Browse content similar to Episode 6. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Meet the Robshaws - Brandon, Rochelle, Miranda, Ros and Fred. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
Let's go! | 0:00:10 | 0:00:12 | |
For one summer, this food-loving family embarked on an extraordinary | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
time-travelling adventure... | 0:00:16 | 0:00:18 | |
to discover how a post-war revolution in what we eat | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
has transformed the way we live. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:23 | |
That is just amazing. Look at them. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
Britain has gone from meagre rations to ready meals at the touch | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
of a button in just 50 years. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:33 | |
But how has this changed our health... | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
We've got a pull out larder! | 0:00:36 | 0:00:38 | |
..our homes and our family dynamics? | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
I can't do it any more. This is what would make a woman break. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
To find out, the Robshaws have shopped, cooked and eaten their way | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
through history. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:49 | |
It's 1974! | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
Whoa! | 0:00:52 | 0:00:53 | |
I think that is enough sugar now there, darling. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
No, I hardly put any on! | 0:00:57 | 0:00:58 | |
Starting in 1950, their own home became their time machine. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
Oh, my goodness! | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
This carpet hurts my eyes. Who designed that?! | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
Someone who was colour blind. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:10 | |
Fast forwarding them through a new year every day, | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
as they experienced first hand the culinary fads, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
fashions and gadgets of each age. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
-Can I have some chips? -You can have some chips. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
Now, at the end of their time travelling adventure, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
I'll be discovering the impact it's had on the Robshaws... | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
and giving them a sneak preview of what the future might look like. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:34 | |
Have you seen those worms in there? | 0:01:34 | 0:01:36 | |
I am kind of repulsed. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:37 | |
For the last five weeks, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
the Robshaws have eaten only the food of the past, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:54 | |
living an accelerated version of the journey | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
we've all been on for the past 50 years. | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
Oh, God, look at that go. | 0:01:58 | 0:01:59 | |
We left them in 1999, celebrating the birth of a new millennium. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:04 | |
Now I'm going to be bringing us right up to date, discovering | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
how our food habits have changed since the end of the experiment. | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
And then, with a bit of luck and from what we know about the way | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
that food history unfolds, perhaps making a few predictions | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
about the way we're going to shop, cook and eat in the future. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
We'll see how we've arrived at how we eat now | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
and how that is made up of the last 50 years. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
You can kind of see the evolution, | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
so I think people are always curious about the future. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:39 | |
It's made me wonder a lot about the future. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:41 | |
I've become aware how much we're sort of ruled by trends, | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
by shifting culture and technology, | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
and all those sorts of things are going to carry on happening. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
It's the constant changes the Robshaws experienced that | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
give us valuable insights into how our eating habits might | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
develop in years to come. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
Throughout their time-travelling adventure, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
the family's diet was guided by real meals | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
recorded in the National Food Survey. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
This is bread and dripping, this is plain bread, this is bread | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
and pilchard. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:13 | |
Established in 1940 to ensure that people were getting enough | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
to eat under rationing, the food survey asked families to write down | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
Mum 32, Dad 41... | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
In Bradford North in 1960, and it's corned beef hash. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
The survey continued until 2000 and gives us an extraordinary insight | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
into how the eating habits of real families evolved over decades. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
But to understand how we eat now and how it might change, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
food historian Polly Russell and I have had to think again. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
Well, the thing is, up until now, we've been very fortunate | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
because we've had the National Food Survey as a kind of basis, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
a sort of detailed account of what people were eating | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
over the past 50 or 60 years, | 0:03:58 | 0:03:59 | |
and that's how the Robshaws are able to live their life. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
For the present and for the future, we don't have that. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
No, that's right. The Food Survey stopped in 2000 | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
and the surveys that have replaced that, rather than using diaries, | 0:04:08 | 0:04:12 | |
look at till receipts to see what people are spending on food. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
Just looking at receipts tells you what people buy, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
but it doesn't tell you how they actually consume that food. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
Cos we're just more concerned about people, aren't we? | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
It's not just about the money. The whole point of this programme, | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
the whole point of this series has been to...from the way people eat, | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 | |
to learn about how they live, which you can't do from till receipts. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
Yeah, that's right. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:32 | |
So our options are basically either to generalise wildly, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
which I love doing and that always seems to work, | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
or to commission a new study, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
which is what we've done. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
So this is a bit like the National Food Survey | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
but it's, you know, this is the 21st century, so it's all got sort of different colours and fonts | 0:04:44 | 0:04:49 | |
and stuff like that, it's not just lists. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
But basically, it's asking people what they had for breakfast, | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
lunch and dinner, the snacks between... | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
You can see this person had a Jammy Dodger biscuit | 0:04:56 | 0:04:58 | |
and a Blue Riband, so they were actually, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
this is from the 1970s, this family. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
And then what did he drink with that meal? | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
Who cooked or prepared the meal? | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
Cos I guess we want to know about whether women are still doing all the work, even now. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
And then also we've asked them about shopping habits, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
electrical appliances, what did they...? Were they using microwaves, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
kettles or new exciting things we didn't know about yet? | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
It does give us snapshots of what people do. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
With a bit of luck, we'll back up our wild generalisations. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
So, Polly, this is, I assume, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
one person's lunch in obesity-stricken Britain? | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
No, it is not one person's lunch. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
This is a selection of different meals that people | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
have eaten from our study over the course of a week. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:38 | |
I think what strikes you is there's a great deal of variety | 0:05:38 | 0:05:42 | |
from all around the world. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:43 | |
It would have looked extraordinary to the Robshaws in the '50s | 0:05:43 | 0:05:48 | |
and the '60s, even the '70s. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:50 | |
And what it shows is we don't have a national diet any more. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
If you'd looked at the diets of British people in the 1950s, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
it would have looked very British. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
Oh, and it would have been so boring, | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
and you'd look at it and think, "I'll eat that once. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
"Please don't make me eat that every Monday, every Tuesday, | 0:06:02 | 0:06:04 | |
"every Wednesday." | 0:06:04 | 0:06:05 | |
I suppose one of the things you do see and you could pick up on this | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
in terms of a national diet is convenience. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
It's all really quite quick to prepare. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:13 | |
The quest to save time in the kitchen was a recurring theme | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
during the Robshaws' journey through the decades. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
When we began the experiment in the 1950s, | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
Rochelle spent over four hours a day cooking meals from scratch. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
Bran's got absolutely no idea what it's like | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
to be in the kitchen for the whole day. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
Basic equipment and ingredients meant even simple jobs | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
were time-consuming. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:44 | |
It's taking a bit of a while. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
We'll probably be in 1954 by the time this boils. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
The family's first fish finger offered a tantalising | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
glimpse of the future - convenience foods. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
Wow! | 0:07:01 | 0:07:03 | |
The product is very convenient, I heat it up and that is it. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:09 | |
Nothing to do, nothing else to do. It's fantastic. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
In the '60s, it took an average of an hour and 40 minutes | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
