Episode 2 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling ripped off,

and you contacted us in your thousands.

You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong

and the customer service that's simply not up to scratch.

And you have to call them.

It takes ages and somebody answers the phone who pretty much

doesn't know what you're saying.

The customer is not benefiting and no, I'm not getting value for money.

You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money

and investigate the extra charges you say are unfair.

They don't deserve to be in any form of business whatsoever,

and they just want shutting down.

And when you've lost out but nobody else is to blame,

you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.

They took the money out of my account and I don't even know who it was that was scamming me.

So, whether it's a blatant rip-off or a genuine mistake,

we're here to find out why you're out of pocket,

and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money.

This is Rip Off Britain.

Hello, and welcome to Rip Off Britain, where, as ever,

we've been busy fighting your corner,

investigating the stories you've asked us to look into.

And one of our reports resulted from hearing about a most jaw-dropping

side-effect from one particular food.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

Well, as we take a much closer look at that particular story,

I can tell you that I found myself in a situation that I never imagined

I'd ever end up in, especially after 50 years of working in television!

So, as we uncover some of the secrets of our everyday foods,

get ready not just for some useful tips,

but also quite a few surprises as well.

Can't wait!

Coming up,

we test the takeaway curries that are not what they seem

or what we ordered.

The results have been quite shocking.

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

but never quite on this scale.

And a big shock for anyone who drinks decaffeinated coffee.

Why it still has a kick you might not expect.

They have all got caffeine in.

But it says on the front...

-I know.

-Have I missed something very obvious here?

On this programme, I think it's true to say that we've always been

interested in unpicking some of the unexpected truths

about the food that we eat.

But, you know, when we first heard about this next one,

it really seemed so extraordinary, well, really, we could

hardly believe it ourselves.

It's all to do with an added ingredient

that's baked in or sprinkled on top of some very common foods,

typically bread and cakes.

And it's usually considered to be rather good for us.

But we've been contacted by one viewer for whom

entirely the opposite was true.

It's no exaggeration to say that eating it

completely changed his life, and not for the better.

Toasting some granary or seeded bread,

packed full of healthy grain and other nutrients can be

a great way to start the day.

And certainly there didn't seem any obvious cause for concern when Alan,

from south Wales, ate some for his breakfast,

one morning in the summer of 2016,

before heading off for another busy day

in his job as an industrial equipment supplier.

On that particular day he was sent for a job at a power station.

And when he arrived on site,

as part of the standard procedure required

for contractors to enter the facility, he was asked to give

a urine sample for a drugs test.

Such tests are fairly common if

employees need to drive, use heavy machinery,

or it's a job involving public safety.

I've had quite a few drugs tests. Usually when I start

with the company, I have a test there.

But this time, when the nurse analysed Alan's sample,

it became clear that there was a problem.

The nurse asked her colleague to come and look at it,

because she was not sure...

if it had passed or failed, because it was borderline.

She couldn't make a decision, either.

So then she asked another colleague to come in.

And the third one said, "I can't make a decision on it.

"So probably go to the safer side of saying that you'll

"not be allowed in."

Alan was sent home and, a few days later

when he was at his company depot in Wales,

he received some rather shocking news from his manager.

He said he'd had an e-mail to say that the drugs test I had failed,

because there was a class A drug in my system.

And what they found in my blood was morphine, traces of morphine.

And the bad news didn't stop there.

I was told I was suspended from work, pending investigation into it.

I felt empty.

I couldn't understand what was going on.

A standard drug screening can detect the presence of opiates,

which are derived from opium.

Morphine is one of these drugs,

and European testing guidelines say that the upper limit that can be

present in urine is 300 nanograms per millilitre.

A morphine level of 690 nanograms was detected in Alan's test,

more than double the limit.

To get to the bottom of how that could be,

Alan was advised to find out from his doctor whether tablets

he takes for his blood pressure might contain the drug.

But he was baffled when the answer came back, no,

none of his medication could have impacted the results of the test.

Determined to find out how morphine could possibly have got

into his body, Alan went online to investigate.

