Episode 10 Rip Off Britain: Food

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 you can feel ripped off

by the promises made for what you eat.

AND what you pay for it.

It makes my blood boil, because I feel like they're tricking people.

From claims that don't stack up,

to the secrets behind the packaging,

we uncover the truth about Britain's food.

So you can be sure you're getting what you expect, at the right price!

Your food, your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain.

Exposing more secrets about something none of us can do without

and that is our food.

Now, the average British household

spends around £3,000 a year buying it

and the cost of what we eat is currently rising

significantly faster than just about everything else.

Yes, with meals taking such a big bite out of your budget,

you want to be sure you know EXACTLY what you're getting for your money.

So today we'll be taking a closer look at some of the everyday things

we buy, unpicking the claims made for them and, of course, the cost.

And that's one of the key things because it's quite shocking

how much, for example, that daily cup of coffee

mounts up to over the year. So, the question is,

are we paying over the odds?

Well, as we find out, we'll also have advice

to make sure that you're getting the most from your hard-earned money.

Coming up...

You may THINK you don't eat much salt,

but there may be more of it than you realise in foods you didn't expect.

If I was to ask you, which you thought had the most salt in them,

Madeira cake or the chips, which would you say?

And how much do you understand about all those reassuring labels

that foods now have on their packaging?

I think the whole area of food-labelling

and food labelling marks is a complete dog's breakfast.

Now, nearly half of all the eggs we buy in the UK are free-range

and most of us don't really mind paying a little bit extra for them,

because with it comes the reassurance

that the birds they come from are just that bit better looked after

and, as much as they can be, live happier lives.

But what if that was wrong?

Would you change your shopping habits

if I was to tell you that free-range hens aren't always happy hens?

Footage like this had a real impact on consumers.

For decades, when it came to eggs,

the only choice offered on supermarket shelves

was what size and how many.

But as a light was shone on battery farming,

the pressure grew for a more chicken-friendly alternative.

In 1991, just 10% of

the eggs we bought were free-range,

whereas by 2013,

they'd captured 50% of the market.

That's 2.5 billion free-range eggs sold a year!

I do buy free-range eggs,

because I believe that the chickens are better looked after.

Usually shopping with the missus and she'd rather have

the chickens looked after, so we'd go for the free-range.

And it seems many of us don't mind paying a little bit extra

to ensure a happy hen laid our egg.

They can call it what they like, but free-range

is the only thing people should buy if you've got a conscience.

But while we took note of the plight of battery hens,

probably fewer of us noticed that, in January 2012,

an EU ruling finally came into force,

banning the use of battery cages right across Europe.

So the method of keeping birds that we felt so strongly about

no longer exists and instead, has now been replaced

by what are known as "enriched, colony cages".

As the name suggests, the hens are still caged

but they have much more room to nest, scratch and roost.

This farm in Nottinghamshire has one million hens,

which produce around 300 million eggs a year.

Here in the shed, the birds are stocked at

nine birds a square metre.

It's here where the birds get their food and water as well.

Andrew Joret chairs the British Egg Industry Council,

which represents the nation's egg producers,

both those using cages and free-range.

What we would say is, without a shadow of doubt,

the new enriched colonies are much better from a bird point of view

than the conventional cages they replaced.

They have a nest, which is an important urge for a bird

to lay its egg in a nest. They have perching,

which the birds use both in the day time

and they're asleep on them at night

which also improves their leg strength

because they're going up and down onto the perches,

and then they have this scratching area

which they didn't have before.

So the bird is able to do in this system

a lot more than it used to do in the old system.

And Andrew is convinced that the new rules

are paying dividends for the hens.

One of the welfare indicators that we look at

is the feather score at the end of lay,

at the end of the cycle for the birds.

And these new colonies have much better feather score at end of lay

than the previous cages did have.

And that's because they now have a scratching area,

they now have more space.

And there's more things to do within that big colony,

so they're not rubbing up against the sides all the time.

So we would say there is something in this system

that birds like and is good for welfare.

That seems to be a conclusion endorsed by research,

which recently hit the headlines, undertaken by animal welfare experts

at Bristol University.

