We eat more baked beans in Britain than anywhere else on Earth.
Every day, we consume over two million cans of them.
That takes hundreds of sacks of beans -
like this.
Tonight, we're going to tell the truly extraordinary story
behind an ordinary can of beans.
By taking you inside the biggest food factory in Europe.
I'm Gregg Wallace.
That's a tin of beans, innit?
..and I'll be revealing the secrets
of this astonishing production line...
A billion beans is going to go through here
and a laser is going to look at every single bean?
..and the science behind the magic...
That is mega-strong.
That's quite incredible. That is simply that with ripples in it.
..turning a humble little bean into one of the 300,000 tonnes
of baked beans we eat every year.
Mate, what it takes to give us beans on toast, eh?
I'm Cherry Healey.
I'll show you the incredible journey your recycled tin can goes on
in order to make it back to your pantry.
God, it's so hot.
Bits of it are just falling off as it rolls away.
Historian Ruth Goodman discovers that tinned food
was once a matter of life and death.
Malnutrition had killed more than half of the British seamen.
Three million cans of baked beans
will roll out of this one factory in the next 24 hours.
And this is the incredible story of how they do it.
Welcome to Inside The Factory.
This is the Heinz factory in Wigan.
It works around the clock with 1,200 staff
to make 200 different products,
including spaghetti, soup and its biggest seller - baked beans.
They come in all sorts of varieties and containers,
like plastic resealable jars
and individual portion pots for the microwave.
But tonight, we're making the traditional bestseller -
baked beans in a can.
Each bean will go on
an incredible mile and a half journey through this factory...
..before they are packaged and ready to head to your local supermarket
less than 24 hours later.
The factory in Wigan is enormous...
..covering 54 acres, five times the size of Wembley Stadium.
It's the largest food-processing plant in Europe...
..and the biggest baked bean factory on the planet.
Bringing in the beans is ingredients inspector John Brady.
Right, John, that's it, that's our load of beans, yeah?
Yep. First one of the morning?
Yep. Come on, then.
Oi! How many of these come in every day?
About 20.
Right, I'll loop it back.
Come on, then. Let's have a look at this.
I did not expect that.
I don't know why, I just didn't expect that.
How many of those big bags on there?
Ten in total, two tonne in weight.
Ten two-tonne bags of beans!
Driver, we're ready.
Overseeing the arrival of the beans is operations manager Gary Dent.
We typically take in 12 to 14 containers a day.
We'll do 50,000 tonne a year,
but when you consider we'll make
over three million cans of beans a day,
that's why we need so many beans.
Three million cans of beans a day? Oh, yeah, easy.
Yeah. Three million cans of beans rolling out of here? Yes.
Forgive me, but what bean is in a tin of beans?
That's them, Gregg. They're haricot beans.
I really love it that we eat so many of these,
yet we probably don't know their name.
We probably don't know what they are!
No, these are haricot beans.
Haricot beans start life in a pod.
They're grown throughout the summer months and left to dry on the plant.
The beans I'm following come from North America,
where the climate provides the perfect growing conditions.
Every week, 1,000 tonnes of beans
are loaded into containers and shipped to the Port of Liverpool.
Then they're trucked the final 20 miles here to the factory.
So, these little things.
Yep. How long, roughly, before they become a tin of beans?
You could see a finished tin of beans within two hours.
I suppose it is possible for me to see every single stage
of this process, isn't it? It certainly is, Gregg.
And maybe taste a few at the end? Oh, without doubt.
The bags of beans are brought out of their shipping containers
and into the factory at bean intake.
This is where the baked bean production line begins.
In just 24 hours, these beans could be in a can on a supermarket shelf.
Each two-tonne bag is carefully positioned above a funnel.
When the bag is opened,
the beans drop onto an enclosed conveyor
that takes them to the first stage of processing.
Could I have a go at that?
Certainly.
Don't go anywhere, Gary, cos if it falls over, I'm blaming you.
Each bag contains 9.5 million individual beans,
enough to fill more than 20,000 cans.
That's a lot of beans to drop, Gregg.
Whoa!
That was a bit tense, that, Gary.