And to his utter astonishment,

his research pointed to a totally unexpected possible answer -

the toast he'd had for breakfast on the day of the test.

I read that seeded bread contains traces of morphine,

because it has poppy seeds in it.

It's true that poppy seeds do contain small amounts of

opiates. And while you may think it's far-fetched that eating them

could have an impacted the results of a drugs test,

one well-known baker, Warburtons,

actually has a warning about this on its website.

And three years ago, at Brixton Prison, poppy seed bread was blamed

when inmates - and, indeed, the prison governor -

tested positive for opiates.

As a result, anything with poppy seeds was

taken off the canteen menu.

The explanation is that even when the seeds are washed and processed,

traces of opiates still remain.

And it's these traces that Alan is convinced must have impacted

his test results.

Poppy seeds, it's an ingredient.

It's not...

something that you would suspect would be involved

in any kind of drug.

Nevertheless, to his horror,

his job suspension turned to a dismissal.

I've never been out of work.

You feel demoralised, you feel as if you have no worth, I suppose.

And, at the end of the day, I've looked back at it and I'm thinking,

"All this has happened because I've eaten toast.

"I just can't believe that."

Now, I can promise you that, throughout my working life,

I have never taken anything stronger than an over-the-counter painkiller.

I mean, let's face it, I don't even smoke!

But as a journalist,

it's really important to me that I research my stories properly and,

where this one is concerned, that means just one thing.

Yes, over three days,

I ate a whole loaf of 400g bread laden with poppy seeds

along with a poppy seed bagel bought fresh from my local bakery.

I then did a quick urine sample and sent it off to a lab for analysis

to see if, like Alan, I would test positive for morphine.

Two days later, I visit Professor Atholl Johnston,

an expert in toxicology

at Queen Mary University to get the results.

If I was someone who habitually ate bread, cakes,

that had been cooked with poppy seeds in them,

would there be a build-up of that in my system?

Yes. If you liked poppy seeds and you ate poppy seeds every day in bread,

yes, it would build up and it would get to what's called a steady state

where the amount of poppy seeds or morphine you took in every day would

build up to a limit, and that would be excreted in your urine

over a 24-hour period.

To see what effect poppy seeds had on my sample,

Dr Johnston did a very similar test to the one that, in the end,

cost Alan his job.

I have to say, I am a little bit nervous to know what he's found.

So, Atholl, what's the result of my test?

Well, you are positive for morphine.

You excreted 13 nanograms per ml of morphine in your urine.

That sounds terrible! I mean, does that mean that if I was

taking a test as an employee that my employers could say,

"There's a possibility, Rippon, that you are a drug taker?"

If they followed the European guidance for testing of drugs

-in the workplace, no, you wouldn't be because...

-Phew!

..the limit there is 300 nanograms per ml.

So you excreted about ten times less than you would need to have a

positive test and be struck off from your workplace.

So, if my morphine levels aren't enough to cost me my job,

how could Alan's result have come out so much higher?

One of the things you need to consider is that poppy seeds are

a natural product, and the amount of morphine in a poppy seed will vary

quite considerably depending on when it was harvested,

where it was harvested and, in fact, when tests have been done,

there's about a 600-fold variation in the amount of morphine in poppy seeds.

-As much as that?

-From the maximum to the minimum.

That's extraordinary.

So, if you took the one that had the most opiate in it,

you would have a higher reaction?

Yes, you could get actually nearly a therapeutic dose of morphine if you

took quite a lot of bread, but you'd have to take quite a lot of bread.

But does that suggest, then, that perhaps,

while it's telling you you've got morphine,

that I've got morphine in my system,

that that is not actually an accurate assessment of what my

situation is regarding whether or not I take drugs?

No, I think that's exactly right.

You can't say, from just a test in urine,

that you are a drug abuser and you are taking morphine or heroin

for kicks, so to speak.

When you get a positive test like that,

someone needs to review that test and also review your situation,

then someone needs to ask a few questions

and perhaps repeat the test.