The research compared the conditions for hens

under the now banned battery method with the new cages...

..and also free-range.

And as Christine Nicol, one of the authors, told BBC Radio 4,

what they discovered was unexpected.

That sometimes the new enriched cages meant better welfare

than even free-range.

To our surprise, we found that on some measures

the birds in the enriched cages had better welfare,

so their mortality was lower, their bone fractures were lower

and some of the damage

that the birds can do to each other by pecking

was lower in that system as well.

Newspapers were quick to suggest this new research

meant that free-range eggs aren't all they're cracked up to be.

After all, if in their new cages some hens appear to be quite happy

and well-looked after, is it really worth paying extra

for free-range eggs that often cost twice as much?

Well, the truth isn't quite that simple.

And the research certainly wasn't intended to mean

you should stop paying those extra pennies for the reassurance

the words "free-range" can give.

Jane Howarth is passionate about hens.

As founder of the British Hen Welfare Trust,

she takes a keen interest in the free-range versus caged debate.

She says the key to a happy hen is simply how well

that particular flock is cared for,

rather than which method of production is used.

There is no doubt in my mind that the caged units

provide the birds with better facilities than the battery cages.

A well-managed colony unit will provide really good welfare

for the bird, no doubt, but I have to say

a well managed free-range unit will offer the birds

a more natural environment.

But Jane acknowledges that even though she regards free-range

as the ideal, if it isn't done well

then there are instances where caged can be better.

You can have birds kept in a free-range unit,

where the management is poor and clearly the welfare of the birds

would be better in a caged environment.

Food journalist, Rose Prince, agrees

and says that what we THINK we're getting

when we buy free-range, might not always be the case.

The average shopper, when they see an egg box marked free-range,

will imagine grassy fields, neat fencing

a farmyard, very Beatrix Potter.

The actuality is often very different

and it varies from farm to farm.

But when free-range is at its best,

it seems how the hens are looked after may not be the only benefit.

Free-range is an animal welfare issue,

but it is also about the taste.

A hen that can roam in a natural pasture

and peck at seeds from plants or grubs and worms

will transfer that flavour to its eggs.

But if you're confused over what all this means for which eggs

to go for, there's one very simple piece of advice to keep in mind.

I would advise anyone buying eggs to look out for the Red Lion mark.

This is a sign first of all that the eggs are British,

so you have a much surer idea of the welfare

because it is laid out by strict rules.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they are free-range eggs,

the most important thing that it means,

is that the hen that laid the egg was vaccinated against salmonella.

That's a message that Jane would endorse.

If you really, really can't afford free-range eggs

then definitely buy British eggs.

They will at least be laid by hens kept in the new style colony cages,

and they're a whole lot better than the old style battery cages.

Ultimately, deciding whether to shell out that little bit extra

for eggs labelled as free-range is a personal choice.

But if you're doing it purely because you think the alternative

means poorly-kept hens, well, it seems that's no longer the case.

So now that the type of battery cages that so shocked us

in the '80s and '90s have been consigned to the history books,

a cheaper egg doesn't necessarily have to mean a guilty conscience.

Doctors are always telling us to watch how much salt we eat.

But that can be easier said than done.

Because three-quarters of the salt we consume

is not added by us at all.

It's already inside the foods we eat every day.

And it's not always in the ones that you would expect.

I have to say we were rather shocked by those familiar products

that contain some of the highest percentages of salt.

Especially as you probably would not have thought

that some of them had any in at all.

We're a nation of salt lovers

but, on average, we all have as much as 50% more than we should.

A recent review of scientific studies found that

if we could halve the amount of salt that we eat, it could

prevent 35,000 UK deaths from heart disease and stroke.

We're only supposed to consume a maximum of 6g of salt per day.

That's a little over a teaspoon.

But few of us can stick to that,

to the despair of dieticians like Helen Turner.

We really do like the taste of salt, don't we?

It's almost like we crave it.

Salt makes our food really tasty.

Actually salt's not very good for us

and can actually cause us to have high blood pressure

or hypertension, which can lead to heart disease and stroke.