to cook a meal. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
But over the decade, new time-saving technology... | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
Isn't it lovely? | 0:07:23 | 0:07:24 | |
It's really going to revolutionise my life. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
..and innovative products started to bring this time down. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:31 | |
Oh, my goodness! | 0:07:31 | 0:07:32 | |
That's a totally new kind of food, isn't it? | 0:07:32 | 0:07:34 | |
Look at those! | 0:07:38 | 0:07:39 | |
Look, look, look at them, have you seen them? | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
Yeah. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:43 | |
That has just made my day. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:45 | |
The arrival of the freezer was another time-saving innovation, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
heralding a host of new products that barely needed any preparation. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
Oh, I have fond memories of cod in butter sauce - | 0:07:57 | 0:08:01 | |
it's one of the first meals I had with Brandon. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
I thought they were quite sophisticated, | 0:08:03 | 0:08:05 | |
so I think the kids are in for a treat. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
And by the '80s, the average cooking time for a meal | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
had shrunk to an hour... | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
-It's six minutes, isn't it, this one? -No, it's five. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
..if you bothered to cook at all. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
But as the decades moved on, the Robshaws were starting to wake up | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
to the potential cost of faster and faster food. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
The food that we were eating, it's got more and more processed, | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
more and more salt, more and more fat, more and more sugar in the diet. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
Today the average time taken to cook a meal is just 20 minutes. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
But in case even THAT sounds too long, | 0:08:35 | 0:08:37 | |
Polly's introducing the Robshaws to a brand-new food | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
that does away with the need for cooking altogether | 0:08:40 | 0:08:42 | |
and claims to be good for you. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:44 | |
By 2000, the food they're eating is much more convenient, | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
but it's also highly processed, highly manufactured. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:53 | |
In a sense, what they've gained in time, | 0:08:53 | 0:08:55 | |
they've arguably lost in terms of health. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:58 | |
Hello, Robshaws. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
Hi, Polly. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:01 | |
How nice to see you in 2014. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
Have you brought us something? | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
-I have! -Sorry, I should... | 0:09:05 | 0:09:07 | |
According to some people, | 0:09:07 | 0:09:08 | |
what's in this bag is the solution to the inconvenience of food | 0:09:08 | 0:09:14 | |
and the problem of processed food being unhealthy. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
A software engineer from San Francisco started to think that | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
food was a really inefficient way of delivering what the body needs. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:26 | |
Indeed, Rob Rhinehart seems to see food itself as an outdated concept. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
It takes a little bit of perspective to see that food really is | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
made out of chemicals, it is reduceable, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
and we can build a backup and we can change it and we can make it better. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
Rhinehart came up with an alternative to his old diet of cheap junk food. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
He claims his invention provides all the calories and nutrition | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
people need in liquid form, | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
removing the pesky need for traditional meals altogether. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
Terrible name, though, isn't it? | 0:09:58 | 0:09:59 | |
Soylent, it's like sort of a cross between soil and toilet, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
it sounds awful. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:04 | |
The name is sort of on purpose because... | 0:10:04 | 0:10:06 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
..he wants it to | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
be almost anti everything we think about in terms of food. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:14 | |
Fans of the concept have developed their own versions of the drink | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
and the Robshaws are following one of their online recipes, | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
using whey protein... | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
249 grams - very precise. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
-..oats, psyllium husks... -In it goes. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
..choline bitartrate... | 0:10:30 | 0:10:32 | |
Let's have a sniff of it. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:33 | |
-LAUGHTER -Oh, that's rank, isn't it? | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
Oh, my goodness me! | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:10:37 | 0:10:38 | |
..potassium gluconate, calcium, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:40 | |
salt and ground-up pills of multivitamins D3 and K1. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
All the things that you associate with preparing food, | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
like the delicious smells and the sizzling sounds, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
it's just not there, is it? | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
You've got the sound of pills falling into a plastic jug. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
Yeah, great(!) LAUGHTER | 0:10:57 | 0:10:59 | |
I just want to sniff this to see if it smells of anything. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:02 | |
Yeah. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
It's meant to be drunk three times a day | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
and claims to totally replace the need for ordinary food. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
It is actually making me feel slightly nervous. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
-Is it? -Yeah. -Really? -Yeah. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:15 | |
But are you excited about the nutritional benefits of it? | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
I'm not excited. - No, not at all. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
I'm starving, but this isn't food. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
-Well, I think I'm going to try it first. -OK. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
Really, really quite unpleasant. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
ROS: What does it taste like? | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
Do you want to do it at the same time? | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:11:39 | 0:11:40 | |
Is it that bad? Have you tasted it yet? | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
-No. -That's disgusting. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:46 | |
I...don't like it. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:11:51 | 0:11:52 | |
I just... | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
Quick, let's just clear all this away and forget about it. LAUGHTER | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
Could you subsist on it, every day? | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
I couldn't do it. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:02 | |
The way this is perceived is that the end, the purpose of eating food, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
is just to enable you to carry on functioning and doing your job. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:09 | |
But food is about a lot more than that, isn't it? | 0:12:09 | 0:12:12 | |
It's not just a means to an end, it is an end in itself, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
and that end is, you know, pleasure and giving pleasure. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:17 | |
And it seems, looking at our food study, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
that most of you still get quite a lot of pleasure from eating. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
In fact, on top of your three meals a day, you can't resist a snack - | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
a trend the Robshaws saw gradually evolve over the decades. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
SHE GASPS BRANDON: 'There was nothing in between the meals, there weren't any, | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
'like, biscuits in the house or packets of crisps, | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
'or things to snack on.' | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
As soon as I get home, I'd usually have something to eat... | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
and I'm actually really, really hungry. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
I'm missing crisps, chocolate, sweets, ice cream... | 0:12:51 | 0:12:56 | |
..just everything nice. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
'70s was really | 0:13:00 | 0:13:01 | |
when we felt like snacks were coming back into our lives. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
There were lots of new different types of crisps, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:08 | |
there were Pot Noodles. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:10 | |
HE SLURPS | 0:13:10 | 0:13:11 | |
We had a biscuit tin in the kitchen. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
HE GASPS Whoo. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
-I'm pleased about being able to snack. -I've missed it. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
In the '80s, new gadgets meant it was even easier | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
to treat ourselves between meals | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
Wow, we did it. Can you hear the bubbles? | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
-You can hear the bubbles. -I don't know. Can you? -Yeah. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
What started as an occasional treat has snowballed. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
Today, we're a confirmed nation of snackers. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
In the years of the experiment that the Robshaws | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
lived through, the National Food Survey didn't even think it | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
was important enough to ask about, but that's all changed. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
When we looked at our modern study, | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
it became clear that we all snack, all the time. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
In fact, not a single respondent didn't snack over | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
the whole course of their food diary. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
So let's take a look at some of the kinds of things the families | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
taking part in our food study were chomping down between meals. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
A respectable showing of fruit - apples, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:12 | |
blueberries, some raw carrot... | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
..seeds. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:18 | |
Mmm, all very healthy. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
One poor child was even eating raw seaweed. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
But let's not beat about the bush. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
Your most popular snacks are cakes, pastries, sweeties, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
chocolate bars and ice cream. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
But it's not just our habits which have changed, | 0:14:36 | 0:14:38 | |
it's the world around us. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
It's impossible to avoid food. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
It used to be a thing you had to make room for in your life. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
At the beginning of the survey you had to shop, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