Yep. Right, now pull that.
There they go. Yeah!
My dry beans are travelling to the blanching room,
which is 200m away from the intake area
to prevent contamination from the outside world.
They move at 5mph on an enclosed conveyor
and it takes five minutes for the first beans to arrive.
Here, they'll be rehydrated.
OK, Gregg, we're now going to see how we rehydrate our dry beans.
What we've got here is the dry beans that you loaded up for us
about five minutes ago.
They've now reached the blancher
and this is where we put the water back into that dry bean.
In the blanching process,
they pass through two 85-degree Celsius steam-heated chambers,
each soaking the beans for ten minutes.
Time and temperature are key in the rehydration process.
You're not boiling them up to cook them. No. You're putting water in for 20 minutes,
85 degrees to get moisture back in.
Exactly. Hydrate.
Rehydrate. Exactly that.
Blanching in steam quickly softens the outside of the dry bean
and lets in water.
Over about a 25-minute period,
these will have taken up around about 65% more water.
That's the before and after.
They've swollen up incredibly.
Yep. But not cooked.
Not cooked. If you want to try one, you can,
but they're certainly not cooked.
It's just got a bit of give,
but in the middle, it's as hard as, like, an uncooked risotto. Yeah.
I quite like them. You got any salt?
The rehydrated beans are washed in warm water
to get rid of any loose skins.
Finally, the laser sorter actually detects any discoloured beans
and rejects them with an air jet.
HE LAUGHS Honestly, yeah. Really?
Yes. Really?
OK, go on, then.
20 years ago, there would be people flicking the beans off with spoons,
but now we use the laser sorter.
There are two lasers - one above and one below the beans -
that examine them from every angle.
A laser spots a discoloured bean
and fires an air jet that knocks it off the production line.
The puffing noise that you hear is the gun firing
and knocking the beans off.
Every one of those little clicks is a jet of air and a bean dying.
It's BEAN rejected.
A has-BEAN! A has-BEAN, very good.
So, when I open a tin of beans,
this laser has had a look at the bean that I'm going to eat.
Absolutely. Yep.
Within the next couple of hours,
these will be in a can, ready to head to a supermarket.
And while I follow the beans,
Cherry is looking at the other essential element
in a can of baked beans - the can itself.
Mmm!
This tin of baked beans is about to go on an incredible journey.
Not the beans - I've just finished those -
but the tin itself will go through an extraordinary process
to end up back in someone else's cupboard.
It all begins the moment you throw it in the recycling bin.
Did I just get that in?
In most major cities, you can throw all of your recycling into one bag,
but how is it all sorted to make sure that my tin can
ends up in the right place?
You do it with one of these - what's lovingly known as the murf -
materials recovery facility.
And it's one of the largest of its kind in the world.
At this recycling centre in east London,
their murf sorts 520 truckloads every week.
My guide through it all is David Rumble.
Wow! That is a monster machine.
It looks like teeth grinding everything.
What is this actually doing?
Well, this is actually separating out into three different sizes -
very big, which just rolls over the top,
medium size, which is where a steel can goes.
and then very small, which is broken glass and shredded paper.
There goes your can, you can see it there.
There it is, there it is.
Once it's all separated into different sizes,
it moves on to be sorted by shape.
Flat objects like paper and cardboard
travel along the top of the wheels.
While the rest, including my can,
drop through and are collected at the bottom.
So, it's a matter of surface area?
Absolutely, yes.
Surface area and physics.
Now that it's been sorted by size and shape,
it needs some hi-tech equipment to separate it further.
This is the near infrared optical separator
and what this is doing is taking plastic off of the belt,
so we're actually pulling out EET,
which is the clear plastic drinks bottles.
A sensor in the separator detects how much light is passing through
or reflecting off the different materials
so it can spot the clear plastic bottles
and they get blown off the belt.
Can it really be that detailed that it can see an individual bottle?
Absolutely.
Finally, my steel can is picked up
and separated from the aluminium drinks cans.
This is an electromagnet that'll lift the can off of the belt,
move it over above a bin and then drop it off.
So, once the tin has been dropped by the magnet, where does it go then?
