste or flavour.

Now all this has echoes of the horse meat scandal several years ago,

so we've been ordering a few takeaways of our own, and guess what?

Not all of them contained the meat they were supposed to.

Each week, millions of us will order food from one of around 12,000 curry

houses in the UK.

But sometimes what's on the menu isn't what's in the dish.

A recent investigation by the Food Standards Agency discovered that some

curry houses are advertising lamb but actually serving a different mixture

of meats - beef, chicken, mutton. Some lamb curries, in fact,

contain no lamb at all.

The investigation found that of the 307 lamb dishes sampled, 65 of them,

that's 21%,

had traces of other meats that hadn't been declared as being there.

And though some of those had only low levels of undeclared meats,

indicating nothing more sinister than poor handling,

in the majority of cases it was a very different story,

and the higher levels found suggest that the curry houses concerned were

deliberately replacing the lamb with significantly cheaper meats,

like beef or chicken.

It's a deception which experts say is motivated by money.

So we've known for many years that

lamb is a premium meat,

and it's been substituted fraudulently by the use

of beef and chicken.

It hasn't gone away, I'm guessing, because it's still profitable.

The retailer is responsible to ensure that the product complies

with food safety requirements and labelling legislation.

Well, across the country,

Trading Standards teams have been cracking down on this type of fraud.

Last year, a takeaway in Rochdale got a £6,000 fine

for serving chicken and beef instead of lamb.

A Nuneaton curry house owner was fined nearly £1,800 for selling beef

and calling it lamb.

And in 2014,

investigators in Teesside found that a staggering 41% of takeaways

sampled were advertising lamb that was actually beef.

But even with all those lovely spices and flavours alongside the

meat, you might wonder, as I initially did,

how the curry houses doing this manage to fool their customers into

thinking they're eating one meat when they're actually chowing down

on another.

So we found the perfect guinea pigs to help put that to the test,

a team of self-confessed curry lovers in the city said to be the

birthplace of the balti - Birmingham.

I want to ask you guys, who likes curry?

-Love it.

-Yeah.

-Right.

Which curries do you really like?

-Tikka masala, probably.

-Chicken tikka jalfrezi.

-Balti.

-Madras, got to be a madras.

-Yeah.

-A bit of heat.

-Yeah, what kind of meat do you like in your curry?

-Chicken.

-Chicken.

-Chicken.

Ever tried lamb?

-Special occasions!

-Yeah.

So, as this lot head back to their training,

on the other side of the city we're preparing them a curry,

Rip-Off Britain style.

We'll see if they can spot that the meat they'll be told they're eating

isn't the whole story when it comes to what's actually on their plate.

In other words, replicating what Trading Standards say is happening

in some curry houses nationwide.

Today, I'm going to cook beef and I will pretend it's like lamb.

Cooking for our footballers is Aksar,

the head chef of the Tipu Sultan restaurant,

which scooped two gongs at the English Curry Awards last year.

And while he and his team would never serve one meat and then make out

it's another that's more expensive,

we asked Aksar to show us what less reputable establishments may be getting up to.

So, he's going to make what looks like a chicken and lamb curry but with

cheaper beef instead of lamb.

The question is - will our footballers be able to tell?

So first I take out some beef and soak in the water, like 15, 20 minutes,

and blood comes out.

Once Aksar has soaked the beef,

he chops it up small to disguise the texture.

He then boils the meat to really take away any flavour.

It will take an hour 15, an hour 20 minutes like this.

So nobody can judge it's beef.

Finally, Aksar adds the chicken to the beef and once it's cooked through,

voila, a curry,

but not the one our footballers will think they're getting.

Do sit down.

Welcome to the world's most stylish curry house!

OK, so just a little bit of information about this curry.

'I tell them it's a chicken and lamb curry.

'Will they spot that it's not?'

So, heads down, aim for the finishing line

and we want to know what you think of it.

Mm.

Did I hear a "mm"?

-Really nice.

