Episode 6 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.

The packaging, I think, is very misleading

and it can give people the impression of getting more than they're actually getting.

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 what you pay for it.

I always say when I get to the till, "Never! How much?"

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 a special series of Rip Off Britain

where we're getting our teeth into anything and everything to do with the food that we eat

and revealing the truth about some of the products that millions of us tuck into every day.

As you can see, our team has been very busy

going through all the e-mails and letters that you sent us on this.

It's pretty obvious that you don't always feel that you know enough

about the things that you're buying or indeed

that the key details to help you make a properly informed choice

are as clear as they should be.

The way products can be marketed or labelled only adds to the confusion

so today we'll be finding out the reality of what's in your shopping basket.

Get ready for some surprises

because not everything you take to the tills may be quite as it seems.

Coming up - when only less than half of it needs to be meat,

what else is in the great British banger?

It might say 50% meat but that might not be good quality meat.

And tough men and women but even tougher packaging.

Why can some of our foods be so hard to open?

It's more than just a daily annoyance

because if you're living alone and can't access the food,

it's a public health issue.

As our household budgets shrink and our grocery bills rise,

it's only natural that we want to get value for money

and that we're shopping around to find the best supermarket deals.

When you're trying to choose between products that are different weights or sizes,

it isn't always easy to see at a glance which product is actually cheaper,

and because of the way some supermarkets display their products,

what should be a simple comparison can turn into a complicated maths test,

meaning sometimes it's virtually impossible to know if you're getting a good deal.

Recent figures suggest almost 80% of us are now shopping around between different supermarkets

to get the best price for our groceries.

I never used to compare prices but I do now.

I take particular notice not just of the price but the portion,

how much it is per portion. It's usually on there.

But in order to be able to shop around,

you've got to be able to compare the cost of the food you're buying

and in fact there's a law that tells big shops exactly how to display their prices.

They must clearly show on the shelf or on a label the price per unit,

say 66.7p per hundred grams,

alongside the cost of the whole pack you're looking at.

This should make it much easier to compare what you're paying

between the packets of different sizes,

but that's not always what happens.

The problem arises when, on exactly the same type of product,

the supermarkets use different units on labels right next to each other.

So for example, these loose apples from Tesco

are £2.15 per kilo.

The price label on the shelf says they're 98p per pound.

But how do you compare them with these Granny Smiths?

They're £1.95 for the bag

but this time the unit price says they're 39p each.

So Tesco is expecting you to compare the cost per apple with the cost per pound.

Not quite comparing apples and pears but beyond most of us all the same.

And we found plenty of similar examples in other supermarkets,

so many in fact that we've brought a few of them along

to the world-famous Bury Market in Lancashire.

We've set up a stall with some real supermarket products and their prices

so we can test how many of you can work out the best deals on offer.

First up, these two items on sale at Tesco.

The box of Shredded Wheat Original is priced at £2.09

and the Shredded Wheat Bitesize at £2.49.

The Original Shredded Wheat has a unit price of 13.1p each,

ie per biscuit,

whereas the box of Bitesize Shredded Wheat has a unit price

of 49.8p per 100g.

So can these passing shoppers tell us which is the best value?

2.49 and 2.09. Shredded Wheat is 2.09 and Shredded Wheat is...

Very confusing. I can't find how much is in it.

Where's the grams on that?

I can't find the weight of them.

It seems that all these shoppers are none the wiser.

It is pretty well impossible to work that one out.

That's per piece of Shredded Wheat and that one's per 100g.

There's not enough information on the packet, is there?

I can't see how you can figure it out when one is giving you the price per 100g

and the other one is giving you the price per individual product.

The Shredded Wheat Bitesize are in fact better value

but in order to work this out,

we'd have to find out how much a single Shredded Wheat Original biscuit weighs,

information that's not easy to find on the box.

Next, some herbs on sale at Marks & Spencer.

These two jars may look pretty similar

and they're even the same price

but actually one is slightly better value than the other.

Let's see if the people of Bury can spot the difference

using the information they'd see on the supermarket shelf.

One is labelled 82.8p per 10g,

whereas the other is labelled £11.46 per 100g.

I think that's the best buy. But aren't they the same?

-It is confusing, isn't it?

-It is very confusing.

The best value?

So that times ten. That's the better value.

Takes a bit of working out, doesn't it?

In fact, they're all wrong.

