Episode 3 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.

You think you're getting a bargain and you're not really.

They're just encouraging you to buy more of a product

when you don't need to.

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.

What really winds me up, I suppose,

is the price of so-called healthy food

then compared with the unhealthy stuff.

The unhealthy stuff seems to be so much cheaper.

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

we'll uncover the truth about Britain's food,

so that you can be sure that you're getting

what you expect at the right price.

Your food.

Your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Well, hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain,

the series that battles on your behalf

to make sure that whatever you're buying,

and wherever you're buying it, you get exactly what you expect.

Now, when it comes to our food,

the place where we still do most of our buying

remains the supermarket.

So, it's those big-name stores that we've firmly in our sights today.

Very much so, because supermarkets

are such a fundamental part of our lives.

You know, every year, between them,

they account for more than a third of all the money

-that we spend in shops?

-Whoa.

And they go to great lengths to win our loyalty, don't they?

But, you know, despite all of their claims about low prices

and offers that simply can't be beaten,

some of you have said that you're not always sure

that when you leave the shop you really have had the best deal.

Well, on Rip-Off Britain our team's been busy

going through all the e-mails and letters

you've sent us on the subject,

and we've been pounding the aisles,

so that next time you're at the checkout

whether it's in-store or online,

you can be more confident that you're really getting your money's worth.

Coming up, the banana's out of the bag.

We unravel why the big stores charge so much more

for bananas that come prepacked than for the ones sold loose.

I thought of myself as a savvy shopper

and, erm, I was very shocked to see that the prepacked bananas

were costing over 80% more than the loose bananas.

And could our trusty Bags For Life be carrying bugs for life?

We've been at the lab testing for the nasties said to be lurking inside.

You can't tell by looking at a bag

whether or not it's hygienically clean.

That means you probably have to assume

that most bags could be contaminated.

Now, we munch our way through five billion of these every year.

But while one may seem pretty much like any other,

they're certainly not the same when it comes to the price.

And one Rip-Off Britain viewer wrote to us

curious to discover the answer to a question

that you might have wondered about as well.

And that is why do prepacked bananas that come in a bag like this

typically cost more than the loose ones that are sold like this?

On average, each of us eats 100 bananas every year.

And Paul Gates, from Warwick,

pretty much always has a bunch in his supermarket trolley.

Until recently, that bunch would typically have been the kind

that comes prebagged rather than loose.

But then Paul did some sums

and started to wonder if he was paying over the odds.

Normally when I go to the supermarket,

it's so easy just to grab a bag of prepacked fruit or vegetables.

So, one time I thought, "I'll put them on the scales."

Paul's prepacked bananas were priced at £1.

But when he compared the cost

with the equivalent weight of loose bananas,

he found his nicely packaged fruit

was costing him almost twice as much.

Because those loose ones were only 55p.

I thought of myself as a savvy shopper,

and I was very shocked to see that the prepacked bananas

were costing over 80% more than the loose bananas.

I wonder if there's any kind of a reason.

A good question, Paul!

Well, we've brought him to a place

where he should be able to get the answer.

This is the largest single banana ripening facility in the UK,

where new deliveries arrive from across the world every day.

OK, then, Paul, as you can see,

we've got two different types of bananas here.

We've got some that have been prepacked in the tropics,

we've got some there that are loose.

And Paul soon hears the first reason why prepacked bananas

end up being more expensive.

They have already cost more to ship to the UK

than their loose counterparts,

because those plastic bags take up valuable space in each box.

Around 25-30% of the price you pay in a supermarket

is thanks to the cost of shipping bananas here from around the world.

So the more bags, the greater the shipping cost.

And that's before they've even arrived at the factory.

Are all these bananas from exactly the same plantation?

No, they're not, no.

This fruit here has come from Costa Rica.

-Right.

-This fruit over here has come from Ecuador.

This fruit will go straight to the ripening room for ripening,

to get them to the yellow stage,

so we'll go and have a look at those now.

20 million bananas pass through this facility every single week.

Because it takes two or three weeks to transport them to the UK,

they're picked and shipped when they're still green,

and ripened in the factory.

OK, Paul, here we are in one of our banana-ripening rooms.

I thought the sunshine ripened bananas?

No, unfortunately, we don't get the...

Enough sunshine in the climate in the UK to ripen them naturally,

so we have to create artificial means to do it.

So, we'll bring these bananas in here

and we'll hold them in here for about six days.