So one of the things we would always recommend is that people try

to cut down their salt in their diet.

And while we can all try and stop

reaching for the salt shaker when we are eating,

Helen and her colleagues have come up with other ways

to stop us taking in too much,

including a rather clever idea they've introduced at the chippy.

We've removed or changed the 17-hole salt shakers

in 1,000 fish and chip shops across Greater Manchester

and replaced those with five-hole salt shakers.

We've calculated that will save the Greater Manchester

population 26 tonnes of salt a year.

Every little less salt helps.

But we may not always know that it's there.

Now, it's not just the salt that we sprinkle on our chips

that we have to think about because, during a day,

you may find that you're consuming

salt that is actually hidden in foods.

So you may think you're doing the right thing by not

reaching for the salt cellar

but, in fact, you can get just as much salt

from some very unexpected places.

If you rely on ready meals then your diet will probably be high in salt.

And then things like soups and sauces,

things like ketchup, mayonnaise.

Sandwiches that you might buy out at lunch time

will be fairly high in salt.

And then the very unexpected things, things like biscuits,

they can be all very high in salt.

That all mounts up.

In fact, salt added to our food by the manufacturers

accounts for a massive 75% of our total annual intake.

As a nation, we tend, on average, to consume 50% more salt

than we're supposed to. But how much is too much?

And how can you tell a low salt food from a high salt one?

Shall we go and find out?

I'm going to see if shoppers can guess

which products contain more salt.

And get ready for a few surprises.

If I was to show you those two -

hot chocolate and peanuts, salted peanuts -

which would you say has got the most salt in?

-That one.

-The salted peanuts?

-Yes.

-Salted peanuts or hot chocolate?

-Hot chocolate.

I would have said the peanuts definitely.

-You would have said the peanuts?

-Yeah.

Why would you have said chocolate?

I think there's a lot of hidden things within these.

Definitely the salted peanuts.

Definitely the salted peanuts. Bottom of the class.

1.3g per 100 in the salted peanuts

and 1.95 g in the hot chocolate.

-My goodness.

-Surprised?

-Very surprised.

-Amazing!

-You wouldn't think so.

-Why would you have that in there?

Now, of course, the figures on the packaging don't always

tell the whole story.

They'll often list salt content per 100g, which,

in the case of hot chocolate,

means that it's in its undiluted powdered form.

Add water to drink it and - as the label also says -

a typical serving contains much less salt.

But you might not have expected

there to be any salt in there at all.

In fact, as we'll see,

salt is often added to what seem to be entirely sweet products because

it's a powerful flavour enhancer and can also be used as a preservative.

If I was to ask you which you thought had the most salt in -

the Madeira cake or the chips - which would you say?

-I'd say the chips.

-You would?

-Yeah.

-You'd be wrong.

0.1% per 100g in the chips. 0.5 per 100 in the Madeira cake.

If you were given the choice between Angel Delight

and chicken nuggets which would you think has the most salt in?

The chicken nuggets.

-You would?

-Yeah.

-You'd be wrong.

-Really?

Can you believe there is only 0.6g of salt per 100

-in chicken nuggets...

-Oh, my God.

..but there is 2.38g per 100 in Angel Delight?

I had no idea!

We contacted the manufacturers of the products

that we took out and about...

Both Cadbury's and Premier Foods, who make Angel Delight,

reiterated that the high figure of salt

per 100g on their packaging relates to the products

when they're not made up rather than how they're normally consumed.

Premier Foods stressed that a standard portion of Angel Delight

contains less than half a gram of salt,

some of which is naturally derived from the milk used to make it

and added that the company has...

And ASDA told us that its Madeira cake, like all their

own brand products, has traffic light labels on the packaging

to help consumers...

But it does seem if you were to simply guess which foods

might contain salt, you might not be right.

And finding foods with a lower salt content isn't always easy.

People tend to be very good at picking lower fat foods

and there's... Again, looking for sugar-free alternatives

and things like that.

But not many people would look to sort of choose a low salt version.

They are out there

but you actually have to look quite hard to find them.

And that is what can make it so difficult to avoid salt

even if you think that you are choosing a healthy diet.