-Nice, yeah, it's really nice.

-The lamb's not chewy.

-No, it's not.

-No.

'They're eating now and the reaction is really interesting.

'I mean they're all saying it is absolutely delicious but several'

of them have said they love the lamb.

-It's well cooked. Really nice.

-Yep.

So, so far, so good.

I think they're in for a surprise.

'Time to reveal the truth.'

So, what do you reckon?

-Lamb was really nice.

-Yeah.

-Really good.

-Was it nicely cooked?

Yeah. A bit of a kick to it.

Well, now you've finished your meals, I've got some news for you.

The lamb and chicken curry I gave you to eat actually contained no lamb,

it was beef and chicken.

The beef meat was washed and treated in all sorts of ways to make it more

like lamb but it wasn't lamb.

A bit shocked, really.

There's no way I would have told the difference, it being beef, not lamb.

But I think if I had found that out, quite distressing really.

From the quality of what it was,

I wouldn't be able to tell, to be honest.

I think most people who have a curry

might have had a few beers and as long as the quality is good,

there is nothing to complain, the lamb tasted like lamb,

so I think 90% of people wouldn't complain about it,

because it did taste the way it was supposed to be.

The fact at that you've told us that we were having lamb,

I think showed around the table that people thought they were eating lamb.

So, obviously if you're telling us we're eating it,

somebody in a restaurant is telling you you're eating it,

you're not going to know.

Well, we certainly pulled the wool over their eyes.

They were completely taken in by the so-called lamb and chicken curry.

All of which proves that with some clever cooking and the art of

persuasion, even the most ardent curry lover

could be fooled into thinking they're eating something they're not,

leaving the industry wide open to this type of fraud.

And that's a huge concern for Syed Bilal Ahmed.

-Hello, Julia.

-'He's editor of Curry Life magazine.

'And a true connoisseur.

'And he's not happy about the unscrupulous curry houses

'who give his industry a bad name.'

How much of a problem is this?

It is increasingly becoming a problem.

I've been reporting on it for a while.

I've seen a few cases here and there.

I'm just shocked because some restaurants are taking short cuts

to use substandard ingredients.

Is it your sense that people are careless in the kitchen?

I think sometimes.

I think the restaurants or whoever is in charge in the kitchen, chef,

is not taking responsibility of things, of the ingredients.

If I am a smart chef, straightaway I can see

the difference between lamb and beef.

When it comes to things like religious differences or perhaps

dietary requirements, then it's quite a serious issue, isn't it?

It is a very serious issue.

If I'm a Hindu, and I am served beef

without being told this is a beef,

then I'll be seriously offended

because it does hurt my religious feelings.

Hindus traditionally revere cows as a symbol of sustenance and life,

so they don't eat them.

And at this Hindu temple in Bradford,

it's clear that eating beef, even unknowingly,

would be a real problem for many of the Sikhs and Hindus who've come here today.

If I would get

served beef instead of lamb, I think I would be really furious about it,

because that's against my religion, not to eat beef, for a start.

You pay for something that you love to eat.

Something that you like to have. When you get served something else,

then obviously it's not right.

As Hindus, beef is not on the menu in any way,

because the cow has been the top most well-praised or well-respected

animal in our faith.

So any beef will be very, very offending to us.

We have never eaten beef through generations,

so it's something which is really out of our bounds.

It's important that you get what you pay for,

not just from a religious aspect but

you wouldn't go into a pub and order a pint and then get some lemonade or

something that has no alcohol in it.

It's just basics of life.

It's not a case of religion in this aspect,

it's what you've paid for, generally.

Well, we were keen to know if things had improved since the FSA

investigation in 2015 and if some curry houses are still selling takeaways

they say contain lamb but which do no such thing.

So we've enlisted the help of this lab in Worcester,

which tests food for local councils across the country.

They can tell lamb from beef at molecular level.

DNA work is about 50% of the work that we do in this laboratory.

The authenticity of meat has carried on really since the horse meat scandal.