The Italian seasoning is the better value.

There's a fair bit more in the jar and it's cheaper per 100g

but it's not as straightforward as it looks, or at least not for everyone.

Obviously that, Italian herbs, isn't it? See, I'm not from Bury.

I'm from Wigan. We have everything figured out.

But for those of us not from Wigan, it can be a tricky business.

Definitely a deliberate ploy from supermarkets just to take your money.

There's no way you can work this out when you're doing your shopping. You haven't got the time.

They should be more honest and more transparent.

I think all supermarkets should have a standard,

whatever it is per 100g,

or if you're buying liquids whatever it is per litre,

and then you've got a good idea whether you're paying over the odds

or whether you're getting a decent deal on it.

And this is exactly what the consumer magazine Which? has been campaigning for.

With unit pricing the problem we found is

that it's just inconsistent and often not clear. What we're saying

is that people need to be able to know the price they're paying for food to get the best value.

We've launched our Price It Right campaign and we've challenged all of the ten major supermarkets

to sign up to a set of voluntary commitments.

All of the ten major supermarkets should sign up to unit pricing.

If they care about their customers and their customers are telling us it's important,

they need to do this.

And with a little prodding by the Government,

all ten main chains have now agreed to take action.

But only six have pledged to include the unit price of multi-buys of the same item.

So just how widespread are these confusing price labels?

To find out, we went to some more supermarkets

and did some shopping ourselves.

We sent researchers to snap pictures of the labels in three stores

that Which?'s research initially highlighted,

M&S, Iceland and ASDA.

First, M&S.

We found that these slicing tomatoes were priced per tomato.

The ones next to them were priced per kilo

so you'd struggle to know which was cheapest.

We also found these Persil tablets were priced per tablet whereas

the Persil powder next to them on the shelf was priced per kilo.

Next we visited Iceland,

where we found these Cadbury Mini Fingers priced per unit

but the Mini Maryland packs close by were priced per 100g.

And this six-pack of Vimto is priced per unit

but the six-pack of Dr Pepper was priced per 100ml.

It was the same story in ASDA.

The green tea with lemon was priced per tea bag

whereas the camomile tea was priced per 100g.

So why don't the supermarkets just make life easy for us

and use the same units?

We asked all the big supermarkets where we'd seen confusing price labels why they don't sort this out

so shoppers can be sure they're getting the best value for money.

Well, they all told us that they're committed

to providing customers with the clearest information possible

and most are confident that they already do that.

M&S, for example, said both selling and unit prices:

Iceland stressed they take their legal responsibilities on this

very seriously and they pride themselves on

the clarity and transparency of their pricing

and they've now changed the price tickets on the examples we highlighted.

ASDA have done the same,

stressing they are only human so occasionally do make mistakes.

They told us their systems and procedures keep such examples to an absolute minimum

but if they do get it wrong, they put their hand up and say sorry.

And Tesco told us they have:

..to ensure they're giving the clearest information possible.

They're now looking specifically at how best to label items

that are sold both individually and in packs:

And the confusion around unit pricing is also an issue that the regulators have started looking into.

John Powell is a retail expert from Manchester University.

The Office Of Fair Trading have been doing a lot of work on pricing

and they have done studies that set out a set of guidelines

that they've put together in conjunction with major retailers and consumer organisations,

and they feel by having a much more transparent process of pricing,

it will help customers make an informed choice.

So with a bit of luck, over the coming months there will be

fewer occasions when to work out whether you're getting the best deal

you'll need all day and a maths degree!

But in the meantime, do keep sending us any examples

you think are confusing or where you feel you've lost out.

There are few foods that are more quintessentially British

than the good old British banger.

Over the course of a year most of us buy quite a few of them

which is presumably why, between us, every day

we eat nearly four million sausage-based meals,

so it's pretty clear that the sausage is close to our hearts.

How many of us know what actually goes into our bangers?

For that special celebration with friends or that romantic dinner for two, what do you think of?

Steak and red wine, French style? Or maybe something Italian?

But bangers and mash?!

For eight years I was a naval officer making charts around the world

and every restaurant you visit is indicative of the type of area you're in.

You come back to restaurants in Britain and it struck me

that chain restaurants are the same wherever you are

and none of them really serve great British food.

So now Max Mason is a man on a mission to restore

what he considers the neglected jewel in Britain's culinary crown.