When they arrive to us, they are stone-hard green,

and we'll want to ripen those up

to something to what you're used to seeing on the shelf in the shop.

After they've ripened, the loose bunches head out of the factory

straight to the supermarkets' own distribution centres.

Meanwhile, the bananas destined to be sold prepacked

come here to be checked, sorted, packed and labelled.

This is our pack house

and we'll be either packing

fruit in bags from loose,

or we'll labelling bags that have already been packed abroad,

or, if the quality's inconsistent,

we will be sorting out quality problems that might have happened,

because you've got to remember they've come a long way

and things do happen.

Which leads to another factor in the higher price

we pay for bagged bananas.

If the team spot quality issues,

they have to make up new bags from loose bananas.

So that's another extra cost.

And then there's the time spent

boxing up the bagged bananas

ready for the supermarkets.

So, you obviously employ a lot of people here...

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We've got a lot of people.

We enhance the product that's coming in the door

to the one that's going out.

And... And they have to be paid for.

Loose bananas, when they're finished their ripening,

they will go straight out the ripening room,

straight on the lorry to the customer,

none of these people even touch them.

So, it's a very streamlined process for loose, compared with prepacks.

It's clear that prepacked bananas are just more complicated

and more costly to process.

But those bags do have their benefits.

On the plus side, though,

a prepacked banana does offer a better shelf life.

-Really?

-Yes, the prepacked banana, you've got in a plastic bag.

It's got a nice moist atmosphere.

It stays better-looking for longer.

But whether that makes the extra cost worth it is up to you.

Thank you very much for showing me around your factory.

-It's been very, very interesting.

-No, it's been a pleasure, Paul.

So, after being shown round a banana factory

for the last couple of hours,

I've got a better understanding of the price difference

between loose-pack bananas and prepacked bananas.

And if there's one thing I really fancy now,

it's a banana.

But the difference in price that we pay for a loose and a bagged banana

is influenced by more than just the packaging.

In fact, bananas are so popular in the UK,

they can be on the front line of supermarket price wars.

Strategically they're very important to supermarkets

and they tend to invest in keeping prices low on those bananas.

Most consumers end up buying packaged bananas

because they're convenient. It's easy to just pick up a bag,

you know how much you're going to pay for it.

You don't have to weigh the bunch. There's no surprise at the till.

And though you may not have noticed,

overall we get a good deal on our bananas,

which can sometimes be a loss-leader for the supermarkets.

Supermarkets really have invested a lot

into low and stable banana prices,

so even though production costs have gone up quite significantly,

that has not been reflected in retail prices.

In most retailers, over the past two years, certainly,

the price of a kilogram of loose bananas

has been pretty stable at about 68p,

and that has been regardless of what's happened

around production costs.

When we spoke to the Big Four supermarkets,

they reiterated what we'd seen for ourselves at the factory -

that the packaging is...

..helping with...

But despite the additional costs that inevitably brings,

the stores stressed their bananas are priced competitively...

As for Paul, well, although he now better understands

why he has to pay more for a prepacked banana

than he would for a loose one,

he knows which kind he'll be buying from now on.

I'm going to be a bit more careful and a bit more mean with my money.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain,

Supermarkets' home deliveries put to the test!

Will your food last longer if you've ordered it online

or if you've picked it in-store yourself?

I'm going to look through them now

and see what dates are on the products.

By the end of 2015, supermarkets in England

will have joined those in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland,

and lots of other countries too,

by charging shoppers for all carrier bags.

Well, to many of us, that won't come as such a shock,

because we've already invested in

the bigger, stronger, reusable Bags For Life

that the big stores have been encouraging us to use

for a long time now.

You may well have diligently been using the same ones

week in, week out, for months or even years.

But therein lies the problem,

because it turns out that those trusty Bags For Life

might be carrying more than just your shopping.

The world is crawling with nasty bugs

like E. coli, salmonella and listeria,

that can make us very ill indeed.

Some of them can even live

on the very food we buy from the supermarkets.

Because these bacteria like to lurk on surfaces

and in places that aren't cleaned very often, they can easily spread.

And it's been claimed that one place they can really thrive

is inside that eco-friendly alternative to the plastic bag -

the Bag For Life.

We've got two Bags For Life,

which we use for either shopping or washing -

for getting the wet washing out of the washing machine,

because they're waterproof.

Oh, yes, we have some at home. They're in the boot of the car.