And there are other foods you should declare if you go for a drugs test -

hemp seeds, tonic water and even cough syrup that contains codeine.

All of which explains why Dan Shears at the workers' union the GMB

also agrees that employers should

be cautious about knee jerk reactions to a positive test.

Part of the point of having a regime in place - is it's supposed to act as a deterrent, yes,

but actually, if it ends up getting rid of people in the business who've done nothing wrong

you undermine the whole relationship you've got with your entire workforce.

So, what are the employees' rights in a situation like that?

Well, they are fairly limited.

It depends very much on what the contract of employment says.

But, as I say, there is really no legislation around this

in terms of actual testing process.

There's very little, realistically, that somebody can do.

Since the shock result of Alan's drugs test,

he has managed to get another job, but the whole ordeal

is not something he would want anyone to have to go through.

The whole experience of it, although it's a learning curve,

it's not a very nice one.

And, to prevent this, I hope people understand...

..be careful about what they eat.

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.

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.

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.

Well, Aksar Hussain, can demonstrate.

He's the head chef of the Tipu Sultan restaurant,

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

He's going to make what looks like a chicken and lamb curry but with

cheaper beef instead of lamb.

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

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,

lo and behold, a curry.

And a team of Balti-loving Birmingham footballers is going to see what they make of it,

without any idea that all is not what it seems.

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.

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 that 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,

doubt I'd be able to tell, to be honest.

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.

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, for Hindus in particular, that can be a serious concern.

They 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.

The cow has been the top most well-respected animal in our faith.

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

Well, we thought we'd see what meat we'd end up with

when ordering a few curries of our own.

And where better to do it than Bradford - the town that's been

crowned the UK's curry capital for six consecutive years.

First, we randomly selected five takeaways

which advertise lamb curries on their menus.

We bought one from each of them,

then sent the food straight away to a lab in Worcester, where

scientist Donna Hanks

used DNA testing to see if the meat we were sold

is the lamb that we asked for.

And not all of it was.

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.

But it was a different story in the second takeaway.

We asked for a lamb curry,

and 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 its lab went on to test a third curry from the same restaurant.

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.

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.

Senior Trading Standards officer Jo Hamer and her team will keep contacting the business

with the aim of working with it to improve its food practices.

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 reputational damage to the business.

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 if you have cause to suspect any food fraud,

it's worth getting in touch with your local Trading Standards,

and, indeed, with us, at the usual address for all your stories:

Now, being Irish, I'm afraid I'm a bit of a tea fanatic.

But I know that lots of you just can't start your day

without that good old cup of coffee.

You enjoy the boost it gives you day-to-day and,

I suppose, I should be more precise and say it's the caffeine.

Now, many of you like to keep a closer eye on how much of it

you're having. And the manufacturers have certainly stepped up

when it comes to helping with that. Every supermarket and coffee shop

now offers an array of decaffeinated products.

Yet we've heard from one viewer who had a bit of a nasty surprise after

drinking her decaf.

So, brace yourself, because chances are, when you hear why,

you'll be just as surprised as she was.

There's no denying we've become a nation of coffee lovers.

Every day we sup a staggering 55 million cups of the stuff.

But we don't all like the kick that comes from caffeine,

so those wanting to steer clear of stimulants will usually

turn to decaf.

Most tea and coffee brands now offered decaffeinated alternatives.

Some claim that you can enjoy a "caffeine free cuppa."

Others say they give you "the perfect cup of coffee,

"but without the caffeine kick."

But, as Kath Hilderley from Peterborough was surprised to discover,

that doesn't mean they're totally caffeine free.

The former prison officer was due to have a heart scan

as part of ongoing treatment for an old work injury.

And she was told to avoid caffeine for the 24 hours beforehand.

She thought nothing of drinking decaf coffee instead.

When I got to the hospital, one of the nurses said,

"Right, what have you eaten for the last 24 hours?"

I said, "Decaf coffee," and that's when she said,

"There's caffeine in decaf coffee.

"You cannot have the scan."