It's my campaign that instead of chicken tikka masala being elevated as the great British dish,

we should have sausage and mash back as the great British favourite that should be celebrated everywhere.

And Max is a patriot prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

After leaving the navy, he started a restaurant in Oxford

dedicated to nothing but the great British banger.

The Big Bang now serves an astonishing 40 varieties of sausage.

On the plate in front of me we have three different types of sausage.

A turkey and cranberry sausage, a pork and chestnut sausage

and a wild winter game sausage.

All of these meats are locally sourced

from within 20 miles of Oxford and they're all bursting with flavour.

Unlike you'd find in a supermarket, these aren't 60% meat.

These are 85-90% meat and, for me, that's great British food.

But many of the sausages we buy every day

are likely to be a world away from the meaty marvels that Max is so passionate about.

Now, just because it says pork on the label outside,

doesn't mean to say necessarily that it's all pork on the inside of your sausage.

So what does "meat" mean when it comes to a sausage?

What actually constitutes meat is a bit of a grey area.

What the public think of as meat

is what the industry calls visible lean.

So a pork chop is about 90% visible lean.

You eat the eye of the meat and then there's just the fat and bone.

But meat that goes into sausages can be made up of things like fat

and other connective tissues up to sort of 30%.

So it might say 50% meat but that might not be good quality meat.

So what do shoppers, so many of whom buy sausages every week,

actually think about the fact that their banger may contain so little actual meat?

-Do you girls ever eat sausages?

-Yes.

-Do you like sausages?

-Yes.

-You do? Which sausages do you eat?

-Pork, beef, what?

-Pork.

-Pork.

When you buy your pork sausages,

how much of that sausage do you expect to be pork?

-Er, 100%?

-80%.

-Over half.

-Over half?

-Yes. Yeah, you'd hope so.

At least 85%.

-Er, 50.

-50%?

-Yes.

You're a bit closer to what you're likely to get.

You only have to have a minimum of 42% pork.

-But then that's not real sausage.

-Yeah. It's not a sausage.

-That's disgusting.

-You think so?

-Yes.

-Not even half?

-Not even half.

-What's in there?

Rusk. All sorts of stuff.

-Does that bother you?

-Yeah.

-Puts you off.

If I want to be eating pork, I want to be eating pork,

not anything else basically.

Supermarkets' ordinary own-brand bangers

typically have around 50-60% meat.

Their value ranges are a bit less

and not unsurprisingly their premium ones are meatier, up to 97% pork.

But you might be surprised that Richmond,

Britain's biggest-selling sausage brand,

only have the legal minimum for pork sausages

in several of their types of banger,

and that's just 42% pork.

We asked Richmond why and they told us their customers:

Interestingly, they also insisted that:

Hang on, you might say,

isn't the legal minimum 42% pork in a pork sausage?

Well, it is, or at least it is if they're labelled as pork sausages

but if you miss out the word "pork",

as several manufacturers including Richmond do on their packaging,

then a lower minimum level of meat applies

because in fact only 32% of meat is required

for the name "sausage" to be used.

But it's not just how much or indeed how little meat is in your sausage

that some people worry about. It's where that meat has come from.

Since the horse meat scandal there have been calls to make the supply chain shorter,

in other words for the meat to pass through fewer hands

before it actually ends up on your plate.

While that's certainly true of beef,

some experts fear that when it comes to pork,

we're actually in danger of finding the supply chain becomes longer.

The National Pig Association, who speak for many of the nation's pig farmers,

are worried that, in a quest to keep their prices down,

some retailers have switched back from the British pork

that they started using after the horse meat scandal to imported meat.

They fear that this makes it harder to keep track of where the meat comes from

and could even lead to the problems that we saw over horse meat.

Concerns over the origins of pork

has seen the growth of specialist suppliers like this one.

The Ginger Pig runs a farm in North Yorkshire

that supplies their six shops in London.

What we've got here is a Tamworth pig.

You can see a really distinctive copper-coloured coat.

It's a very traditional British breed.

It's where we get our name from, the colour.

They take pride in the way that they rear their pigs.

As you can see here, you have pigs that are given plenty of room to exhibit their natural behaviours.

But clearly taking that bit of extra care costs extra too,

which they have to pass on to consumers

and that makes it hard to compete with supermarkets

and is why some farmers feel that sometimes the playing field for their product seems far from level.

A British sausage might not always be what it seems.