Well, later in the programme, you can see what happened

when we sent to the lab five curries

that we bought from a cross-section of takeaways in Bradford,

the city crowned curry capital of the year six years in a row.

In terms of takeaways,

a conscious decision has been made to substitute a cheaper meat

for a more expensive meat. It's not an issue of contamination,

or someone making a mistake.

It's a pure and simple economic fraud.

Now here's a question - who doesn't enjoy a taste of the high life?

A bit of posh nosh to make a meal feel decadent

or to impress that special someone.

Well, I'm sure you've noticed that

several of the things that used to be considered luxury food items

and are now widely available for us all to enjoy,

and sometimes at surprisingly reasonable prices.

But it's clear from the e-mails we've received

that I'm not the only one to have wondered how on earth they do it.

So with some of you asking if we are genuinely getting what we think

we are, and not a pale imitation, we've been sampling

what at least appears to be some of the finer things in life.

Lobster, truffles and caviar -

once the preserve of the great and the good,

but now sold by most major supermarkets in some shape or form,

whether it's olive oil infused with their flavours

or pasta dishes boasting them as ingredients.

But can we be sure that everything we now see

offered at more affordable prices is the real deal,

or quite the exclusive taste we expect?

One Rip-Off Britain viewer who enjoys indulging in

some of life's finer things is jazz singer Alison Taylor,

who lives in Perthshire. She has a penchant for truffles

and on a recent trip to Italy was given some as a gift.

But she wrote to us, curious as to whether what she's got

is really the genuine article.

Truffles, I have a big love affair with truffles,

because they're so pungent

and strong and nutty and earthy in their flavour.

They're just so unique.

And also the simplicity of the truffle on pasta,

that's a massive plus for me. I love truffles.

The food Alison loves so much

is an edible fungi that grows underground.

It has a very distinctive earthy taste and firm texture,

and although there are many species,

some are more prized for their flavour than others.

It's safe to say Alison is a fan, but she knows that a jar this size

wouldn't come cheap.

In fact, single fresh truffles can cost around £30 each.

So she wanted to savour them and use them sparingly.

The jar of truffles sat in the fridge for a few weeks

before we decided to open up the jar,

and that was for a special occasion.

So we really built up to this occasion -

we'll have some fabulous pasta,

we'll shave the truffle onto the pasta,

and it was just such a big disappointment

when the jar was finally opened.

The pungent aroma Alison had fallen in love with

during her time spent tasting truffles in Italy

was, she felt, notably absent.

I was expecting, when I opened the jar,

to be walloped in the face with the smell of Italy

and great food and this truffle sensation,

but that just didn't happen.

Instead, Alison felt her truffles had a more vinegary odour,

which struck a real bum note with the singer,

particularly after some rumours she had heard

about some products on the market.

Our close friends in Italy warned us

that the Chinese had been sculpting potato into the shape of truffles

and scenting them up and dyeing them.

And we suspected that the truffles in our jar

may have been potato that had been sculpted,

which completely horrifies me.

I would like to find out what's in the jar

and if it's actually truffles.

But the contents of her own jar

isn't the only thing that's got Alison in a truffle kerfuffle.

There's lots of truffle oils on the market as well.

I'm interested to know whether it's authentic truffle,

it's been scented up chemically,

or if it's been scented with actual truffle proper,

the essence of real truffle.

Truffle expert Dr Paul Thomas

is ready to unearth the truth behind Alison's truffle conundrum.

He has a PhD in plant science

and runs a company which cultivates truffles worldwide.

Alison is here to meet him and do some digging of her own.

I was gifted some truffles but when I opened up the jar,

it didn't taste or smell of anything.

What tends to happen with those products in the jars

is they take the fresh truffles, they poach them in hot water,

all the flavour goes into the water,

a lot of the flavour goes into the water, they put that in a can

and they sell that to chefs and they cook with it,

and then they put the truffles into the jar and sell them to you and me.