cook and eat a meal three times a day. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:49 | |
Now, wherever you go, you're assailed with snack food. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
You walk down the road and there's kebabs, and there's hamburgers | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
and there's fried chicken, and there's fish and chips, and there's... | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
Walk into a newsagent to buy a newspaper, there's chocolates and cakes. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
You buy a coffee in a coffee shop - there are ten on every high street - it's not coffee | 0:15:01 | 0:15:04 | |
they want to sell you, that's not where they make money, | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
it's the 1,000-calorie blueberry muffin that you don't want, | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
didn't need, didn't even know existed 20 years ago, rammed into your face. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
It's impossible to avoid food. It's impossible to avoid snacks. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
Food is thrust upon us night and day | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
and it's left to us to make our own choices | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
about what and when to eat... | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
..and it's slowly killing us. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:25 | |
It's a far cry from the world the Robshaws found themselves in | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
at the start of the experiment, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:34 | |
when the government controlled their diet through rationing. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:38 | |
I feel, sort of, actually quite nervous | 0:15:38 | 0:15:40 | |
because it's the thought of the limitation of food... | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
so I'm feeling a little bit anxious. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
There's your rations for the week. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
-Oh, gosh, that's for the week? -Yeah. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
So that's just one egg for five people? Wow. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
Food then was basically made to give you 2,000 calories | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
and nothing else. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:57 | |
It wasn't for pleasure, it was just bland and tasteless. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
They're going to have some of this cold liver, | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
which, I have to say, has gone a bit green. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
It's disgusting. I'm actually still hungry after dinner. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
I ate, like, potatoes and bread. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
It sounds quite filling, but it really wasn't because it | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
was...just bread and potatoes, and I don't really want to eat that. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
- What was it? Potatoes, cauliflower and bits of liver - all cold. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:25 | |
What's not to like, you know(?) | 0:16:25 | 0:16:27 | |
There might not have been the choice they were used to from their | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
modern lives, but even the Robshaws could see that government control | 0:16:33 | 0:16:36 | |
of the food supply had its benefits. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:38 | |
Although I didn't particularly rave about all of the food, it was, | 0:16:38 | 0:16:43 | |
quite clearly, a healthier diet | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
than we had later on in the experiment. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
Can you get your shears right round that green bit at the end? | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
Not my finger. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:52 | |
-Catch. -Whoa. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:54 | |
The food was low sugar, low salt, and we had fresh vegetables, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:59 | |
so I think we came out of it actually feeling quite healthy, quite good. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
-That was well nice. -Is it really nice? | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
Food rationing finally came to an end in 1954, | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
but one place the state did | 0:17:13 | 0:17:14 | |
retain some control of our diet was in schools, where strict nutritional | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
guidelines for school dinners stayed in place for nearly 30 years. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:22 | |
MUSIC: School Day by Chuck Berry | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
Right, children, your 1950s lunch is ready. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
What do you think of the food, then? | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
Not nice. Disgusting. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
Do you think you might grow to love it? | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
ALL: No. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
They might not have loved it, but it was unarguably good for us. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
In the 1950s, children's diets were healthier than at any other | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
point in the experiment. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:42 | |
I think it was healthy, but not very nice. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:49 | |
As the decades moved on, | 0:17:49 | 0:17:51 | |
other factors began to influence the food we bought. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
So have a look in the cupboard. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
-Quite a lot more branded food. -Uh-hm. | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
Where, in the past, the government has been in the kitchen through | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
rationing, what you're seeing now is the retailer, the manufacturer, | 0:18:03 | 0:18:08 | |
the processor coming into the kitchen, | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
muscling the government out. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:11 | |
So somebody else gets into your cupboard | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
and tells you what to eat, and it happens to be big corporations. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
By the end of the 1960s, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:18 | |
virtually every British household owned a TV. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
TV: Birds Eye fish fingers - double delicious - | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
that's something every eating expert knows. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
Food manufacturers had a direct line straight into the consumer's home, | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
tempting him with delicious new products. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
JINGLE PLAYS | 0:18:33 | 0:18:35 | |
TV: Bird's Angel Delight, the most delightful taste around. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
In 1981, the last vestiges of state control of our diets disappeared... | 0:18:43 | 0:18:47 | |
when Mrs Thatcher's government contracted our school dinners | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
out to private companies and abolished nutritional standards. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
Like many families, the Robshaws adopted the packed lunch. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:59 | |
Wait, wait, that's not helping. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:04 | |
-Yes, it is! -That is hindering. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
It's helping, Mum. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:08 | |
So you've got about eight minutes. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
When you've only got a few minutes to prepare it, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
you're going to throw in prepackaged processed food. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
That's it, bye. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:17 | |
That's an area that the government really should take | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
care of, and I'm quite happy to have the state planning children's menus, | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
just as it plans children's education. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
You wouldn't leave their education up to the parents, would you? | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
In 2005, minimal nutritional standards for school dinners | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
were reintroduced, and just last year, the government brought in | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
free meals for every child under seven. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
If you are not a child, the government's role since | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
rationing ended has simply been to offer advice. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:45 | |
But is that enough? | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
Since the Robshaws finished their time-travelling experiment | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
in 2000, Britain has been in the throes of an obesity epidemic. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
Nearly two thirds of us are now overweight or obese, that's a huge | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
drain on the National Health Service, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
and life expectancy in this country | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
is in danger of coming down for the first time in 1,000 years. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
It's a crisis. We obviously need to do something about it, | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
but what role should government play? | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
I set up my own fast food stall with Dr Oliver Mytton, | 0:20:13 | 0:20:17 | |
an expert on obesity, to try out some of the policies governments | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
in other countries have adopted in the fight against fat. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
So when did this crisis start to happen? | 0:20:24 | 0:20:25 | |
Because I've been on this time-travelling experiment | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
with the Robshaws, from the '50s right through, | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
I hadn't seen it coming, particularly. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
Suddenly, "Pow!" it's upon us. When? | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
Well, in terms of obesity, | 0:20:34 | 0:20:36 | |
we first really started to notice it in this country in the 1990s. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
-Right. -That was only when we started to measure it, and it's likely | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
that pattern had been happening for a period of time before that. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
Fat tax is a phrase one hears banded around, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
they've tried it in some countries, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:49 | |
it's a way of directly taxing the food that is making us fat. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
How does it work? Can it work? | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
So, fat tax is all food taxes. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:56 | |
The idea is to tax unhealthy food items | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
and therefore discourage their consumption. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
-Could we do it here? -We could | 0:21:00 | 0:21:02 | |
and it's something that some people have suggested we do. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
But it is controversial, a lot of people don't like it. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
The food industry would probably have some serious reservations about | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
doing this because they're worried about how it would hit their sales. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
It's harder to make money from sunny, healthy food, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
and part of the idea behind food taxes is perhaps to start to | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
shift that balance, so selling healthy foods becomes more profitable. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
Food taxes have already been introduced in parts of Europe | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
and are under discussion worldwide. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
Figures range from the 10% already implemented in Hungary and Finland | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