You can put "British" on the packaging of something as long as it's made here.

That doesn't mean the meat was actually produced here.

So Britain has comparatively high standards of animal welfare

but the meat in a British sausage might have meat from somewhere much further away

that doesn't have very good standards of animal welfare.

And this is where those sausages end up

and there is no doubt that shoppers do pay a price for meat

that can be traced literally from field to plate.

Butcher Tom Aston insists that the price is realistic

if what we want is a real British banger.

These are 97-98% pork

and we just use three different types of paprika -

a hot paprika, a sweet paprika and a dulce paprika -

and then we smoke it for 12 hours

and it's filled into a natural casing.

Moving on from them ones, we have these ones, for example.

These would be 78% pork. We call them our Lincolnshire ones.

It's quite a traditional breakfast one.

These are still a high content of pork but the rusk and fillers in these ones

make it slightly easier to eat.

Tom, your sausages cost about £1 each. What would you say

if I said there are some people who can make them for 20p?

I tell you it's impossible to do that.

How can you do it, you know?

The packaging is going to cost more, plus the label,

on top of the person mixing the mixture.

Something has to give

and it's going to be the quality or content of pork,

hence why they're made with fillers and water and cheaper cuts of pork.

You get what you pay for is the oldest line in the book

but when it comes to the humble sausage, it seems truer than ever

and passionate devotees like Max in Oxford

are determined to keep flying the flag for the great British banger.

I know of less than five restaurants in Britain serving solely sausage and mash at the moment

and for me I'd be very happy if there was a sausage restaurant in every town across the land

serving the perfect embodiment of what is a local dish - sausage and mash.

For this series, we've been investigating an extraordinary range of issues with the food we eat

and we've found no end of cheeky tactics and little-known facts

about some of the things we put in our shopping baskets

but none of what we've unearthed about what is actually on the packet

really matters if you can't get into the packet in the first place.

You've been there, so have I. Big or small, young or old,

it seems sometimes we have to work a lot harder to enjoy the foods we want than we should ever expect.

Now these four items look pretty ordinary,

the sort of thing any of us might pop in our shopping basket.

But if you do, some say you might have a bit of a fight on your hands.

These products all look pretty straightforward, don't they?

But they have all been singled out in consumer research,

not because there's anything wrong with them

but because they're really, really difficult to actually get into.

Tricky plastic tabs, mysterious keys,

jar lids that just won't budge,

and hunting for the scissors when all you want is a hot buttered crumpet.

I just don't know what's wrong with me.

I find getting into any of these products almost impossible.

Maybe I need to get to the gym and pump a bit more iron, certainly for this one.

Well, I might, but this lot certainly don't.

While some of us lightweights might struggle to open these products,

we thought we'd see how quickly competitors from

the National Amateur Body-Builders' Association would manage it.

First up, their Mr Universe 2012, Andy Polhill.

We need a bit of muscle so he looks like our man.

He's starting off confident.

But it's not long before he's having to give it everything he's got.

And all that strength does seem to do the trick.

How's that? Bit messy?

As you would expect, not a bad overall time for Mr Universe,

but even he didn't find it a walk in the park.

Yes, a lot trickier. Especially the packaging on the crumpets.

It was very slippy and resulted in them exploding all over the table.

Next up, one of the female contestants tries her luck.

I can't get into it!

Yay.

CROWD CHEERS

Yes, I'm in.

Oh, no. I've not done this for years.

Oh, I'm rocking.

Count me down. Any second now.

Nearly there.

Yay! Definitely hard for older people.

My mum and dad certainly wouldn't manage the meat one, definitely not.

Her time is not quite so impressive,

although to be fair you might not really expect any sort of struggle

when faced with a few everyday food items.

And finally, a competitor from the over-50s category.

He's kicking off with the soup.

Oh, dear. It's gone everywhere.

He found this one quite a struggle but finally he's in.

Next it's those crumpets.

Not even trying to rip the packet open is working.

He's given up.

And he's not having much luck with the jam either.

And the corned beef's defeated him as well.

Not a cat in hell's chance, mate.

So it seems even the strongest amongst us

can still find these foods rather tricky to open

and according to the research from Which? magazine,

tough packaging can be more than just a mild irritation.

Four in ten of those asked said they'd hurt themselves battling against it

and one in five considered their food choices to be limited by complicated packaging,

which can be a particular problem for the growing number of people

who live alone and have nobody on hand to help.