Kath was astonished.

But the nurse was adamant that there was caffeine in her system,

so her scan had to be cancelled.

I was angry.

I was upset because I thought by having decaf coffee was no caffeine.

I thought that was the right thing to do.

In fact, decaf coffee does still contain caffeine,

which the hospital involved says it made clear in the leaflet that they send to patients.

Upset by her experience, Kath got in touch with Kenco,

asking why its decaf coffee has no mention of its caffeine content

on the label.

The company replied, confirming that the product does contain caffeine,

but only a small amount.

0.3 mg of it, compared to 65 mg

that you'd expect to find in a regular cup of coffee.

I'm sure like many of you,

I didn't realise that when something says decaf, or decaffeinated,

that actually there still can be some caffeine in the product.

Even the word decaffeinated, to me,

makes it sounds like everything has been removed.

So, we've come to this cafe in Reading to see

if customers and staff here know which drinks contain caffeine.

In front of them is a range of products that either claim to be

decaffeinated or that you might assume are totally caffeine free.

But is that right?

Let's see if they can spot which ones do and don't contain

that caffeine stimulant.

Decaf.

Hmm, this might be a trick one.

-I love hot chocolate.

-I like hot chocolate, too.

Chocolate's not going to have caffeine in it, surely.

OK, right.

Caff free...

-Caff free.

-So I suppose it says that, so I shall put it there.

Now they've made their choices, it's time to reveal the truth.

I'm going to have to put that one over there.

-Really?

-I'm going to have to put that one over there.

I'm going to have to put this one over there, the chocolate.

I'm going to have to put this over there and I'm going

to have to put the tea bags over there.

-Really?

-They have all got caffeine.

That's so bad!

-But it says on the front...

-I know.

..decaf? Have I missed something very obvious here?

No, so you think that's misleading when you see that on the front?

Incredibly misleading.

Our simple test has confirmed that to many of us, decaf means no caff.

But while the various processes manufacturers use to decaffeinate

coffee remove most of the caffeine, there'll always be a bit left.

Admittedly, only small amounts - but it's there all the same.

So what are the rules on how a product should make that clear?

Well, any that's been through the decaffeination process,

leaving less than 0.3% caffeine, is classed by law and labelled as decaffeinated.

But manufacturers often only mention that residual caffeine content

in the small print which many of us miss, like on this coffee

that actually says it's "caff free" which isn't quite true.

No wonder marketing expert David Duke thinks the industry

could be making things much clearer.

Manufacturers and marketing brand leaders want to actually create the

impression that this is something special,

but creating that impression might mislead

and so something like "caff-free"

is an alternative way of trying to describe a decaffeinated product,

but of course, I would regard something that says caff-free as being

perhaps significantly more likely to be absolutely 0% and therefore if it

does contain caffeine, if it says caff-free, yes,

I would regard that as misleading.

That caff-free product came from the makers Kenco JDE.

It told us that, while the product complied with the rules by making

clear in a number of places that it was decaffeinated,

it now has dropped the name "caff free"

as part of a rebrand on all of its products.

As for hot chocolate, there's no need to declare caffeine unless it's been added as an ingredient.

And, as manufacturer Cadbury points out,

the caffeine in its product:

But Kath remains frustrated that decaffeinated products aren't

what she'd imagined them to be.

What I'd like to see is the packaging marked clearer.

Decaf just along the label isn't enough, in my opinion.

It should be marked, "less caffeine."

Well, that's almost it from us for today.

No doubt you'll have learned quite a few things you didn't know

from the stories we've investigated today - we certainly did.

And I have to say, I'm still reeling from that Angela Rippon drug test -

which still sounds like the most improbable tabloid headline you'll ever read!

But if you've got a food question or, indeed, any consumer issue

that you'd like us to get to the bottom of,

do please get in touch, cos we love to hear from you.

And it could be your story we investigate on a future programme.

Well, that's where we leave it for now, but we will see you again soon,

-and, from the three of us, bye-bye.

-Goodbye.

-Goodbye.