If I'm carrying shoes to work or anything like that,

I will use my Bags For Life for that.

I love them. They're handy, they're convenient

and they're environmentally friendly.

Even the sturdiest Bag For Life won't literally last a lifetime,

but many of us do use them for months or even years

and rarely, if ever, clean them out.

And that means any bugs living in those bags

are going to stay there undisturbed.

They'll often have come from the food we've bought

and dropped into the bag in the first place,

which is why microbiologists like Dr Lisa Ackerley

worry that our Bags For Life could be transporting more

than just the ingredients for our dinner.

Bags For Life are a great idea

because obviously they're reducing the waste that we have,

but we just need to be aware that sometimes they could be contaminated

with things such as E. coli or campylobacter

because of the previous use.

And, of course, we don't just use Bags For Life for food,

we also put all sorts of things into Bags For Life.

We use them for our sports kit, football boots,

walking boots, all sorts of things.

Several studies in both the UK and America

have found that instances of food poisoning have gone up

after ordinary plastic bags were outlawed.

And in a recent test carried out by a Scottish newspaper,

almost 50% of a small sample of Bags For Life

tested positive for potentially dangerous bugs.

There are plenty of bacteria around in the supermarket,

so, for example, potatoes and leeks and other root vegetables

will have soil on them, which means that they could have E. coli.

Equally, studies have found

that chickens have very high levels of campylobacter,

so we could find at least 60% to 70% of raw chickens

could be contaminated,

and we've found also that the packaging that they're stored in

may also be contaminated.

Washing fruit and veg removes the bacteria,

and cooking chicken thoroughly kills the campylobacter

that naturally exists in around 70% of supermarket chickens.

But if meat juices from one of those chickens

leaks into a bag where ready-to-eat food like fruit is kept

and it isn't washed,

then you open yourself up to the risk of infection.

When you pack your bags at the checkout,

you're putting potentially contaminated food

into your shopping bags

and, of course, if they're Bags For Life,

then that means that the next time you use them

then you could have contamination

from your previous shopping still in the bag.

Oh, could it? Urrgh!

I'm shocked.

Yeah. Where are they coming from? The bacteria?

So how worried should we be about the bugs in our bags?

To find out, we asked ten shoppers to surrender their Bags For Life,

so we could send them to a lab.

Dr Ackerley has agreed to take a swab from each of our bags

and test them for common bacteria found on supermarket food.

Of course, it's only a small sample,

but nevertheless, it will give a useful snapshot of what,

if anything, we're carting around in all our reusable bags.

What we're going to do is test the bags

to see what levels of contamination they have,

so how many bacteria there are on the bags.

Whilst it's almost impossible to know for sure

if your Bag For Life made you ill,

official bodies like the Food Standards Agency

agree that bacteria from raw meat and fish

could contaminate any ready-to-eat food

that's put in the same bag.

But there is a scientist who could have the solution.

Paul Morris works for a company

that specialises in making materials that stop bugs from growing.

Following conversations with the FSA,

his team came up with a new version of the Bag For Life

that, if released onto the market,

might just reduce the risk of contamination altogether.

I think there's a high risk with the Bags For Life at the moment

because people aren't aware of it,

and you only need very small levels of the bacteria

to actually cause you a problem.

What we're looking to do is to lower the risk,

so if there is bacteria there

our product will permanently get rid of the bacteria on the surface.

Paul's company has created an improved Bag For Life

that includes a small layer of silver

designed to prevent any bacteria from growing on it,

reducing in one fell swoop the risk

of bugs being passed from bag to person and so on.

You wouldn't let your children play with a raw chicken breast.

But if it's in a trolley, people assume it's safe.

You either disinfect the bag after every use,

which people don't tend to do, people like to be lazy,

or why not have an antibacterial Bag For Life

which costs a few pence more than a normal bag

and actually gives you that protection then

that you're not going to spread bacteria

from one shopping trip to another.

Any solution that keeps our bags free from bugs

has got to be good news.

But were the Bags For Life we tested as bad as we feared?

The results are back from the lab.

And it seems that this time at least there's no need to panic.

Well, we've got the results back from the laboratory,

and whilst the results are not as alarming

as some of the other studies that have been carried out,

we nevertheless did find some bacteria in the bags,

but at fairly low quantities

and nothing that would really cause me great concern.

However, it does show that the bags are not sterile

and they will be used for food,

and so that means that if there is any contamination in them,

it could be passed on from one food to another.