Alaster Yoxall is a packaging expert with a particular concern

over the effects of this on the ageing population.

It's more than just a daily annoyance

because if you're living alone and you can't access the food,

it's a public health issue.

You're not actually getting the nutrients and the food that you need to be able to...

So people could be malnourished

because they can't get into the food that they need to.

And although he says there are those in the £11-billion-a-year packaging industry

trying to make their wrapping easier to open,

he's not always impressed with the results.

One product that I've tested where people have tried to make

an easy-open feature is McLelland cheese brand.

It's actually labelled with a new easy-open feature.

When I tested it, it really wasn't very easy to open at all.

A lot of the older people I tested it on couldn't actually open it.

The cheese company wouldn't agree with that,

telling us their new resealable packs were specifically:

And designed so that you can:

We also contacted the manufacturers of the other products

that have been singled out as hard to open.

Princes, who make most of the corned beef sold in the UK,

said that although they have tried different types of packaging,

the keys they use now are the most convenient

and make it easier to remove the beef from the can.

Soup makers Glorious! said it isn't easy coming up with packaging

that combines keeping food fresh and safely sealed

with being easy to open

but while their constantly looking at ways to improve,

after selling millions of pots,

only nine people have told them they were hard to open.

And jam makers Hartley's simply said they welcome feedback

so they can offer consumers the best products for their needs.

Now, we'll come back to the crumpets,

but experts like Alaster have helped design new ways

to make things simpler, like this easy-open jam jar lid.

The outside of the lid moves separately from the plate.

So what that does, it means the screw thing on the jar

is actually doing the work, so it pops off really simply.

You're not fighting against the vacuum inside the jar

which is what you do with a more traditional lid.

Good idea.

So should the industry as a whole be doing more to make our lives just that little bit easier?

Dick Searle speaks for Britain's packaging manufacturers,

so will he open up more easily than some of their products?

I suppose people watching would say, "Why is packaging so difficult to get into?"

In terms of difficult to open, I'd challenge that all of it is difficult to open.

There are some that are difficult to open.

The Which? report mentioned the tin can, which has been around for 200 years

and we do have things like can openers.

I think some people have forgotten how to use implements, to be honest with you.

Things that are used on the go have been designed so that you can get into them.

Some things which you use at home,

then a pair of scissors in your kitchen doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

So it's a balancing act always

because the first role of packaging is to protect, to secure, to preserve.

But of course you've got to be able to get into it.

Not much use if you can't.

So it's a nice balancing act between making it good enough

to ensure it gets in one piece into the customer's home

and is reasonably easy to open. Have we got it completely right? Of course we haven't.

I do think the industry ought to take a bit of responsibility

when you're putting forward food of any kind.

Well, it's a fiercely competitive industry.

We operate on pretty thin margins so clearly pricing is an issue.

There aren't many people who pay more for packaging than they need to.

I have tried to open this today on camera and I can't.

So have a go because you're the man of experience.

The first thing I would say is they're crumpets.

Crumpets are going to be toasted so crumpets will be in the kitchen

so why wouldn't you use a pair of scissors to open the pack?

I might be in an office whereby I can pop it in the toaster.

A lot of offices these days are a bit self-catering.

-Yeah, but even then they would have a pair of scissors.

-Not necessarily.

-That's the point.

-I could maybe want my crumpet the way it is.

-Good luck!

Have another go and see if you can do it.

-Have you tried to do this before?

-No, I haven't actually.

-I could have cheated, couldn't I?

-You could.

-You did it. Good man.

-One mangled crumpet as well.

No beating that one. But there is good news on the crumpet front.

Manufacturers Warburtons say to keep them fresh for as long as possible they are:

But they do recognise that that can make them a bit difficult to open so here's the good news.

From March their packaging will have a scissor mark added to give:

So if, like our body-builders, it's something you've ever struggled with,

now you know exactly what you need to do.

Still to come on Rip Off Britain -

why this man asked us to find out the reason

there is so much water added to some of our meat.

I was shocked to see just how much liquid was coming out of the packet

and it just never seemed to stop.

I'm sure many of us can sometimes be swayed by labels on foods

which seem to suggest that they're healthy.

Words like "natural", "light", or even scientific-sounding phrases

like "probiotic" can be sometimes what persuade us to buy them,

but they may not mean precisely what you assume,

as marketing professor Isabelle Szmigin explains.