Take James and Nick, who work as designers in Manchester's

trendy Northern Quarter.

They reckon that, overall, they usually make the right

culinary choices.

'I'm definitely aware of what I eat. I try and keep healthy.'

But then if I'm tired or stressed or whatever I'll definitely notice that

I'll just eat sometimes something that's quick and easy.

'I'm not too conscious, really, about trying to, you know, calorie'

count or watch certain things that I eat.

I just... I generally like healthier foods.

So far, so good, you might think. But just how much salt

are Nick and James consuming without realising it?

To put that to the test, we asked them to keep

a diary of everything that they ate over one weekend.

Then, come Monday morning, we asked our dietician Helen to take a look.

Can you guess or do you know how much salt that you're

-supposed to have in grams per day?

-It's about 6g.

Very good. We've analysed the two days of food that you've eaten

and on one day you had 15g plus.

-Right, OK.

-OK. And on the other day you had 8g of salt.

After eating a takeaway with curry sauce as well as other foods

perhaps even more surprisingly high in salt, such as white bread

and ketchup, James consumed a total of 23g of salt over

the weekend - nearly twice as much as the recommended amount.

So how did Nick do?

So, Nick, you fared a little bit better in your salt intake.

-OK.

-One day you had had 12g and one day you had 9g.

-OK.

-OK.

So the foods that sort of pushed your salt intake up were

actually the stock cube that you'd used in your soup.

-In my soup.

-And your granary bread

cos you were into your bread as well, weren't you?

And also you are a fan of butter, aren't you?

-Yeah, butter in cooking, yeah.

-Big butter fan.

How do you control that?

I think, in terms of controlling it, one thing that you can do is

look at labels. Labels are fairly confusing but some breads

and cereals and things like that will be lower than others.

It'll take you longer shopping. And take your glasses with you.

Cos the labels are really, really tiny.

But even with your glasses on, those labels can be very confusing.

Not least because sometimes they don't list salt, but sodium.

Many of us assume that one is the same as the other.

But it is not quite as simple as that.

In fact, to work out what sodium means in terms of salt,

you need to do a bit of maths.

And the answer might mean that, once you've done your sums,

that low level of sodium on the label could actually turn out

to be a rather higher amount of salt,

which makes it harder to understand just how much you're having.

A quick trip down the supermarket aisles

and we found products as diverse as salad dressing, corned beef,

curry sauce and cup-a-soup that all listed just sodium and not salt.

Manufacturers can cause a lot of confusion, when you're reading

labels, by putting sodium on the labels rather than salt.

What's important - to convert sodium into salt,

you just need to times the grams by 2.2

and then you'll get the amount of salt in that particular food.

Things should get a little easier for the consumer by the end

of the year when it will become compulsory for food manufacturers

to display the salt and not just sodium content.

But now they know just how much more salt they are eating than

they should be, will the boys think twice about what

they put on their plates?

I guess most days I'll be more conscious of the everyday stuff

that I'm eating like the meats and the things that you're not instantly

aware of that has more salt. I'll maybe just be conscious of that.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain,

we unpick the cost of a cup of coffee and reveal how much that daily

treat can end up setting you back over a year.

If my wife saw that,

yeah, she'd be making me have... She'd be making sandwiches!

You know, sometimes our food choices don't just come down to price

or even some of the claims that are made

for how tasty or healthy they are.

We might buy a particular product because of the logos on the packet

suggesting that they meet one of the various food quality schemes.

Now, these logos are obviously there to convince us that when we

part with our cash we are doing so in the knowledge that what we are

buying meets a certain standard.

But how much do we really know about

what some of the best known logos actually mean

and, indeed, whether or not the promises really stack up?

From salmonella in the '80s

and BSE in the '90s

to foot and mouth in the noughties,

Britain has had plenty of food scares that

seriously knocked public confidence in what we put on our plates.

The food and farming industry acted fast to put that right

and a whole raft of new schemes were created to try

and convince us that we can trust the quality of what we are buying.