It goes to the baler,
where we make it into a big square bale of ferrous metal.
The baling machine crushes up to 40,000 tin cans
into one single cube, each weighing one tonne.
This one includes my can.
I'm now going to take this lot off to one of the largest steelworks
in the UK for a bit of a rough time.
Back at the factory, it's been 25 minutes since my dried beans arrived
and now they've been rehydrated.
To make baked beans, every manufacturer uses haricot beans,
but they all create their own particular tomato sauce.
Here at Heinz, their special ingredients are prepared
in the spice-mixing area.
The recipe is classified information,
and making sure it stays that way
is manufacturing coordinator Paul Sherrington.
This is where we make up the secret spices what makes the beans famous.
What do you mean "the secret spices"? A secret no-one knows.
Only two people in the world know about these spices.
Who do you think you are, James Bond? Yes. Mate, get out of it!
The ingredients are listed on the label of a can of beans,
but because no recipe can be copyrighted,
the exact proportions they use are a trade secret
known only by the head buyer and the chief quality officer.
The secret spice recipe has stayed the same since 1896...
..and is delivered to the factory as three anonymous powder mixes.
What are they? I don't know.
You honestly don't know what they are? Honestly, I don't know.
I can taste these, though, can't I, cos I...
Indeed, yes. ..I might be able to work out what's in it?
But if you do, then we'll have to kill you.
Surely working out what's in the three different mixes
shouldn't be too hard.
Oh!
They're so strong.
You've got a saucy one...
..a peppered chilli one
and a sweet, garlicky one.
Do you know what I conclude from that?
I haven't got a clue.
HE LAUGHS Nice one!
Paul doesn't know the exact ingredients,
but he does know how much of each mix to measure out
for our bag of spices.
What quantity of tomato are we going to add this to?
We're going to add to a batch which is five tonne in weight.
And how many tins will that make, roughly? Approximately 20,000.
20,000 from this little bag? Yes.
No wonder my lips were tingling.
I'm taking my bag of secret spices next door to the sauce room...
..where sauce operator Peter Foster is ready to mix up a batch.
Hello, mate. Hello, mate.
I've got some spice.
Right.
What is this room?
It's the sauce room.
You control the spice.
I control the pump, the water, boilers.
You're the chef.
Well, you could say so.
Peter is in charge of eight mixing bowls,
each one holding enough sauce for 20,000 tins of beans.
You are mixing and cooking the tomatoes, the water,
the starch, the sugar. Yep.
And the secret ingredient. Yes, that's the one.
Do you know what the ingredients are?
No.
Mate, do you? Believe me, there's only two people who know.
So I've heard.
Now for the tomato puree, which comes in one-tonne bags.
Two rollers squeeze out every drop of the puree,
which has been made from Californian tomatoes that have been cooked,
blended and sieved to remove the seeds.
It's then pumped through pipes into the kitchen.
There's your tomato pulp. Oh!
Then, I add my bag of spices.
This is just like adding a stock cube at home.
With the press of a button, Peter adds starch to thicken the sauce.
The sugar and salt are blown through pipes into the mixer.
Each 415g can contains just under five teaspoons of sugar
and almost half a teaspoon of salt.
Then some vinegar, but they won't tell me how much -
it's a secret.
And finally, it's all blended in the giant food-mixer.
Don't you think it might be a little bit too technical
for an old-fashioned tin of beans?
We make the best beans so that's what we do.
After 15 minutes, the sauce is ready.
That's a tin of beans, innit?
It's a tin of beans.
Our tomato sauce is on its way to get mixed with the beans.
Next, we're going to need some cans.
They can make up to four million baked bean cans
in this factory every day,
and, for that, you need a lot of steel.
I followed my old tin can from the recycling plant
to Tata Steel in Port Talbot, Wales.
This is the largest steelworks in the UK,
which recently hit the headlines when its future came under threat.
In six hours, my can will be part of a brand-new sheet of steel.
Here, scrap metal makes up about a quarter of the finished steel,
and so my old recycled tin can is about to be combined with this -
raw iron ore.
It's been mined from rocks as far away as Australia.