None of our bags contained any bacteria

that could actually cause any serious illnesses.

And the fact we did find bacteria in them isn't really surprising.

After all, bacteria are everywhere.

But it does show that there's the potential for contamination.

It's always very difficult to know

where somebody has actually become contaminated.

Whether it was a bag, whether it was contamination

from picking up a packet of chicken,

whether it was preparing chicken in the home,

or failing to wash their hands.

Often it's very difficult

to trace back individual cases of food poisoning

and determine where the fault actually arose.

And, of course, it doesn't help that you won't be able to tell

what secrets your bag might be harbouring just by looking at it.

So you can see this bag is a little bit grubby,

but it wouldn't strike you as a really, really dirty bag.

But yet this was the dirtiest one in terms of the microbiology.

This bag was the second dirtiest bag

in terms of bacteria that we found on it and, actually,

it looks pretty clean.

So, I can't actually see any evidence of dirt on there,

so what this actually means is you can't tell by looking at a bag

whether or not it's hygienically clean.

That means you probably have to assume

that most bags could be contaminated.

And while not all the bacteria

that may be in your Bag For Life will be harmful,

Lisa has some simple tips

to make sure you don't get any unwelcome surprises

from the ones that are.

I'd recommend, if you're using a Bag For Life,

to mark one up with a big "R" on it -

this is what a lot of people do that I know,

and maybe they're a bit peculiar,

but that's what they do - a big "R", and that says raw meat only.

So, all the raw meat goes into one bag.

And as long as we understand

that we're picking up bacteria on our hands

and we take the appropriate action, which is washing our hands

before we eat, then really we are going to be quite safe.

An ever-increasing number of us do our weekly shop

without ever leaving the house,

because internet grocery shopping

has transformed the lives of literally millions of people.

And while, personally, I still prefer

to have a good old look around what's on the supermarket shelves,

there's no doubt that by doing the shopping online,

well, is invaluable for many people.

But, you know, nothing's perfect, and over the years we've noticed

a steady trickle of e-mails

complaining about the short shelf life

of some of the food that you've had delivered,

pointing out that the weekly shop ordered online

hasn't lasted anywhere near the full week.

And that's led to some of you even wondering

if it's the policy of the big chains

to send the food that has the longest sell-by dates

to the shops and the shortest sell-by dates

to those shopping from home.

So, to see if there's any truth in that whatsoever,

we've done some shopping of our own.

The traditional big weekly shop for many of us

is no longer done quite as traditionally as it once was.

'Now Iceland's special freezer vans

'bring home the bacon, the ice cream...'

In the 1990s, home delivery took its hold

and set to change supermarket shopping forever.

'Iceland's coming home.'

'Brilliant!'

Since then, an increasing number of us

have chosen to have our shopping delivered direct to our front door.

It's said that a fifth of us now order our weekly groceries online

from the comfort of our own home.

But as online shopping has grown in popularity,

so too has the number of people contacting us

to say that they don't think it's all it's cracked up to be.

Because when you rely on somebody else picking your potatoes

from the fresh food aisle, things can go wrong.

Late or cancelled deliveries, the wrong items being delivered,

and the occasional strange substitution

are all things that we've heard complaints about.

They were some problems with them substituting certain items.

Items that I would never have bought myself.

Sometimes the deliveries would be late.

Often food come, and it's bruised, with your fruits,

or you've not received the full offers.

One particular criticism that crops up repeatedly

is to do with the expiry date on fresh produce,

which some of you claim can often be close to its limit

even as soon as the food is delivered.

Warren Copland from Oxford got in touch

after becoming frustrated that,

despite meticulously planning his weekly shop,

some of the groceries he pays to have delivered

won't actually last the week.

He claims that, in one delivery,

seven fresh items, including broccoli,

fishcakes and minced beef,

had best-before dates that were just one or two days ahead,

leaving him very unhappy about how much had to be eaten

long before the week had ended.

It's a suggestion we've heard before,

with some of you even wondering if stores deliberately distribute

goods with the longest shelf lives to the stores,

leaving those with dates closer to expiry for the online shops.

So we thought we'd do some online shopping of our own.

We placed orders for 11 items of food

that you'd find in a typical weekly shop

from the websites of five leading supermarket chains.

We chose Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose,

all of it to be delivered two days later.

On the day of the delivery,

we went to a local branch of each of the same stores

to try and buy exactly the same things.

So will there be much of a difference?

It's time to find out.