We need to be very careful about the kinds of health claims

that are made on the products that we buy in supermarkets.

We live in a world where we tend to think that something that says it's natural

is going to be better for us and I think we need to get out of that mindset

and remember that the world has produced many additives,

chemically-produced ingredients, that have actually been very good for us.

The very fact that food can be preserved is a positive thing.

And what about other words which we associate with healthy eating?

Words like "light", "lighter", are particularly treacherous for consumers

because these are words that we make assumptions about.

Very often we think that something that says it is light

is actually going to have less calories. This is a huge mistake.

Take words like "low-fat".

They are very strictly controlled by the Food Standards Agency

so if a product says low-fat, it has to have 3% or less fat in it,

whereas the use of the words "light" or "lighter"

can actually mean that there is six or seven times more fat

than in a product that is labelled "low-fat".

What about words like "probiotics" and their so-called good bacteria?

In 2012 the probiotic industry suffered a major blow

when the European Food Standards Authority ruled on something like 800 different claims from the industry

in terms of the good that they would do

and they found that there just was not enough evidence of this.

It doesn't mean that probiotics are bad for us

but we should be aware that we do not have the conclusive evidence

to say that they are actually going to do us any good.

If I was to ask you what is in a chicken breast,

you would probably think it was a silly trick question,

but here's someone who was so surprised and shocked really

at what else had been added to that, that he wrote to us to find out why.

You know the saying water, water everywhere?

In fact, as you remember from your science classes at school,

it covers 71% of the Earth's surface.

But as Mark from Dorset has discovered,

rather more of it than he was expecting seems to be

filtering down into the food he's buying.

Pork sausages with added water.

Honey roast ham, which says, added water 18%.

He first spotted it one evening when he came to cook dinner

and took some chicken breasts out of the freezer.

I was shocked to see just how much liquid was coming out of the packet

and it just never seemed to stop.

It was even more after cooking

and yet again even more after it was cooling down.

I was just concerned why all this liquid is in this packet basically.

A quick look at the ingredients on the packaging and Mark discovered

that it wasn't just plain old water that was coming out of his food.

Upon close inspection of the ingredients, I can see

that it mentions things like dextrose, which I know is sugar,

and sodium as well, so it's obviously some kind of salt-sugary solution

that's been pumped into this chicken breast to increase the weight of it.

Mark is not alone in worrying about the amount of water in our meats.

Recent press reports have questioned why so much can be there.

So to find out more, we took three different chicken breasts

to the lab of food scientist Dr Peter Maynard.

We've got a butcher's breast of chicken,

then we have supermarket fresh and then we have some frozen ones.

Peter, we gave you these to test earlier on.

Shall we start with the butcher?

That chicken breast doesn't have a significant amount of added water,

just a very small amount, but you would expect that

because obviously chicken has to be washed before it can be sold to you.

-Then we have supermarket fresh.

-This one is similar.

Again it had no particular amount of added water.

But then what about the supermarket's frozen chicken?

We can see just by looking at it that there's water running out of it.

But if it's frozen, wouldn't there be more water around it anyway?

There may well be but we tested this one

and we found about 80% of chicken and the rest is added water.

So 20%? Wow.

When would the manufacturer, when they package this, put the water in?

This would be slaughtered by the grower of the chickens

and then the breasts would be sent to a packer

and the packer would tumble it with water or with brine

and maybe in extreme cases actually inject the water into the muscle

and then package it and freeze it.

Now if 20% of what you're paying for is water and not chicken

that means you're getting 20% less of the meat and protein you thought you'd bought.

You might buy 500g of chicken but 100g of it is water.

That's a shocking figure really, isn't it?

Just why does the food industry do it?

While some stores and manufacturers suggest on the labelling

that water has been added to give extra succulence,

there are those who reckon bulking out a product with water

is just a simple way of giving you less meat.

The food industry add fluid to meat

because they're going to make more money.

If the meat is heavier, and meat is always sold by weight,

they're going to do rather better out of it than the consumer that eats it.

Keeping this water in the meat sometimes means adding yet more ingredients

such as additives to retain the water content.

In cooked meats like ham, they can use polyphosphates.

Polyphosphates are salts which help to retain fluid

and they're quite widely used in the industry.