to 40%, as proposed by some groups in New Zealand. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:36 | |
These taxes have seen consumption fall, though critics claim | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
people are simply switching to other unhealthy products. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
The reason people eat these is because they taste good. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
You have to confess. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:50 | |
I want to see if paying more for fast food would put the Robshaws | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
off buying it, so today I've slapped a fat tax on my burgers. | 0:21:55 | 0:22:00 | |
-My customers! -Hello, Giles. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
-Oh, my word, it's the Robshaws(!) -Have you got a new job? | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
Yeah, it didn't pan out very well, the show... | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
and so they had to cut me out, so now I'm... | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
But it's good, I'm happy with my work. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
Is anybody in the mood for a burger? | 0:22:14 | 0:22:15 | |
Well, I'm quite hungry, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
but everything's got two prices, I'm noticing. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
I've added a tax of 40% to the food, | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
and my menu shows the prices before and after tax. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
Imagine a future world in which there is a fat tax | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
and food that's going to make you fat is going to cost more. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
So, where it says, for example, five quid for a cheeseburger, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:34 | |
it's actually not five quid, it's seven quid, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
cos the more fat there is in it, the more you're going to have to pay. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
-Can I have some chips? -You can. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:41 | |
-How much are the chips, can you remind me? -£2.80. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
£2.80. And is that, that's the fat tax price, is it? | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
-Yeah, that's a lot. -Is that worth it? -No. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
No. So you're not going to have chips, after all? How about that? | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
You see, it works. Brilliant. So OK, no chips for the kid, great. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
-Ros, what do you think? -I want a hamburger. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
The trouble is that there's five of us. I actually haven't got | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
enough money on us to get five hamburgers at that price. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
-That is over... That's like £30, isn't it? -Yeah. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:04 | |
You're going to be looking at about £30, £35 | 0:23:04 | 0:23:07 | |
and, if you want sugary drinks, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
you're probably going to be doing a 50. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
-Yes. -I can't get over that. £50. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
One hamburger, one cheeseburger and one chips. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:15 | |
So on your cheeseburger, would you like some gherkins? | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
-ROCHELLE LAUGHS Do they cost extra? -No, | 0:23:18 | 0:23:20 | |
they don't, cos there's no fat in them. Some lettuce? | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
-Yes, please. -Yummy, healthy lettuce. No tax on the lettuce. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
That looks fantastic. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:28 | |
So that is £16.10 for two burgers and some fries. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:32 | |
-That's painful to do that. -Does it take you back to the '50s? | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
Because you had basically... At the beginning of the experiment, you had | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
the government telling you what to do, what you could and couldn't eat, | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
and then in the '70s and '80s and '90s, you could eat whatever you wanted. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
And now you are back in a world where the government controls what you eat, is that...? | 0:23:44 | 0:23:48 | |
- It strikes me that this is going to affect people on low incomes more, probably. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
- But what about if we taxed unhealthy food and we used that | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
money to subsidise healthy food, so the average effect would be nothing? | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
Yeah, that'd be good. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
Would that drive you from unhealthy food to healthy food? | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
- I think it would nudge you, wouldn't it? | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
Which is the idea, I suppose. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
- Perhaps one of the concerns with taxing food is | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
if people have less money to spend on other food items, | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
do they cut back on healthy food items like fruit and vegetables? | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
But perhaps we ought to be a bit more targeted in what we go for | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
and sugary drinks have been one thing that have been particularly | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
implicated with obesity. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
Can I get a Coke? | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
Whether or not they move on these taxes, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
-they're going to have to do something, aren't they? -ROCHELLE: Yeah. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
I think, because we cannot control ourselves, having the government | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
control what we're eating now, it would probably be quite a good thing. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
I mean, it's a pretty sort of paternalistic view, isn't it? | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
- You're handing over these... - It's maternalistic. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
It's maternalistic. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:44 | |
The idea of government intervention in our diets is one lesson we | 0:24:44 | 0:24:47 | |
could take from the past... | 0:24:47 | 0:24:49 | |
But I think there's another - about the way we shop. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
With no car, and nothing but a larder to keep food fresh, | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
shopping locally was the only option for Rochelle in the early '50s. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
Living without a fridge is the hardest part. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
You can see that it would have been absolutely necessary, | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
it's not through a particular choice, | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
but you would have to go shopping every single day. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
Although it took up lots of time, | 0:25:13 | 0:25:14 | |
Rochelle could also see the benefits. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
I think the good bit about shopping locally in the '50s, | 0:25:17 | 0:25:21 | |
sort of, experiment was that you would see the same face every day, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:28 | |
you would start to have a connection with whoever's selling you the food. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:32 | |
I've come for my liver. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
In the 1960s, Dave Myers delivered the Robshaws' first fridge | 0:25:41 | 0:25:45 | |
-Ta-da! -Oh, wow. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
When we got a fridge, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:51 | |
I remember how delighted Rochelle was with that. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
It made a difference to shopping, you see, | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
you didn't need to shop every day. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:58 | |
It's really going to revolutionise my life. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
For the first time, they could stock up. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
Newly popular supermarkets offered a one-stop shop | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
for all their groceries. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:09 | |
Welcome to shopping, 1960s-style. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:13 | |
'When I first went into a '60s supermarket, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
'I thought it was really exciting.' | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
There's just so much to look at, isn't there? | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
There's just so much to look at. It's absolutely extraordinary. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
The new self-service system transformed the way they | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
shopped for food. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:29 | |
I felt that we were much more in control of what we chose | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
and I really enjoyed it. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:33 | |
Later in the experiment, I became a bit more | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
cynical about supermarkets, but when I first encountered them, | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
I thought, "This is fantastic. What's not to like? | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
"All these options. You can just, just get it, choose it, grab it." | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
By the 1980s, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:50 | |
the Robshaws did all their shopping at the supermarket. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
-ROCHELLE: -On the supermarket shelves, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
a lot of the produce is now in plastic. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
I'm definitely going to have a chicken madras | 0:27:00 | 0:27:02 | |
and I'm not giving any to anybody else - I'm just saying that now. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
You couldn't see what you were buying any more | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
because it was sort of hidden in a box, so you're buying a picture. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
You're buying a picture of something. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
I'm seeing this with new eyes. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
By the 1990s, supermarkets had supersized. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
Their combination of low prices and massive choice seemed irresistible. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:30 | |
I do think this is amazing. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
This whole aisle, which must be about, like, 20 metres long, | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
is all different varieties of cheese. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
But even just the cheddar... It is a wall of cheese. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
It is a great wall of cheese, it's probably visible from space. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
'But for Rochelle, it didn't feel like progress.' | 0:27:43 | 0:27:46 | |
It was almost shocking in the amount of food that we | 0:27:46 | 0:27:50 | |
could pile into the back of the car | 0:27:50 | 0:27:52 | |
and I didn't find that a particularly pleasant experience. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:57 | |
It was just more and more boxes and plastic bags. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
See, so much of this stuff is perishable. We'll have to... | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
If we don't eat it soon, we'll have to just chuck it out. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
You are going to end up eating more, but simply by the fact that it is here. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:10 | |
In the '90s, you think, "Oh, we're just going in the car to | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
"get some shopping," because that's what we've chosen to do. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:15 | |
But everyone's doing it, you're actually just following a herd. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