So by the time it's got into the jar,

it's lost a lot of that wonderful aroma.

Dr Thomas can also explain how it is that many of the truffle products

on sale in supermarkets now seem so affordable.

What they did in the '80s,

they took one of the flavour compounds from truffles,

they synthesised it and produced it artificially

and then they started to produce truffle oil with it.

So when you buy truffle oil, even though it says natural flavouring,

they can call it natural flavouring, they can call it truffle extracts,

they can call it truffle concentrate

and it's pretty much always synthetic.

So, do you think that's a good justification for the prices?

Absolutely not.

It's a very cheap product to produce.

So we've asked Dr Thomas

to take a look at a couple of supermarket products

to see if the taste of luxury they appear to provide

is all that it seems.

First up, truffle pesto,

that costs around £2.50 for a 90g jar -

rather more than standard pesto.

In the ingredients we've got here, we've got flavourings, ubiquitous,

so that's probably some truffle flavouring within there.

But also this one contains black summer truffle.

You can see there's black specks in there.

So you think that's actually the black truffle?

Yeah, so, that should have a black truffle species in there.

Probably a lot of the flavouring's coming from

the synthetic flavour they put in, but that has real truffle in.

Next up, some truffle-infused pasta, costing £3.

This says it's got mushrooms in,

truffle - 0.2%, so very small amounts.

-Tiny!

-And it doesn't even say the species, it says truffle,

so this could legitimately be Chinese truffle,

it could be French truffle, it could be Spanish truffle,

it could be English truffle, anything.

The likelihood is, it will be the cheapest.

As a truffle producer, do you think there should be

a tightening up of how truffles are described on products such as these?

Yeah. I'd love to see that.

The good things about these is it makes truffle flavour accessible.

So you can get a rough approximation of what they taste like.

So they're great to use at home, have a play around with,

but just be mindful that real truffles,

way more complex and a slightly different flavour profile.

Speaking of real truffle,

Alison's brought with her the ones she was given,

to see whether Dr Thomas can tell if they are bona fide.

I've actually brought them with me. Is that OK?

Well, thank you very much. I mean, it's listed as summer truffle.

It's even got the Latin name.

But, yeah, we'd have to have a closer look, actually.

I'll take them back and we'll try to extract some DNA

so hopefully we can get some good material from that.

-So we'll test them.

-Great, Paul. I really appreciate that.

Thank you for doing that for me.

Dr Thomas will take Alison's truffles to his lab

to see what he can find out.

As for the other products he looked at,

we asked the makers what actually goes into their truffle treats.

Tesco didn't get back to us

about its mushroom and truffle girasoli pasta.

And Sacla, the makers of the truffle pesto,

said that because truffles vary in flavour from season to season,

it does use some flavouring, in addition to real truffle,

to give it a consistent taste,

and they told us the reason its truffle pesto was more expensive

than regular pesto is partly because

it has a higher cheese and nut content as well.

Meanwhile, at his lab,

Dr Thomas has completed his tests on Alison's truffles.

Now, Alison is out of the country,

so we've turned to technology to connect them up

and find out if her suspicions are correct.

Could what she hoped would be a much-loved treat

really be potatoes posing as truffles?

Oh, gosh, I'm quite anxious to hear what the news is.

The key things really are, it was a truffle -

-it wasn't a potato, it was a real truffle.

-Oh, that's good.

Well, I'm heartened to hear that it actually was a truffle.

Yeah.

But I'm just a wee bit concerned that it still tasted of nothing.

Can you tell if the truffle actually came from Italy?

So when we checked the spores we know that it's from Europe,

but the sacs were quite empty,

so a lot of the spores hadn't quite developed,

so we know it was immature, so it had very little flavour,

probably, when it went into the preservation process.

And also, as you pointed out, you know, the smell really wasn't right,

so something happened throughout the preservation process

which rendered it bad.

It had a bad aroma and not a truffle aroma, but it was the right species.