Legally, as long as the package makes it clear that water has been added,

there are no specific legal limits as to how much water there can be,

although when it comes to ham,

the British Meat Processors Association told us that to meet their chartered quality standard,

the amount of water retained during curing should be less than 15%

or, in the case of thinly-sliced ham, 20%.

But they did concede that it's possible

that some lower quality products not covered by their scheme

might be bulked out with water.

Should we be worried about any of this extra liquid being added to our meats?

They're not bad for you as such.

The food safety authorities deem them safe.

However if there's nothing to worry about from a health perspective,

less meat for your money does mean you probably are not getting the full value you expected.

So what are the rules when it comes to labelling how much water is in our food?

Let's move down because you have some of the labelling here.

-Obviously with the butcher's chicken you're not getting any labelling.

-That's fine.

-This one?

-Just says...

-It just says chicken breast fillets high in protein.

-Legally are they supposed to say if there's water in it or what percentage of water?

-Yes.

If there's any more than 5%, which they reckon you can get in almost by accident,

then yes, you must declare it.

So when we come to the frozen chicken breasts, this actually says:

'Chicken breast fillets: Skinless, boneless, chicken breast fillets with added water and corn oil.'

So it's not pulling the wool over your eyes.

When we look at the ingredients list it says chicken breast fillets 85%

and then the next ingredient is water.

So you can actually tell if you look.

-Sometimes they describe them as succulent.

-Yes.

Is that adding the water to make it look plumper and succulent and fatter, basically?

Weasel words, I'm afraid.

It supposedly keeps it more succulent when you cook it.

It will of course dry out when you cook it

but if there's added water it won't perhaps dry out quite as much

so it will end up as a moister chicken

but basically they are adding the water to save themselves money.

But while some products do make it very clear water has been added,

perhaps even making that sound like a real benefit,

others only alert us to that fact in very, very small writing

on the back of the pack.

I think meat that contains added fluid should be labelled as such

and that information should be carried on the front of a pack.

Essentially the consumers believe when they see

a neatly packaged piece of cooked meat, cured meat or fresh meat,

that that's exactly what it is

and they have no idea because they'd have to read the small print

to find out there was anything added to it at all.

However small it may be,

the information does have to be there somewhere on the label.

But unless you take the time to look for it,

in some cases you might not realise that a large part of what you're paying for is simply water.

Chicken is chicken

but if you're paying for a particular size of chicken breast fillet

and you're only getting three quarters of that because of the added water,

then, in effect, they are taking your money for water.

There are allegations that some retailers and manufacturers

have bought in cheap, raw, frozen chicken from Brazil

and then subjected it to a process known as tumbling,

adding water and water-binding additives to bulk it out.

But the British Poultry Council told us consumers can rest assured that British chicken:

The best advice is to know not just where the chicken you buy comes from

but what sort of preparation it's had before going on sale.

Meanwhile, when we asked the British Retail Consortium about all of this,

they said that water is added to meat and processed meat products

both intentionally and unintentionally

either for technological reasons or to assist various processors,

all of which are long-standing practices supported by legislation

and guidance on what levels are permitted and consumer labelling.

But for Mark in Dorset, being more choosy over his chicken

will be first on his shopping list from now on.

Everybody wants value for their money, don't they?

So nearly every shopper shops by the weight.

To think that we're paying so much for the water in this meat is just absolutely shocking.

It's terrible really.

Here at Rip Off Britain we're always ready

to investigate more of your stories and not just about food.

Confused over your bills or just trying to wade through never-ending small print?

When they sit you down to sign up for things they don't really give you the chance or the time

to read through all that small print.

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

and that great deal has actually ended up costing you money.

These people have ripped me off well and truly.

Or you might have a cautionary tale of your own

and want to share the mistakes that you've made with us.

You can write to us at:

Or send us an e-mail to:

The Rip Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

When we're at the supermarket deciding what to buy,

we don't always have the time to do a forensic study of the packaging

so what we tend to do instead

is take an awful lot of what it says there at face value,

but I think it's true to say that, as we've seen,

that may not always give us quite the full picture.

And while there's nothing wrong with big-name stores and companies

making things sound as appetising as possible, don't believe all the hype.

Fancy names or labels may only be adding to the price of what you buy and not the quality.

You'll find plenty more savvy shopping tips on our website:

But I'm afraid that's where we have to check out for today.

We're going to be back very soon revealing even more nuggets about the food that we eat

-but until then, from everyone on the team, bye-bye.

-Bye.