From Fairtrade to Freedom Foods,

organically grown to sustainably sourced,

our food these days is covered in so many labels and

all of them are trying to help us make the best choices for ourselves.

But is it all getting just a little bit too confusing?

Just how many of the alphabet soup of labels on our food

do shoppers even recognise, let alone understand?

Or are all those different symbols that little bit too confusing?

Would you recognise any of these signs on food at all?

And, if so, do you know what they mean?

No, and I do shopping every week.

-Yes. I'm like him.

-You don't recognise what that is?

I know what food standards means but I don't recognise the symbol.

Right. How about that and that?

Do you recognise the difference between them if there is any?

I would associate the colour on that more with organic

but I wouldn't recognise that.

I've never seen that one before.

That's the Organic Food Federation, which means it's organic, of course.

-And how about that?

-I have never seen that either.

-You haven't?

-No.

Would you recognise what these labels are on things

and if you saw them?

Five a day.

-Do you know what that is?

-Yeah.

-What?

-Five fruits and veggies a day.

And that? Do you know what it represents?

-No.

-No.

-And that one. Do you know what that represents?

-No.

But if you saw that label on foods, would it influence

-you as to what you bought?

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

-Five a day, yeah.

Do you recognise any of these symbols and know what they mean?

-The Red Tractor.

-What does that mean?

Well, all the food produced to that standard...

Well, it's produced to the Red Tractor standards.

-The Union Jack is a bit of a give away.

-Oh, it's all British.

I wouldn't have recognised that that as a tractor unless you'd said.

I suppose it is a bit stylised, isn't it?

The confusion we found is echoed by those who campaign to

improve our food.

I think the whole area of food labelling

and food labelling marks

is a complete dog's breakfast.

I think most people don't know the difference

between one and the other.

They're trying to do their best to buy something that's healthy,

that's ethical, that's good for animal welfare and so on,

and the labelling system more or less prevents them

from doing what they want to do.

What we need are some more rules

and some more people to enforce those rules.

At the moment, the system is almost completely voluntary.

But perhaps it's no wonder that we don't always understand just

what the labels mean when there isn't always agreement within

the industry about which are the most helpful.

Take, for instance, the debate around one of the ones

that's most widely used.

This Red Tractor logo is just one of the signs that is being

produced to try and help make things a little bit easier for shoppers.

It's something you may well have seen yourself

when you've been out buying food.

Perhaps it really did influence you in your choice of product.

But even this has had its critics.

And it's certainly not universally recognised.

This little Red Tractor

with a Union Jack underneath is on hundreds of products

as an assurance that the food inside is responsibly produced and

that the ingredients can be traced back to inspected farms in the UK.

It was launched in 2000 by a body made up of experts from farming

and the food industry uniting every part of the UK food chain to

provide a single stamp of approval.

And the scheme's chief executive is confident that, because it

covers everything from safety and hygiene to animal welfare and

the environment, seeing that logo on packets is invaluable for consumers.

It's about demonstrating to consumers,

to shoppers that food has been made to the standards they expect,

all the way from the farm right through to the supermarket shelf.

Animals being well treated, control of animal diseases

and care for the environment.

Red Tractor say that the scheme involves 78,000 farm businesses

and that any supplier who uses the logo is independently inspected

and certified as meeting their standards.

Certainly, that little red tractor has been widely used,

with all of the big four supermarkets using it...

up until now.

Over the last 18 months, the number two supermarket chain,

Sainsbury's, has phased out the use of the Red Tractor on packaging

because, they say, customers have told them that...

But they insist that, although the logo has

gone from their foods, they're more committed to British farms than

ever and they still adhere to the standards

that the tractor represents.

But, for some critics of Red Tractor,

those standards are not rigorous enough.

Compassion In World Farming worries that consumers may think

Red Tractor standards are higher than campaigners believe they are.

What we are concerned about is that Red Tractor, all too often,

assures little more than compliance with minimum legislation

and Government guidelines.

To us, in terms of higher welfare, that's not good enough.

If shoppers are looking for a genuinely higher welfare option

then look out for terms such as free-range, such as organic,

the RSPCA's Freedom Food scheme label. These are the ones to go for.