You don't realise it, but you are just completely falling | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
in line with the spirit of the times. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
When we left the experiment in 1999, | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
it seemed as though the rise of the big supermarket would be inexorable. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
But in the last 18 months, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:33 | |
an extraordinary change has taken place. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:35 | |
At the end of 2014, the amount of money being spent in the big | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
four supermarkets went down for the first time since 1994. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
Our study holds a few clues | 0:28:41 | 0:28:42 | |
as to why the big supermarkets might be in trouble. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
The last I left Rochelle, it was big out-of-town superstore shopping, it was killing off the high street, | 0:28:53 | 0:28:57 | |
everyone was going to the supermarkets. | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
I know, partly because you reflect it a little bit in the study, | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
but also my own life, that the internet, online shopping, means that the | 0:29:02 | 0:29:05 | |
massive weekly shop feels to me like it's not the thing that it once was. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
Yeah, that sort of going to the supermarket and your car actually, | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
you know, groaning with the amount of shopping you had, seems to be over. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
What we're seeing is perhaps the death of the weekly shop. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
And when you look at the study, you can see some of that in the way | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
that people are actually reporting their shopping habits. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
This woman has said, "I don't tend to do full shops, only now and again." | 0:29:25 | 0:29:29 | |
They just call on supermarkets a few times to stock up, | 0:29:29 | 0:29:32 | |
so in and out of shops rather than doing that once a week thing. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:37 | |
It seems like people are sort of ducking | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
and diving between online, a bit of supermarket, | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
and then topping up on the high street in the smaller shop. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
Online grocery shopping took off in 2000 | 0:29:47 | 0:29:49 | |
and was heralded as the future. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:51 | |
BROADCAST: Every day, 4,000 customers order their shopping from Tesco | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
through its internet site, sending a list via computer to a local store. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
100 supermarkets, mainly in the south, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:01 | |
have the equipment to receive such orders. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:03 | |
Today Tesco announced, by the end of the year, | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
300 stores nationwide will supply online shoppers. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
Internet orders are displayed on a trolley computer, | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
collected and then delivered by staff. | 0:30:12 | 0:30:15 | |
Tesco claims a million people will use | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
the service by the end of the year. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
But supermarkets swiftly realised online wasn't great news for | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
their profit margins. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:24 | |
The genius of the supermarket was that we | 0:30:25 | 0:30:28 | |
as customers drove to the shop, we picked the goods off the shelves, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:32 | |
we put them in the bag, we drove them home and then we unpacked them. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
They didn't have to do anything except put it on the shelves. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
-We did all that work. -Yeah. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:39 | |
Online shopping's different. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
Suddenly, the supermarket has to bear the cost of choosing the food, | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
picking the food, putting it in the bag and also transporting it. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
Now that changes the cost basis for supermarkets. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
So, less profit, is that why they're failing? | 0:30:50 | 0:30:52 | |
Yes, online might be one reason that they're struggling. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
But also, snapping at their heels, are these discount supermarkets. | 0:30:55 | 0:30:59 | |
The rise of shops like Aldi and Lidl has been a big news story | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
over the last couple of years. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:07 | |
So you've got a Waitrose bag, Sainsbury's, | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
a Tesco's bag, but you're also shopping at Aldi. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:12 | |
-Why? -Yes. Though beforehand, conveniently you could go to one shop | 0:31:12 | 0:31:15 | |
and get loads and loads of stuff, | 0:31:15 | 0:31:17 | |
you're finding you're spending a heck of a lot of money. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
Whereas if you could split it between two shops, | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
and one of those being Aldi, you save yourself a heck of a lot of money. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:25 | |
Aldi arrived in the UK more than 20 years ago. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:29 | |
It may have far fewer products than a traditional supermarket, | 0:31:29 | 0:31:33 | |
but that gives Aldi huge buying power with suppliers. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
Discounters like Aldi are stealing a march. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
What's happening here on these aisles is sending shockwaves through | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
an industry already grappling with huge change. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
But the internet and discount supermarkets aren't | 0:31:52 | 0:31:55 | |
the only things that are changing the way we shop. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:57 | |
I think there's another, potentially more interesting, transformation afoot, | 0:31:57 | 0:32:01 | |
which may mirror the way things happened in previous eras, | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
where a small number of foodier people get into a way of doing | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
things which gradually become mainstream. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
And I think it's beginning to happen in the way we shop for food. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:15 | |
So I've brought Rochelle to my local high street to see | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
if I can persuade her that this is the future. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
I don't know really how that small local shopping | 0:32:20 | 0:32:25 | |
can fit in really well to a busy lifestyle. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:27 | |
You see, I think it can. I think the supermarkets are dying, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
the big four supermarkets are all losing money, | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
their shares are all down, people are doing more and more of their | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
shopping online, people aren't going to the out-of-town superstores. | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
In the spare time we have that is made by doing the main | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
shopping online, that leaves room to buy bread, fish, | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
meat, you know, the daily things people need to buy locally, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:46 | |
and so there is a resurgence of local shops. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
And I think that might well be the future, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:51 | |
as we've learnt in this series, where the middle classes with | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
a few quid lead, the masses do eventually follow, whether that's | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
fast food, frozen food, microwaves, curries, you know... | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
And I think because poncy middle-class people like me | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
are starting to go back to local butchers and fishmongers, | 0:33:03 | 0:33:05 | |
-that's how the future might be. -Right, I'll follow your lead. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe you'll think the shops are rubbish. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
There's been an astonishing 25% increase in the number | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
of independent food shops since 2012. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:19 | |
Our first stop is the new fishmonger run by Jonathan. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
-How's business here? -It's been really good. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:27 | |
We opened July 1st this year. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:31 | |
Things are looking really nice, really comfortable now, yeah. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:34 | |
For me, shopping more locally is about "How easy is it to do?" | 0:33:34 | 0:33:39 | |
I live down the road. Walk in, boom, and you've shopped really quickly, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:42 | |
and that's convenient, isn't it? I mean, you're open late... | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
Yep, Tuesday through to Friday, until 7.30pm. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:47 | |
There's a good burst at school run time, and then from 5pm | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
through to 7.30pm is probably 40% of the day's trade. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:55 | |
-Right. -If not more. -It's almost like a Mediterranean sort of idea, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
isn't it, shopping late? | 0:33:59 | 0:34:00 | |
'Later opening hours have made them more convenient, | 0:34:00 | 0:34:03 | |
'but I know Rochelle will need convincing about the cost.' | 0:34:03 | 0:34:07 | |
You don't have to be particularly well off to come in here | 0:34:07 | 0:34:09 | |
and buy a bit of fish. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:10 | |
The things the supermarkets sell that we sell as well, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
we're priced almost identically. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:14 | |
Are you? I was going to ask, who comes in, is it just rich people? | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
No, not at all, no. People from all walks of life come in. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
This came up this morning from Newlyn, | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
that's a really cracking bit of whiting. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
And how much would that piece of whiting cost? | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
That piece of whiting, I'd say about £4. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
What would you do with that, then? | 0:34:29 | 0:34:31 | |
That just needs seasoning, a little smattering of flour | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
and frying in butter. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:35 | |
Everything needs frying in butter, effectively, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
makes it anything taste good, really, doesn't it? | 0:34:37 | 0:34:39 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:34:39 | 0:34:40 | |
OK, well, I think I'll maybe have two of those. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:44 | |
-Two of those? OK. -Yes, please, yeah. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
-Brilliant, OK, lovely. -Thanks very much. -Thanks very much. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
Thank you. Cheerio. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:51 | |
One of the factors driving customers back to local shops | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
is that we want to have confidence in our food again - | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
especially in our meat. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
-Good morning, how are you? -Hi. -Good to see you. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