To make steel, the iron ore is tipped into a blast furnace,
mixed with a type of coal called coke
and heated to over 2,000 degrees.
The result is almost pure molten iron,
which is poured into brick-lined steel vessels called torpedoes
and shunted across the yard to the most incredible place
I've ever set foot in.
Whoa!
That is absolutely unbelievable!
Here, my tin can, along with the rest of the scrap metal,
is being loaded into a huge skip.
Tim Rutter talks me through the process.
Two things are going to happen -
firstly, the scrap metal is going to come along
and be charged into the mouth.
Which is there. Which is coming down the bay as we speak.
So, that's scrap metal and how much scrap metal is in there?
There's anything between 50 and 100 tonnes of scrap metal,
maybe the equivalent of up to two million steels cans
will be in that charging vessel. Whoa, so my tin can
could potentially be in there,
and that scrap metal is going to go into the mouth of the cauldron.
And what is over there?
Here you can see the ladle full of molten iron.
So, we've just come from the blast furnace where that's been made.
It's now in a ladle and that's ready to charge on top of the scrap
in the steel-making vessel.
From behind the safety of a concrete wall, we can watch the action.
First, the scrap metal is tipped into the 12m-high cauldron.
The whole building is shaking.
Then, 300 tonnes of molten iron is poured on top.
Wow!
Finally, pure oxygen is pumped in at supersonic speed.
The powerful reaction causes the mixture to heat up to 1,700 degrees.
Carbon and other impurities turn into a gas,
leaving behind the steel we need to make cans.
How many tins of baked beans am I looking at right now?
If you estimate that we're making about 320 tonnes of steel,
then that maybe makes about, say, eight million cans.
Eight million cans!
The new steel is poured into a water-cooled mould
to reduce the temperature to 900 degrees Celsius
and turn it into a slab that weighs around 30 tonnes.
God, it's so hot that bits of it are just falling off as it rolls away.
That's absolutely amazing.
Before the slab of steel can be made into a baked bean can,
it needs to be a lot thinner,
so it enters this kilometre and a half-long hall to be compressed.
It passes through a series of rollers
exerting almost 4,000 tonnes of force,
which make it longer and thinner.
Oh, wow! So it's being rolled up into a huge coil.
You can really feel that intense heat.
The steel is constantly cooled with water
and it's at a temperature just low enough to hold its shape.
A second set of rollers transforms the 60m-long coil
into a kilometre-long length of sheet steel.
That sheet steel is moving at an unbelievable speed.
30 to 40mph.
Five minutes later, the steel is coiled up for the last time.
It starts off with a slab that's about ten metres long,
and by the time we've squashed it down to 2mm-thick,
that is about 1km of steel.
Once it's rolled up into that amazingly neat roll,
where does it go next?
So, the next place for this coil to go
will be our sister plant in Trostre,
who's going to cold roll it to make it even thinner
and coat it with tin before they pass it on to Heinz, our customer,
to make baked bean cans.
So, this product is still steel and, later on, it becomes a tin can.
Well, people call it a tin can,
but of course it's a steel can that's got a coating of tin on it.
It seems unfair. I'll call it a steel can from now on.
Excellent.
Coating the steel can with tin creates a barrier
to stop air, water and beans touching the surface of the steel.
It prevents the can from rusting and will protect the beans inside.
Finally, the coated steel is cut into sheets
and trucked off to the factory in Wigan,
where it could find its way to your kitchen cupboard within a few days.
So, next time you open your tin of beans,
spare a thought for the unbelievable engineering
that's gone into making it.
Back at the factory,
it's been 45 minutes since my dried haricot beans arrived.
They've been blanched to rehydrate them
and my tomato sauce has been mixed.
Now I need something to put it all in.
Heinz have their own can-making factory here on-site.
Every day, 168 tonnes of steel arrives,
enough to make more than five million cans.
The engineer in charge is Darren Maloney.
This is the steel that Cherry sent over.
Yeah. I want to see how we make this into cans for baked beans.
That's fine.
Well, we buy the sheet steel in one-metre-square sheets,
approximately.
The sheets of steel are fed into a machine that cuts them into strips.