What I would like to see is all meat

and milk be labelled according to method of production

so people can tell whether it's come from a free-range system

or whether it's come from a factory farm.

All of that is criticism which Red Tractor firmly rejects.

I don't think it's true that we are only putting

a stamp on the minimum legal requirements.

First of all, I think it's about consumer choice.

We have good practical standards that produce food at a price

that most shoppers can afford.

We have a number of standards right across the piste

that are above legal minima.

For example, in our poultry scheme, we demand 10% more space for the

chickens than the EU minimum and we have done some ground-breaking

work on animal welfare in the pig and dairy sector only this year.

It also rejects the idea

that its label simply adds to shoppers' confusion.

I think that it's very easy to underestimate consumers. They

are more savvy than that and they do understand the Red Tractor logo.

Our latest evidence is that two thirds of consumers recognise

our logo and about a third of shoppers actually look actively

for Red Tractor products when they shop.

Well, thanks to that flag, the Red Tractor logo is perhaps easier

to work out than some of the other logos stuck proudly onto our foods.

But it's a little ironic that labels supposed to make understanding

our food simpler are reckoned by some to do completely the opposite.

I think most people, when they go shopping, look at all the

different labels and don't have a clue what most of them really mean.

Sometimes you have a general impression that might be

completely wrong and it's really hard to find out what

all of them mean and what the details are behind them.

'And it does seem from the people that we asked that not all of these

'logos including the Red Tractor,

'are quite as familiar as the industry might hope.'

Where do you think you might find that?

Above some meat perhaps?

-How about eggs?

-Well, you might.

-It's the lion on the eggs.

-Of course it is.

How about that one?

Um...I'm not so sure about that.

It sort of is what it says, really. Quality standard brand.

I imagine it's not horse meat posing as beef.

I think you're right there!

But that's the Red Tractor.

Do you know what the Red Tractor stands for?

The Union Jack's a bit of a give away.

Yes, well... Red Tractor. Do you know? I'm going to fail.

I'm going to pass on this one.

Now, if you've ever wondered what it is that makes you choose

a particular tipple when you go out for a drink,

it may not be as accidental as you think.

Food journalist Richard McComb

is here to share some secrets of just how it is that bars and pubs

can get you get you to spend more

as soon as you walk through the door.

An eagle-eyed member of bar staff would be trying to

read your body language as you walk into the bar.

They'll be trying to work out what kind of day you had, perhaps.

Say you step up to the bar

and you've had a particularly hard day in the office.

They maybe say to you, "Maybe you'd like a large gin and tonic, sir."

Before you realise it, you've just bought yourself a double.

But you think, "What the hell? It's been a hard day."

Or maybe you fancy a glass of red wine.

A good bar staff member will say to you, "We've got a particularly

"good merlot on today, sir.

"All of our customers are saying it's terrific.

"Maybe you'd like to try a large one of those."

And before you know it again, you've got a very large glass of wine.

The atmosphere in a bar is key to getting you spending and,

according to Richard, a crucial part of that can be the music.

In many cases, that's what the music is there for,

just to create a nice cool vibe.

In other occasions, however, it's there for a very different reason.

Because if it's played really loudly,

you can't hear your companion talk. If you can't hear each other talk,

you're probably likely to turn to drink, quite literally.

And have you ever wondered why some bars are so hot?

When it comes to the temperature inside bars,

it really is a case of the heat is on.

Bar staff are told to crank up the thermostat in order to get us

nice and hot under the collar.

So, of course, when we're hot, we get thirsty.

When we're thirsty, we drink a lot more alcohol.

Crucially, however, alcohol also dehydrates you,

it makes you more thirsty.

So, the more alcohol you drink, the thirstier you get.

And Richard warns against being tempted to spend more

because of a fancy name.

The new kid on the block, or rather the old kid, is the cocktail.

The revival of cocktail has been an absolute god-send for bars.

Now, there is a price to pay for premium cocktails with really

high-grade spirits and quality mixers.