How is business, how's it working out? | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
We've had a really good start here. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:05 | |
Lots of local shoppers, people have really taken to us, which is nice. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
People, you know, they want to be able to trust what they buy, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
and I can tell you where all these animals came from, | 0:35:11 | 0:35:13 | |
where the farm was and how they're bred, and that's what we do here. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:16 | |
This kind of reminds me of what it was like when I did the '50s | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
-and I'd go locally to my local butcher. -Yeah. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:22 | |
The importance of knowing where their meat came from | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
was brought home to the Robshaws in the 1990s when BSE, | 0:35:26 | 0:35:29 | |
known as mad cow disease, became a national talking point. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
'The so-called mad cow disease may pose a threat to humans.' | 0:35:36 | 0:35:40 | |
It puts you off a bit, doesn't it? | 0:35:40 | 0:35:42 | |
You wouldn't be happy giving Fred a load of beef | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
knowing that there's not, how safe that beef is. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
How would you possibly feel safe giving it to him? | 0:35:49 | 0:35:53 | |
But I don't like it, I don't like those farming methods. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:56 | |
The fact is, we know that... | 0:35:56 | 0:35:58 | |
..the food chain is violated at various points. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:04 | |
Our trust in food was rocked and the bad news kept coming. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
In 2013, we learned that some supermarkets had sold us horse meat | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
in convenience products labelled as containing beef. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:18 | |
'More beef products were revealed to contain horse DNA yesterday.' | 0:36:18 | 0:36:22 | |
'If you are just about to pop your dinner in the microwave, | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
'don't be put off by the news tonight - | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
'that's the official government advice. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
'They say we should keep on eating processed beef, | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
'even though they don't actually know what's on our plates.' | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
People are really keyed up now with food and I think | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
they're starting to realise that, you know, cheap food comes at a cost. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
We're enjoying a little sort of resurge of people | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
coming back to the farmer's market | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
and, you know, coming and buying fresh meat, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
which is really heartening. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:53 | |
People kind of wanted to learn from these scandals, | 0:36:55 | 0:36:59 | |
why was it a problem, why were cows going mad, | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
why were sheep getting foot-and-mouth and things like that, | 0:37:02 | 0:37:05 | |
and they wanted to talk about what they were buying. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
And we saw a movement, people coming back to independent shops | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
so they could speak to somebody and say, "What have you got?" | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
Now, there are people who will be watching who would think, | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
knowing where their meat came from, how they were bred and everything, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
this is a kind of poncy middle-class interest. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
Is that the case at the moment? | 0:37:22 | 0:37:23 | |
I don't think it is a middle-class thing, it's about knowledge. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
It's about people wanting to know what they're eating, | 0:37:26 | 0:37:29 | |
wanting to be secure in what they're spending their money on, | 0:37:29 | 0:37:32 | |
and you can come and buy what you want. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:34 | |
You haven't got to buy four lamb chops if you only want to eat two. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
So you're contributing to less waste, then, do you think? | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
Yeah, absolutely. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:42 | |
Less waste, good value, extended opening hours, | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
I'm sold on local shopping as the future. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
But have I managed to convince Rochelle? | 0:37:49 | 0:37:51 | |
I hope very much that we can, | 0:37:53 | 0:37:55 | |
you know, resist the temptation of going to the supermarket. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
It's not like it's sort of like in the '50s, the housewife going out | 0:37:59 | 0:38:04 | |
to buy food just for her family in-between the hours of daylight, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:08 | |
now you can shop locally at any time, and it is a pleasant experience. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:13 | |
It adds something to your life. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
It's not just where they shop that's been affected by their time travel. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:22 | |
The Robshaws have changed the sort of food they're buying. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
One of the things we've taken away from the experiment as a whole | 0:38:25 | 0:38:29 | |
is that we do have a regular veg box delivery now. | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
This idea of good, fresh vegetables, that's really influenced us. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
-Veg box. -Veg box. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
-Nice and colourful, isn't it? -Hmm. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:43 | |
Getting it seemed to be quite important, | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
and just, it seemed to be an expense that I wanted to sort of... | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
prioritise. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:52 | |
Living through the experiment, | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
the Robshaws saw a dramatic shift in their diet, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
from fresh ingredients... | 0:39:01 | 0:39:02 | |
to food that was increasingly processed. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
What do you think of this? | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
This beef curry is actually a little bit dry and powdery. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
With advances in food processing enabling novel new products, | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
they were only too happy to embrace the appliance of science. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:23 | |
We're all part of a massive experiment. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:25 | |
Our food is being changed from a traditional | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
to a new technologically-based diet | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
and we don't know what the consequences of this are going to be. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
Isn't it amazing how it does this? | 0:39:38 | 0:39:40 | |
I'm pouring into the Pot Noodles now, everybody. It's bubbling. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
See that? Bloop-bloop-bloop! | 0:39:45 | 0:39:47 | |
-The cheese is quite bright orange! -Yes! | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
That's the '80s for you, everything's bright orange. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:56 | |
Nobody could do that. | 0:39:56 | 0:39:57 | |
I do quite like the food that I've been eating in the '80s, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
but it's not exactly the healthiest of foods. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
The family's visit to an organic farm in 1996 was a wake-up call. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:14 | |
-OK, so we're going to jump out and look at some lettuces. -Great. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
-So that's a cos lettuce. -It's fantastic. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
It's really, really beautiful. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:22 | |
They just don't look as kind of... | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
'For me, it was standing in Guy Watson's field' | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
and just seeing food again, as it is, in its sort of raw state. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:32 | |
It took us almost full circle to the '50s. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:36 | |
The outer leaves are the most nutritious, where it's green. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
It's really got flavour. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
'Tasting that lettuce fresh from the field, and it was so flavoursome, | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
'that is when I thought, "I'm not eating enough fresh food." | 0:40:45 | 0:40:49 | |
'That was my Damascus moment.' | 0:40:49 | 0:40:51 | |
Why on earth are we eating processed food? | 0:40:52 | 0:40:57 | |
Two extremely fine leeks... | 0:40:59 | 0:41:01 | |
The Robshaws are trying out new ingredients | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
and Rochelle is finding a renewed enthusiasm for cooking. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
-What do you call that? -Kohlrabi. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:12 | |
-Are they English? -It's not very English-sounding. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
-Looks like a teapot, doesn't it? -Yeah, it does, actually. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
Short and stout, here's its handle, here's its spout! | 0:41:18 | 0:41:20 | |
"The Winter Minestrone." | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:41:24 | 0:41:25 | |
We are replacing the turnip with... | 0:41:25 | 0:41:29 | |
-Kohlrabi. -Carborabi... -Carborabi? -What did I say? | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
-You said, "carborabi"! -Carborabi! | 0:41:32 | 0:41:34 | |
Before they started their time travel, Rochelle worked full-time | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
and Brandon did the lion's share of the cooking. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
When I first went into this experiment, part of me | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
was kind of fed up with work, | 0:41:51 | 0:41:53 | |
and I kind of thought, "Ooh, it'll be very nice to be at home." | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
-Bye, Rochelle. -Bye, Brandon. | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
'All those years of women struggling to get out of the home, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
'I'm putting myself back into it. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:05 | |
'I think what I had completely underestimated was the fact | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
'that it is all hard work.' | 0:42:12 | 0:42:13 | |
I suppose this is what would make a woman break. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
I didn't really, really want to be at home 100% of the time. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:22 | |
In the mid-'70s, Rochelle got a part-time job... | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
-You're back. How was your day? -Hello! | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
-It was good, thank you. -Did you enjoy it? | 0:42:28 | 0:42:30 | |
-Yeah, I did enjoy it, yeah. -Oh, well done. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
..but was still cooking virtually all the meals. | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
-What about supper? -Haven't really thought about it. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
-No, and you haven't, have you? -No. -No. And you haven't? | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
-No. -Right, better get on with it, hadn't I? | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
Once we sort of hit the manic-ness of the '80s, | 0:42:43 | 0:42:47 | |
life becomes a hell of a lot harder because you're out working | 0:42:47 | 0:42:52 | |
and you're also doing a lot in the home. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
You're just part of a system, that you have no freedom, | 0:42:56 | 0:42:59 | |
'you have to, you know, you're just caught up in this | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
'manic-ness that is kind of overtaking you.' | 0:43:01 | 0:43:05 | |
-Could someone get me the scraper for this? -Yeah. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