Our Tesco order is the first to arrive.

Tesco has been delivering food for 18 years

and is the UK's largest online grocer,

making up more than half the online food shopping that's done in the UK.

When the driver delivered these,

he told me there were no substitutions.

So I'm going to look through them now

to see what dates are on the products.

Tesco performed best in our experiment,

delivering only one product with a shorter shelf life,

but the rest had either the same expiry dates

or an even longer shelf life.

But of the products from the Sainsbury's delivery,

four had expiry dates that were shorter than our in-store shop.

Only one ordered online, the salmon,

had a longer shelf life.

Things were a bit more evenly matched at Morrisons,

where only two items from our online order

had a shorter shelf life than the ones bought in-store.

Morrisons uses Ocado to deliver its shopping,

the world's largest specialist online grocer,

which has no physical stores of its own.

Ocado also delivers Waitrose products,

but Waitrose has its own online delivery service as well

and it's grown by more than 25% in the past year.

Even so, our Waitrose delivery seems to have a few problems.

So the Waitrose driver told me

that there were a couple of substitutions.

I didn't have to accept them if I didn't want to.

So, looking at this, a bag appears to have not made it off the truck.

Not sure what's happened there.

This time we only ended up with seven items

we could directly compare.

But of those, three of the ones we'd bought in the shop

would last longer than the equivalents we had delivered.

Two whole days more

in the case of the chicken.

From the online order,

only the grapes had a better shelf life.

But the good news is that when we called Waitrose the next day

about the items that hadn't arrived, we were instantly given a refund.

Finally, Asda.

So the Asda driver told me there were a few substitutions.

Said I could reject them if I wanted to.

I've got some mushrooms in here!

I'm not sure what they're substituting yet.

SHE GIGGLES

Instead of 500g of grapes, they've sent us some mushrooms.

That's a really confusing choice.

I don't understand how mushrooms would be a substitute for grapes.

Me neither!

But whilst the substitution wasn't quite what we wanted,

when it came to shelf life, again, there wasn't much in it.

Of those we could compare,

two products from the store

would last slightly longer than the equivalents bought online,

but the other six were exactly the same.

So, looking at these products,

generally they are the same as what we could get in-store,

aside from the broccoli and the chicken,

which we managed to get a little longer shelf life on them,

it's the same.

So, while our test was obviously just a snapshot

from a handful of stores,

we certainly didn't come across any evidence

to suggest there's a conspiracy or deliberate policy among supermarkets

to send food with the longest dates to their stores,

and keep the ones with shorter shelf lives for home deliveries.

In fact, when we contacted the supermarkets,

some of them explained the opposite is true.

Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Asda all told us their staff

are trained to pick goods with the longest shelf lives possible.

Sainsbury's say they also...

And if you're not happy with the dates, it's a...

Asda and Morrisons also said you won't be charged for an item

with a date you're not satisfied with.

And Morrisons went on to say

that in common with most of the other big stores,

its receipts clearly list the lifespan of each product...

..and can plan their meals for the week ahead.

It also said that stock used for online deliveries

is kept entirely separate from the stock sent to stores.

Meanwhile, Waitrose added that with its deliveries,

customers can add specific preferences to an order.

For example, if you particularly like green bananas.

Well, it's clearly a much more complex business

than you might have realised,

and likely to get increasingly sophisticated

as more of us commit to shopping this way in the future.

Online grocery shopping seems to be a winner.

I'll certainly stick with online shopping.

Here at Rip-Off Britain,

we're always ready to investigate more of your stories on any subject.

You can write to us at...

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

Remember that The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting

to investigate your stories.

Well, as you know, the supermarkets are experts

at convincing us all to spend money with them.

And sometimes, as in the case of those prepacked bananas,

in convincing us to pay a higher price

for not always that much extra in return.

Though of course, all those constant price wars between them,

do help to keep at least some of our shopping costs down.

But, you know, that doesn't mean

they can take our custom for granted.

No way!

So do keep your supermarket stories coming in to us.

And if their great deals don't quite stack up

then, again, please do let us know,

because I'm pretty sure

this is a subject we're going to be looking at again and again.

And don't forget we're keen to hear from you on any subject,

not just food.

Our team is already working on the next series

of Rip-Off Britain programmes,

so do please get in touch

and tell us what you'd like us to investigate.

You never know, it might be your letter or e-mail

we'll be looking at next time.

But for now, thanks for joining us. And from all of us here, goodbye.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.