However, any idiot can slosh together a rum and coke,

stick in loads of ice, throw in a lime wheel,

maybe put on one of those pretty umbrellas,

and repackage it as a Cuba Libre. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Especially when you've got to pay an extra three quid for it(!)

Our lives today are busier than ever.

We can be constantly on the go and when we're out and about,

naturally, we need refuelling.

But that can be an expensive business

especially now it seems that takeaway coffee cups

are almost welded to our arms.

We've been looking at whether we pay too much for those snacks

on the hoof and whether convenience comes at too high a price.

Walk down most high streets

and you'll rarely be too far from a cup of coffee.

There are now more than 5,000 branded coffee shops in the UK

and thousands more independent ones.

In a typical year, they can serve up around £6 billion worth

of cappuccinos, lattes, cakes, muffins and assorted extras.

In fact, one survey even claimed the average Brit spends

more in coffee shops each year than they do on their electricity bills.

Many of us start the day the caffeine way but, even if you only

spend £2 a cup - and you can spend a lot more than that - it soon starts

to mount up when you think about it per week, let alone per year.

To show just how dramatically it mounts up, I'm going to calculate

how much the daily spend of these hungry workers

becomes when you multiply it by a typical number of working days.

Now, where's Carol Vorderman when you need her?

-Do you buy sandwiches and coffee on a daily basis?

-I do.

-And how much you reckon you spend?

-Too much.

-Can you work that out?

-Probably about, easy a fiver.

Easy a fiver. Bag of crisps, sandwich - £5.

So, would you be interested to know what it would cost you annually?

Yeah, go on.

OK, steel yourself, because my friend here

here is going to show you the figure.

£1,175.

Seriously, that is unbelievable.

If my wife saw that she'd be making me have...

She'd be making sandwiches!

-Well, there's quite a chance she will see that.

-Yeah.

I get a large, venti size, which is three...

I think £3.75.

£3.75 for your venti.

And then how much would you reckon to spend on a sandwich?

Probably about £2.50.

So, together, that's £6 a day or more than £1,500 a year.

Oh, my God. Just some coffee and sandwich.

-Yes.

-Wow, that is a lot.

-Surprise you?

-Yes, definitely.

I think you could probably spend up to, like, £7 on lunch a day

but I mostly have a packed lunch so... I can't afford to do that.

Would you be interested to know what it would cost you

if you were spending that every day for the year?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Well, my friend here has got his calculator

and he's going to tell you.

-Oh, my God.

-That's a lot.

-That's astonishing.

-Yes.

-That's huge.

That's very nearly creeping up towards £1,500.

Each individual coffee, cake or sandwich

feels like an affordable treat and, at a time when many people

have cut down on eating out, one we're determined to hold on to.

But it's easy to see how the costs can mount up.

That's £6.15, please.

And, wherever we live, chances are we're

spending our money in the same places.

Three big chains account for a huge number of all those frothy coffees.

Costa has over 1,500 stores,

Starbucks more than 700

and Cafe Nero has around 500.

In all those coffee shops, you'll typically pay more

than £2.60 for a large latte.

Make it bigger and more elaborate, with cream, syrup or on ice,

and the drink alone could be over £4.

Throw in a cake or a muffin

and your coffee break could be seriously expensive.

But that's just the beginning.

Lunch can be an even bigger drain on our wallets.

These days, the humble British butty is a mainstay of the nation's

midday meals

and we spend a staggering £5 billion a year on lunches on the go.

The number of coffee shops on our high streets

is dwarfed by the number of sandwich shops.

The biggest player fighting for our lunch money is Greggs,

with more than 1,600 stores.

Hot on their heels is the American chain Subway, which now has more

than 40,000 outlets around the world and almost as many

branches in the UK as Greggs does.

Together with Eat, Pret A Manger and some smaller chains,

there are around 4,000 branded sandwich shops in the UK.

And it's a crowded market - there are at least

the same number of independent sandwich shops.

But, surprisingly, we don't buy the majority of our sandwiches

from any of these places at all.

The sandwich market in the UK is valued at £3.5 billion

so it has grown massively over the last ten years.

Supermarkets have come in in recent years and taken

the lion's share of the market and now sell much cheaper sandwiches.