Well, thank you so much, Paul,

for shining some light on my truffle and where it came from

and I'm really glad that it's actually a real truffle,

and it is from where it said it's from.

So after all it seems that Alison's truffle troubles

were down to preservation problems, and, according to Dr Thomas,

the contents of her jar being picked too young.

And while that's good news for her,

clearly it isn't always easy to know for sure if the food you've picked

really is one of the finer things in life.

What appears to be posh nosh may be no such thing.

And while you might think that it doesn't really matter

as long as the price is right and you enjoy it,

later on in the programme,

we'll hear why some people violently disagree.

I can't see how that can be £2.50, that £5, and that £100,

I just don't get it at all.

Caviar is the salted roe of the sturgeon fish.

It's not from the salmon, it's not from the trout,

it's not from the lump fish or the catfish roe.

They're worlds apart, worlds apart.

Next, more on our investigation into food fraud, and specifically,

curries that don't contain all the ingredients they should.

Well, we ordered in a few takeaways ourselves

and then sent them off to the lab for testing.

And the results will have you wondering if what we discovered

could even have happened to you.

Earlier, we joined a team of hungry footballers and provided them with

a very welcome post-match treat - an authentic Indian curry.

So heads down,

aim for the finishing line, and we want to know what you think of it.

What our footballers didn't know is that we had substituted the lamb

in their dishes for beef, and despite being seasoned curry lovers,

not one of them guessed the truth.

A bit shocked, really.

There's no way I would have told the difference,

it being beef, not lamb.

But I think if I had found that out, quite distressing, really, to find.

The fact that somebody in a restaurant is selling you meat,

and you're not going to know.

Now it's one thing to pull the wool over the eyes of a few footballers,

as we did - quite another to do it to paying customers.

But as we've discovered, that's exactly what

the Food Standards Agency found was being done

by a number of curry houses across the UK.

Dishes sold as containing lamb

in fact were made with cheaper beef, or chicken.

It's false, and it's not a good thing in general,

because people are obviously paying for this specific meat.

I'm a Muslim person and the food I eat should be kosher or halal.

If they said they're going serve you beef and then serve you lamb

or the other way around, then they shouldn't have done that.

It's kind of like cheating.

Yeah, I don't think that's good.

Mainly for, like, religious people who wouldn't eat, say, beef,

and also just for health reasons, you know.

Some people prefer to eat white meat.

And it's just like the moral of it -

ethically, you would rather know what you're eating.

Well, it's been over three years

since the horse meat scandal prompted the Food Standards Agency

to carry out its study into the whole issue of food fraud.

So we thought it was time to see what's changed

on the curry front, at least.

And where better to conduct our research than Bradford,

the town that's been crowned the UK's curry capital

for six consecutive years.

Firstly, we randomly selected five takeaways

which advertise lamb curries on their menus or online.

Posing as customers, we bought a lamb curry from each of them,

then took the dishes directly to a lab in Worcester.

It will be down to scientist Donna Hanks

to determine if the meat dishes we were sold

consist of the meat we asked for.

The test works by extracting DNA from the meat.

We do this by taking the meat from the samples that you brought us...

..mixing it with some special chemicals which will break down

the structure of the meat to release the DNA.

When the DNA is released, we can then run it on a special machine

that will look at specific small pieces of DNA

for each species that we are looking for.

Donna tests the meat of each of the five curries in turn.

So now we can work with this to see what species are in there.

Once the meat has been under the microscope,

it's time for the moment of truth.

Will any of the five takeaways we bought as lamb

actually contain any other meats?

The test leaves no doubt that beef has been substituted for lamb

in two out of the five curries.

Three of our five takeaways did contain lamb.

But the other two contained absolutely no lamb at all.

The results have been quite shocking.

We've seen problems with substitution of meat

from takeaways before but never quite on this scale.

To see if what we found was simply a mistake or a one-off,

we went back to the two Bradford curry houses

that sold us the fake lamb dishes.

Once again, posing as customers,

we asked for a lamb curry in both.