In the 1990s the balance finally began to be redressed. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
I do feel that Brandon is getting much closer | 0:43:15 | 0:43:20 | |
to his contemporary role in the kitchen. He's happy to be there. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:25 | |
-Oh, I tell you what, that's really nice. -Is it? Oh good. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
Really nice, yeah. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:29 | |
With the pressure off, cooking could become a pleasure again. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
Oh, that's wonderful! Hang it up on the tree. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
Hang it on the tree, baby. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
That's so good. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:38 | |
'I am cooking more and I don't know if that's' | 0:43:40 | 0:43:43 | |
because I had felt that there were these | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
sort of like rows of other mes behind me now telling me what to do. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
Well, this is going to be a nice chunky soup. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
It can't be chunked. It says chopped. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:54 | |
Oh, don't... Look, who's making this, us or Guy Watson? | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
Look, everybody likes a succulent chunk of leek. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:00 | |
-If you really loved me... -Yeah? -..you'd chop 'em fine. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:04 | |
No, no, it's because I love you | 0:44:04 | 0:44:06 | |
that I want to give you really nice leeks. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
You just feel like you've acquired that little bit of extra | 0:44:08 | 0:44:11 | |
knowledge all the way through, so it's just sort of made me | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
take more interest in it. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
Oh, that just smells so delicious, doesn't it? | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
-Dad? -Yeah? | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
It's very vegetable-y. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:26 | |
It's really nice. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:27 | |
It is nice. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
It tastes really good. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:30 | |
-You can see it looks healthy. -Hmm. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
Where with the normal soup, it just tastes really salty. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
When you get one out of a tin, it tastes, | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
like the whole soup tastes the same. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
But this, like, you can taste each little different part of it. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:45 | |
Since the experiment ended, we have been eating together more, haven't we? | 0:44:45 | 0:44:48 | |
It creates a space for conversation, doesn't it? | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
It's just about being able to make a connection | 0:44:51 | 0:44:53 | |
with somebody that you care about and that you love. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:57 | |
'It's very much made me appreciate how food affects family life, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
'and you can see that as food changed, our family habits changed.' | 0:45:02 | 0:45:08 | |
You can never have too many Pot Noodles. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:45:11 | 0:45:13 | |
Fast forwarding through 50 years, the Robshaws saw sit down family | 0:45:14 | 0:45:18 | |
meals become a rarity as informality crept in. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
The sort of order of sitting and eating at the table, | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
which we'd done in the '50s and '60s, was broken up. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:28 | |
You close the door and press time... | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
The arrival of microwave ready meals revolutionised family dinner times. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:37 | |
I'm going to play with my Nintendo. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
This is the very first evening when everybody is eating differently. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:45 | |
You're standing up, she's sitting... They're sitting over there, Fred's in the other room. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:49 | |
We're all sort of dispersed and displaced... | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
and the microwave's doing it. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:54 | |
But you do gain in convenience. It's quite nice. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
But what is the convenience? | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
Well, you know what the convenience is. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:01 | |
It's very quick and it minimises the washing up. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:04 | |
Watch this. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
No washing up. How's that? | 0:46:07 | 0:46:09 | |
Pushed for time in the 1990s, | 0:46:12 | 0:46:14 | |
the Robshaws barely sat down to eat...let alone with each other. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:19 | |
And if every meal is informal, eaten on your lap in different | 0:46:19 | 0:46:22 | |
rooms of the house, then you lose something. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
THEY CHAT | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
By the end of the experiment, we'd learned that it's very nice | 0:46:30 | 0:46:34 | |
and it's very, very healthy and good to come together as a family | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
and eat round the table several times a week. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
I hope that will always be a constant in the future, that we won't lose that. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
Where and when the Robshaws ate might have changed dramatically over | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
the 50 years of the experiment, | 0:46:52 | 0:46:53 | |
but there was one constant ingredient. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:55 | |
-Is it a slice of pork? -Yeah. | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
Meat. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:00 | |
What we are looking at here is a family of five's weekly meat | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
consumption in 1955, just after rationing. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:15 | |
This is the sort of quantity they were eating, largely of beef | 0:47:15 | 0:47:18 | |
and pork, carcass meat, stuff that was on the bone, | 0:47:18 | 0:47:21 | |
and today's, specifically 2013, | 0:47:21 | 0:47:22 | |
but it hasn't changed much in the last couple of years. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
Basically, and surprisingly to me, the same amount of meat. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
-It just looks different, lots of processed stuff. -Yeah. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
The key difference is here they didn't have chicken very often. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
This sorry little thing represents what would have been | 0:47:34 | 0:47:36 | |
a very small amount of chicken, two or three a year | 0:47:36 | 0:47:39 | |
because this was expensive and not a thing that people ate very much. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:42 | |
Here, lots of boneless, skinless chicken breast. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
The cost of chicken, totally driven down by changes in technology | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
and new ways of farming, | 0:47:48 | 0:47:50 | |
have meant that people can afford to buy an inordinate amount more | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
chicken than they would have been able to do in the past. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
-ARCHIVE: -'Not many years ago, | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
'the chicken was an expensive luxury for special occasions only, | 0:48:00 | 0:48:03 | |
'but today it's an easily available and comparatively cheap food, | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
'ready to be popped into the oven.' | 0:48:07 | 0:48:09 | |
The arrival of factory farming in the '60s made chicken affordable. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:13 | |
-Hey, look what I've found. Frozen chicken. -Wow. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:17 | |
Look at that. That's the first time we've had it in this experiment. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
It is, yeah. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:21 | |
In our normal lives, chicken is just a... | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
It's a kind of everyday thing, isn't it? | 0:48:24 | 0:48:26 | |
And new processed meat products mean that much of the meat | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
we now consume would be almost unrecognisable to a family in the '50s. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
Clearly this glut of meat is not a situation that can last. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
In the future, meat supplies might be a problem. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
I think that's right because, as populations grow globally, | 0:48:39 | 0:48:42 | |
there's a huge pressure on the amount of meat that is produced | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
because as developing countries get richer, people start adopting | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
Western-style diets and they tend to consume a lot more meat. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
So that it means in countries like China, for example, in the | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
'last 70 years, there's a fourfold increase in meat consumption.' | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
-So demand across the world will drive up the price of meat? -That's right. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:05 | |
If that continues, what will change is we will be paying a lot | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
more for it, and we've got very used to having, particularly these | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
kind of highly processed meats, being really very inexpensive. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
So if we're going to carry on eating this sort of quantity of meat, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
we're going to have to pay for it in terms of price, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:22 | |
but also in terms of environmental cost as well. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
The hunt is on for an alternative source of protein which | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
doesn't cost the earth. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
I want to give the Robshaws a final futuristic dinner | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
and serve up a radical alternative to meat. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
I am actually quite intrigued as to what this is going to be. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
This is going to be the food of the future. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:45 | |
What do you think it's going to be? | 0:49:45 | 0:49:47 | |
Do you think we might be eating more things from the sea? | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
No, because I think everything from the sea will be dead. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:53 | |
There will be things along the journey that you've had, | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
the time travelling, | 0:49:56 | 0:49:57 | |
which would have been surprising for you to have eaten. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
The arrival of new tastes and flavours | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
has been a continual theme for the Robshaws. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
In 1963, even garlic was an alien ingredient. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
Oh, bolognese! Oh, wow. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
-I'm excited. -Are you? | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
-Can we start? -Can we start? | 0:50:20 | 0:50:22 | |
One of the things we learned from the experiment I think was how | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
quickly something can go from being exotic to being completely normal. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:29 | |
So when we had spaghetti bolognese in the 1960s it was like, wow, | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
we've never had anything like this with the spaghetti | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
and the garlic, and it's so different. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
See that. That's how good it is, | 0:50:37 | 0:50:39 | |