Obviously great news for the consumer but not

so good for the small sandwich shop owner.

And if the growing power of the supermarkets isn't enough to

contend with, sandwich shops have a bigger problem on their hands -

impatient customers. According to one survey,

city centre sandwich shoppers won't queue for more than two minutes.

When you go into a sandwich shop,

it tends to be a pretty clear transaction -

you go in, you order your stuff, you take away, you go home.

So, with less opportunity to sell you extras, the sandwich shops

need bigger margins on the items you DO buy if they're to break even.

An egg and cress sandwich in Eat will set you back £1.70.

But if you bought eggs,

bread and other ingredients at a supermarket, you could make the same

for less than 50p.

A Subway Swiss and tomato six-inch sub costs £2.30.

Doing it yourself, you could make something similar for just 43p.

And a cheese and pickle sandwich from Pret A Manger cost us £2.49

but buying the ingredients to make it yourself

would typically cost just 43p.

With profit margins like that, you could be forgiven for thinking

that sandwich shops and cafes are raking it in.

But, with all their extra costs, it's not as simple as that.

Hi there. Table for two?

Peter Godfrey runs this independent cafe in central London.

Yes, of course, it's profitable but not to any high level.

I don't think our clients actually realise what things are costing here

or the running costs of the whole place. For instance, the rent is

approximately £73,000 a year alone.

You've got the rates, well over £20,000.

Plus your VAT. You've got all that for a start then you've

got your light, you've got heating, you've got wages.

And, when costs increase, prices have to as well.

Peter last put his prices up 18 months ago

but it's something he is forced to consider all the time.

Basically, as a family, we all sit down

and we go, "Right, one, how do we improve the place?

"And what about the pricing?

"Where are we going wrong? What's happened?

"What's selling? What's not selling? Can we go higher?"

And then we will actually have a discussion what we can do about it.

Well, a sandwich shop owner would say that, wouldn't he?

But does Peter have a point?

You have quite a small window when you can sell to the public.

People only want sandwiches normally at lunchtime.

Say, for example, your monthly rent and rates come to about £12,000.

Wages add another £6,300.

And that's before you've spent the £830 or so you'll need for the raw

ingredients crucial for a coffee - milk, sugar and the coffee itself.

All those costs so far come to a total of £19,130,

which works out as £637 every day.

Now, if you're selling a medium latte for £2.35, you'll need to sell

271 of those every day just to break even.

That's a lot of lattes.

And it's why, for coffee shops, extras like sandwiches

and cakes are vital to help make ends meet.

When you go into a restaurant, it is much longer process.

That server is there to make sure that you buy your glasses of wine,

buy your coffee. They get to up-sell all the time.

A coffee shop falls in the middle.

They've got these massive displays enticing you to spend more and more

money all the time and that person behind the till is trained

always to ask you to buy more

It's all about the up-sell.

I think a lot of people would be really surprised.

It is not easy to make money out of a sandwich shop.

Here at Rip-Off Britain we're always ready to

investigate more of your stories. And not just about food.

Are you confused over your bills?

Or just trying to wade your way through never-ending small print?

I mean, why is it in small print if they want you to read it, you know?

Maybe you're unsure what to do when you discover that you've lost out

and that great deal has ended up costing you money.

All my money is very hard-earned

so when I go to spend it, I expect value for money.

Or you might have a cautionary tale of your own and want to share

the mistakes you made with us.

You can always write to us at...

Or you can send us an e-mail to...

The Rip-Off team is ready, willing and waiting

to investigate your stories.

With the cost of our food rising so quickly and so many of us

buying the same products over and over again, it's more important

than ever that we know exactly what we're getting for our money.

It certainly is.

But the shops and the manufacturers don't always make it that easy

and unravelling the truth about what we eat

can be quite a minefield, as you know.

So do keep telling us about the things you'd like us to look into

and we'll keep on investigating whether those promises

and prices really do stack up.

And you'll find more tips and advice on our website. That's...

And we'll be back to expose

more of the secrets behind your shopping very soon.

-Till then, bye-bye.

-Thanks for your company. Bye-bye.