On our second visit to one of them,

we were told that they didn't sell lamb, so we left empty-handed.

We later contacted the owner

to see why we had previously been sold a lamb curry containing beef,

but have had no response to our letters and phone calls.

But it was a different story in the second takeaway.

We asked for a lamb curry,

and we were sold one without question

but when this second curry was tested at the lab,

once again, it turned out to be beef.

Well, we took our evidence to West Yorkshire Trading Standards

and with a potential case of food fraud in their hands

the team got straight on the case.

So I'm on my way to a takeaway to carry out a test purchase,

to see if the takeaway is describing it correctly or not.

Senior Trading Standards officer Jo Hamer,

is at the coalface of food fraud on a daily basis.

Her team investigates between 10 and 20 cases

of this kind of fraud every year,

so she sees first-hand the lengths that some businesses will go to

to cut their costs.

It's a tough job for Trading Standards officers

at the moment with the economy how it is.

There's more reason, I suppose, for businesses to cut corners

to try and win a quick buck here and there.

Jo is going back to the curry house

that twice sold us meat that it claimed was lamb,

though the tests proved it was beef.

She's going to order another lamb dish

to see if the same thing happens again.

We're going to test the meat for speciation,

which is to test what meat it is,

to see if the takeaway is describing it correctly or not.

Depending on what happens,

if they've got no defence, or mitigation,

then we'll instigate proceedings,

whether that be a form of caution or any other legal action against them.

Jo makes a start by ordering up the curry over the phone.

Hi. Can I place an order for collection, please?

A lamb curry, please.

Medium, please. Yes, please.

Brilliant. Thank you. Bye.

Posing as a customer,

Jo goes in and buys what the shop says is a lamb curry

and at no point while she was buying it

did anyone say it would be anything other than lamb.

Once the purchase is complete, she reveals who she is,

the friendly neighbourhood Trading Standards officer.

Then it's off to a different lab for Jo's takeaway,

where Dr Duncan Campbell is tasked with testing it.

Over the years, Dr Campbell's work has helped convict food fraud cases.

In terms of takeaways,

a conscious decision has been made to substitute a cheaper meat

for an expensive meat.

It's not an issue of contamination or someone making a mistake.

Generally, when the incident is investigated,

it's found that the owner of the takeaway is buying beef,

knows that beef is being bought, the menu description says lamb.

It's a pure and simple economic fraud.

After conducting a DNA test on the third curry

this particular establishment supplied, the results are in.

The curry was tested for speciation, so it was tested for the presence

of cow, goat, pig, and sheep,

and it's only found that there was cow present in the sample.

As with the two previous curries that we bought,

beef was the only meat present.

There was absolutely no lamb.

So it wasn't a particular surprise to me, unfortunately.

It is quite prevalent throughout West Yorkshire.

We've done quite a bit of sampling in this area and have found

quite a few cases that have been beef, as opposed to lamb.

We contacted the takeaway for an explanation but it made no comment.

Yorkshire's Trading Standards team will keep contacting the business

and aim to work with it to improve its food practices.

If the business doesn't respond or make improvements,

further action will be taken.

But with food fraud still an issue right across the country,

Trading Standards here isn't relying on simply a punitive approach

to get it under control.

With offences such as these,

we've been working with an alternative resolution,

which has been to offer them a caution,

but then also visiting the premises to get their compliance,

to educate them so that they can comply

and we've seen much better results in these than just going to court

because we're working with the takeaway, as well, to get it right.

But if that doesn't work, tougher action may be required.

When a business commits food fraud,

depending on what offences we took to court,

the outcome of that could be a considerable fine or imprisonment.

As well as that, it will most likely be in the media.

So it's the bad publicity

and potential representational damage to the business.

Well, what we've found suggests there may well be plenty more

curry houses substituting cheaper meat

for the kind that you've paid for,

and while, as we've seen, that is not always simple to spot,

if you have any cause to suspect food fraud,

it is worth getting in touch with your local Trading Standards,

or, indeed, with us.