people are actually scraping the dish. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:41 | |
But, you know, within a very few years, | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
that's just a normal British meal, and that seems to happen a lot. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
In the '70s, their first curry added chilli and spice to their diet. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:56 | |
To me, this is just fantastic. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:00 | |
This is just like a kind of party going on in my mouth. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
And, you know, I've broken out in a sweat because of it and I... | 0:51:03 | 0:51:07 | |
That's what I wanted, you know, I love that. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:09 | |
Why is it that men felt the need to test themselves with the curry? | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
I mean, women weren't impressed by that, I'm not impressed by that. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:17 | |
But I mean, I don't know, what is that about? | 0:51:17 | 0:51:20 | |
And by the '90s, adventurous British diners | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
were even bold enough to try raw fish. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
I've been wanting fish for like 50 years. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:31 | |
And now you finally get it. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:33 | |
Loads of it, raw. That is really... I don't know what I think of that. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:38 | |
Just to see these sort of bits of raw fish going round | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
and round was really foreign and felt really different. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:47 | |
It did feel that that was a very sort of extreme eating experience. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:52 | |
Perhaps not as extreme as this one though. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:59 | |
I'm serving a protein-packed menu of international flavours | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
and no meat in sight. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:04 | |
-See all those worms in there? -Oh, delicious(!) | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
-Oh, they're bugs, aren't they? -Yeah, absolutely. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:12 | |
Insects have been hailed as the solution to our meat problem. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
Full of protein, low in fat and packed with nutrients, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
they are already part of the staple diet in parts of Africa and Asia. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
Two billion people in the world, | 0:52:24 | 0:52:26 | |
that means one third of the population of the world, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:28 | |
is already eating insects. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:30 | |
They can become a sustainable source of food | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
and I think their importance is going to grow. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
I start by boiling them, to about five minutes boiling them, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
then after that I have to make my sauce, | 0:52:39 | 0:52:41 | |
which is tomato-based sauce, then they are crispy now. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
They have no aftertaste. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:50 | |
It's just really a beautiful, very, | 0:52:50 | 0:52:54 | |
very nice taste. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:55 | |
Once we have developed better technologies for farming insects, | 0:52:55 | 0:53:00 | |
they have really large potential for becoming a major food source. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:05 | |
Today we're having Mexican spiced cricket tacos, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
Asian worm stir-fry, | 0:53:11 | 0:53:13 | |
buffalo worm tart... | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
..and cricket kebabs. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:18 | |
So, Rochelle, what do you think about eating insects? | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
What's your first reaction to this food? | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
I am kind of repulsed really. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
I really don't fancy eating it at all. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
They're just staring at you with their little eyes. | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
But the fish stares at you. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:32 | |
I must say, these little worm tarts, I don't like the look of those. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:36 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:53:36 | 0:53:38 | |
-Come on, Fred, you take it away first... -You're the bravest. | 0:53:38 | 0:53:40 | |
-I'm going to try... -What are you going to eat? | 0:53:40 | 0:53:43 | |
Is he going to try the stir fry...with the buffalo worms? | 0:53:43 | 0:53:47 | |
That's really disgusting. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
What's it like? | 0:53:49 | 0:53:50 | |
Mmm, delicious. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:52 | |
-Is it? Is it OK? -Hmm, yeah. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
They're not disgusting? You'll happily have them for your dinner? | 0:53:55 | 0:53:58 | |
If I didn't know what they were. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:00 | |
Worm tart, have a quiche, have a worm tart. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
-No, no! -Look at this delicious taco. Who can do one? | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
-Brandon, you can eat anything. -Yeah, I'll do one. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
Oh, look, they're trying to climb out... | 0:54:08 | 0:54:11 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:54:11 | 0:54:13 | |
Just quickly, hastily... | 0:54:13 | 0:54:14 | |
Ugh! | 0:54:14 | 0:54:16 | |
Well, they're dead, aren't they? | 0:54:16 | 0:54:18 | |
It's savoury in a kind of slightly earthy way. As I say... | 0:54:21 | 0:54:24 | |
MasterChef! That's a fantastic description. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:28 | |
I have to say, I feel inclined to remove the wings. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:32 | |
It gets a bit stuck. We've all got to do it. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:35 | |
One, two, three, go. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:38 | |
I can't do it! | 0:54:38 | 0:54:39 | |
It's not the taste, it's the... | 0:54:41 | 0:54:42 | |
When you scrunch down on them, there's a slight squeak...that's... | 0:54:42 | 0:54:47 | |
This is the future. This is how it's going to be. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:50 | |
I'm just not sure if I am disgusted by it because I think, oh, | 0:54:50 | 0:54:54 | |
I've only ever seen these sort of wiggling about, sort of live, | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
or the fact that I'm just not used to it. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:00 | |
A lot of it is to do with the fact that we | 0:55:00 | 0:55:03 | |
think of insects as carriers of disease. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
We think of worms, maggots as things that inhabit rotting food. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:07 | |
Locusts do terrorise communities and strip crops and are disgusting, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:12 | |
-and that's why we don't want to eat them, isn't it? -Yes. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:14 | |
I don't really want to go there unless I'm sort of... | 0:55:14 | 0:55:18 | |
-Dying? -Dying, yes! | 0:55:18 | 0:55:19 | |
I don't think you'd ever think you'd be coming home from work | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
and you'd think, "Great, we've got centipede tonight." | 0:55:22 | 0:55:24 | |
It just... It doesn't taste nice enough to make me think that. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:27 | |
I think we ought to get the next course and see if it can be any help. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
Their plentiful supply makes insects a no-brainer, | 0:55:30 | 0:55:32 | |
if we can overcome our revulsion, | 0:55:32 | 0:55:34 | |
which is where our second course comes in. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
It's not really just cookies, is it? | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
We are serving up burgers made from a mixture of beef and insect protein | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
and cookies made with insect flour. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:45 | |
-Take a burger. -Take a burger. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
That actually tastes really nice. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
Yeah, here you can't taste the insect at all, can you? | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
And what about for Miranda and Ros? | 0:55:56 | 0:55:58 | |
It solved my problem with the wings and the eyes, but it's just got | 0:55:58 | 0:56:02 | |
a kind of aftertaste in the back of my mouth, and I don't know whether | 0:56:02 | 0:56:06 | |
it's my brain going, "There's an insect, so it has to taste nasty." | 0:56:06 | 0:56:10 | |
I don't know. If we hadn't been told, | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
I wonder if we'd have just scoffed our way happily through this. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
Maybe this is the way that you make eating insects acceptable. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
I don't think it's the best meal we've had, | 0:56:20 | 0:56:23 | |
but I don't want to have a kind of kneejerk reaction against this food. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
It could be the way forward. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:28 | |
Can I just say that Fred has eaten his way through half a burger | 0:56:28 | 0:56:32 | |
and two biscuits, knowing, knowing what is in them, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:37 | |
so maybe it is a generational thing. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:39 | |
# Da-da-da! # | 0:56:39 | 0:56:41 | |
In Britain, we have undergone a revolution in the food | 0:56:43 | 0:56:47 | |
we eat over the last 50 years - | 0:56:47 | 0:56:49 | |
the Robshaws have witnessed those changes close up - | 0:56:49 | 0:56:51 | |
it is an experience that has had a profound effect on all of them. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:55 | |
At the beginning of the experiment, | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 | |
I never would have tried to eat an insect, | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
but I'm definitely more willing to try more foods. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
It does feel good to be more adventurous. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
I feel really, really lucky to have done this experiment | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
because like, I'm 15, | 0:57:12 | 0:57:14 | |
but I've been in the '50s and that's just pretty cool. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
Whoa! | 0:57:16 | 0:57:18 | |
'As a family, I think we've come full circle and we're taking' | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
the best parts of what we've experienced into the future. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
'We'd learnt, throughout the experiment, | 0:57:28 | 0:57:30 | |
'that obviously food is essential' to life,' | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
you need to eat to live, and you might as well enjoy it. | 0:57:33 | 0:57:37 | |
But I think, even more important than that, we learnt that food is | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
an important part of nurturing people you care about. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
If it's even as simple as taking them a cup of tea, | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
or if it's cooking a proper meal and all sitting down together | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
in the evening enjoying it - | 0:57:49 | 0:57:51 | |
all of those things, I think, are ways of showing love | 0:57:51 | 0:57:54 | |
and caring for those who are close to you. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:56 | |
-Cheers to the end of the experiment. -Cheers. -You did well. | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
Whatever we're eating in 50 years, whether it's insects, | 0:57:59 | 0:58:03 | |
nasty vitamin drinks, or good old egg and chips, | 0:58:03 | 0:58:05 | |
I think it's fairly safe to say that | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
food will go on binding families together as it has for generations. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:12 | |
'I think the experiment's made me realise that sort of, for me,' | 0:58:12 | 0:58:15 | |
'part of being a mother is to try and create memories, | 0:58:15 | 0:58:19 | |
'and part of those memories would be around food, | 0:58:19 | 0:58:23 | |
'and eating and creating meals.' | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
Food is something to be celebrated and enjoyed every day. | 0:58:26 | 0:58:30 |