There are several ways to contact us with any of your food concerns.

Or, indeed, if you've got a story that you'd like us to investigate,

you can get in touch via our Facebook page,

which is BBC Rip Off Britain,

our website... bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain,

or e-mail us at [email protected].

Or if you'd rather send us a letter, then our postal address is...

Getting value for money is a subject very close to my own heart

and judging from your letters and e-mails,

it's something that you care passionately about, as well.

When every penny counts,

we want to give you the confidence to spend it wisely.

So this next story will do just that.

As we heard earlier in the programme,

it does seem to be getting easier to treat ourselves

to some of the finer things in life.

But increased availability may not always mean

we're getting quite the luxury goods we think we're paying for.

So on our quest to sort the best wheat from the cheap chaff,

we're delving deeper into the luxury food market,

to see how we can work out if what we're buying is the real deal

or, indeed, worth it?

And it seems that, like me,

many of you are always on the hunt for more for less.

Obviously if somebody said there is some cheap posh nosh going,

like a fiver for a lobster, I'd buy it, yeah.

I don't really value caviar and lobster,

mainly because I'm a normal eater

and I value normal foods like fruit and vegetables.

If I go to a more high-end posh supermarket, salmon,

I can think, can be £6, £7.

But then you can go to a more budget store

and you can get it for £3 or £4.

So it is a luxury food but it's obtainable, as well,

at a cheaper price.

Maybe it's worth paying for for some people but not, like, other people.

Not people who, you know, walk through this market now and then.

So to discover what makes posh nosh...well, posh,

we've come to meet Angela Clutton, a food historian,

who's studied how our eating habits have changed throughout the ages.

It all depends on what's happening in society.

Back when people used to grow their own carrots and peas,

there is nothing posh about being able to do that

but what would have been posh, is late 1800s, turn of the century,

you were able to have pineapples - something exotic on your table

because you had a hothouse, or a greenhouse, to be able to do that.

That was posh, that showed your status.

When food is difficult to get hold of,

the price of getting your hands on it will usually go up.

But that's not the only reason

certain foods attract a luxury status.

Almost any item of food could be posh,

if it just has to fulfil a few particular criteria.

It could be that it's expensive.

It could be that it's particularly seasonal,

or from a particular place,

or, sometimes, it could be that a certain kind of person enjoys it,

and that's the aspirational lifestyle that people want,

in order to make it posh.

Angela believes that, across the centuries,

it's supply and demand that's had the biggest impact on food trends,

particularly when it comes to seafood.

Oysters are a posh food.

They have had status but that very much didn't used to be the case.

In the 1700s and the 1800s, we were awash with oysters.

They were coming from Whitstable, from the Firth of Forth,

there were millions of them coming in on the new railways.

It was the food for the poor.

It appeared in Lancashire hotpot, shepherd's pie, cottage pie,

but because they were so popular, they were over-sourced,

the supply dwindled.

So, now, we see that what happened to the status of those oysters

when there's fewer of them

and that's why now today we think of oysters

as being something which is posh.

In fact today, oysters are so in demand

that we've found restaurants charging a whopping

£34 for half a dozen.

That's over £5 for one morsel.

But, fear not, as oysters become unaffordable for many of us,

there's another seafood treat that you might be surprised

is increasingly within the grasp of all budgets,

and that's lobster - one of my favourites -

and it's all thanks to conditions

which have allowed lobsters to thrive.

In the Atlantic, their major predators have been overfished.

So with fewer cod coming after them and warmer seas to grow in,

there's no shortage of lobster.

There is a huge supply, so with cheaper lobster coming in

from the Atlantic waters,

that might now, for the first time, really change the status of lobster

and it might not be posh.

While they're not quite ten a penny yet,

there are certainly a greater number of special offers

and deals on them in supermarkets.

A few months ago, Lidl ran a promotion,

offering lobster for £2.99.

And in Iceland you can currently pick one up for even less,

just £2.49.

Half the price it was in 2014.

And there's another culinary treasure you'll increasingly find

nestled between the tinned tuna and whitebait.

It's caviar - but this one's a little more complicated,

and not just because of its price.

In one store we found caviar on sale for just £2.50.

Yet, in another, it will set you back over £200.

So, what's the difference?

Well, one person who considers those cheaper varieties decidedly fishy

is Kenneth Benning,

who owns the UK's only Beluga caviar farm in Exmoor in Devon.

He's unhappy that the word caviar is now used to describe

the fish eggs, or roe, of more species than he thinks is correct.

Caviar is the salted roe of the sturgeon fish.

It's not from the salmon, it's not from the trout,

it's not from the lumpfish or the catfish.

It's a very specific fish and a very specific product.

And there's a reason for that.

If you actually compare the two of them together,

the salmon roe or a trout roe with caviar from the sturgeon fish,

caviar, they are worlds apart.

Worlds apart.

And that goes for the price, as well.

Because Kenneth's caviar

will set you back around £250 for a 125g tin.

A figure which the farmer says

is justified by the cost in producing it.

Caviar is an expensive product.

It takes nine, ten years to produce this product.

OK? And you've got to feed it every day, et cetera.

And in farming terms, it's a risky and expensive product to produce.

Catfish roe, we're talking months.

Salmon, we're talking less than a year.

You know, you've got to take the basics of the feeding costs

and the feeding costs of eight years versus one year.

You'll get an idea why caviar costs so much money.

The Government department DEFRA says caviar is traditionally associated

with the sturgeon fish,

but it also says that the word caviar can be used

as a generic term to describe the roe from other fish species as well.

In such cases, however,

the packaging should clarify which species the eggs are from

and, in 2014, Aldi did cross the line

when it claimed to be selling a bargain Beluga caviar,

that was actually from a different type of sturgeon.

After an outcry from experts and negative press coverage,

the store was forced to relabel the lot.

And while you might think none of this matters

if you're getting a tasty treat at an affordable price,

we're curious as to whether shoppers know the difference

between some of the fish eggs currently on offer.

So we've taken to the streets

armed with three different types of caviar.

A 50g tin of Kenneth's Beluga, costing almost £100.

Salmon caviar, priced at a fiver,

and a lumpfish caviar costing £2.50.

Will this lot know their sturgeon from their salmon?

It's what it says on the tin, caviar!

Well, that's a different colour.

That's salmon, and that's Cornish salted.

-Whatever that means?

-Is it more expensive?

Well, I don't think all three are the same

because the labelling suggests

that they come from different fish families.

The Exmoor caviar is a genuine one

and the other two products are a derivative.

Really, this can't be caviar, can it?

I can't see how that can be £2.50, £5, and that £100?

I just don't get it at all.

Now, of course all these brands do meet current regulations

and can legitimately be sold as caviar.

But the reactions we had suggest that some foods

do still have a luxury connotation.

And, perhaps, sometimes, we quite like it that way.

So if you like a slice of the high life,

the best advice is to shop clever and, as ever, check those labels.

Because as we've seen, while there are bargains to be had,

clearly there are all kinds of reasons

why posh food suddenly becomes affordable

and, in some cases, it might mean

it's no longer quite as posh as you would like.

Well, that's just about all we have time for today

but thanks to everybody who shared their experience,

or suggested a story for us to investigate.

I'll certainly be double checking the meat in my meals from now on.

But at least we do know where to turn

if it seems we might have been a victim of food fraud.

And if you missed the details of that earlier,

well, it's very easy,

because you can find them on our website, which,

just to remind you, is bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain

And if you've got something you'd like us to look into on your behalf,

about food or anything else, then please do let us know.

We really appreciate all the e-mails and letters that you send us

and we'll be back to investigate

more of the things you've asked us about, very soon.

But until then, from all of us here,

-thanks for watching and goodbye.

-Bye.

-Bye.