So, we slit it that way into long strips.
Then we slit it this way into the final blank.
Wow! It's now cut into 16 of those.
How many tins will that now make?
Two.
The transfer system collects them
and takes them to the welding machine.
It's taking about 100 at once.
It's taking more than 100.
It's taking 240 at a time.
It's like one of those funfair games where you have to grab the toy.
In a fraction of a second,
each steel strip is bent round to form a cylinder
with the edges overlapping by just half a millimetre.
In a process called resistance welding,
two electrodes heat up the steel edges,
melting them and joining them together.
Heats it up, sticks it together. Yes.
It's now the right shape for a can,
but it's big enough to make two,
so the cylinders travel across the room on conveyors
and into a machine which finally turns it into a can.
Well, this part of the kit rotates.
It basically splits it in two.
Does it go like that?
Yes.
Rips it in half.
That doesn't seem anywhere as strong as a finished tin can.
I mean, I can't do that with my can of beans.
We put the ripples on the can to make the can strong.
If we didn't do that, you'd end up where the cans would just squash.
The ripples give it the strength.
So, the next machine rotates the can around a mould
that creates ripples on its body.
These help to keep the can rigid
to prevent it collapsing under pressure.
You can feel the difference.
Yeah, that's sturdy.
That's quite incredible. That is simply that with ripples in it.
Yes. But actually when you transport them,
you can transport them over ten feet high,
so the cans at the bottom are supporting the weight
of all the other cans.
Yes. That is mega-strong.
And then over there it's putting the tops on.
Yeah. It's putting the tops on on the bottom of the can.
Circular steel can-ends arrive at the factory ready-made.
They're dropped on top of one end of the can
and the edges are folded over to make a seal.
This happens over 1,000 times a minute.
And now they're off on their way to be filled.
Quick and easy canned food is one of the most popular items
on our shopping list.
The average household in Britain
gets through more than ten cans a week,
but, as Ruth Goodman explains,
when the tin can was first invented,
it wasn't for the sake of convenience.
It was to save lives.
In the early 19th century,
food preservation was a matter of life and death.
For all of the military might
of both the British and the French navies,
the question of food was playing on the minds of the warring admirals.
Malnutrition had killed more than half of the British seamen
in the previous Seven Years' War, so solving this problem was imperative.
To find out what was going wrong with the naval diet,
I'm aboard the Gannet, a Victorian naval ship,
to meet historian Alex Patterson.
Could you tell me, why on earth
were all those men suffering malnutrition?
I mean, surely they loaded the ships up with supplies before they left.
Fresh food stocks would spoil very quickly
so you were left with the bare bones,
which was the dried food products.
Dried food products didn't have that much nutrition in them.
Coupled with lack of fresh water,
the men weren't getting what they needed.
It wasn't a great diet to be at sea four, five months at a time.
Away, without vitamin C for months,
the sailors were prone to diseases like scurvy,
suffering muscle and joint pain, red rashes and swelling gums.
Do you think they were actually going hungry
or is it the quality of the nutrition that's the problem?
Potentially, a bit of both, actually.
The quality of the nutrition wasn't great, we know that,
and if food spoiled quicker than they could have controlled it,
they would've had to lessen the rations.
To be able to feed 400 to 800 men on board was a huge feat
that the navy really struggled with.
Across the Channel, the French navy faced the same problem.
In 1795, they offered a cash prize to the first person
to find a new method of food preservation.
The winner was Nicolas Appert.
He found that by heating food inside glass bottles
and sealing them up with a plug of cream cheese and slaked lime,
he could preserve food almost indefinitely.
The British quickly jumped on the bandwagon,
coming up with their own version.
Looking for a less fragile material,
they turned to their already established industry, tin plate.
Author John Nutting has made a replica of their solution.
Hello, Ruth, how are you? I'm good.
Is this a can?
This is a replica of a can
that would have been made from about 1813.
What is it made out of? This is tin plate.
Does that mean pure tin?
This is steel which has been coated in tin.
Why change from glass bottles to tin cans?
Well, glass bottles were fragile,
so you didn't want really to have to use something
which was not particularly good at resisting knocks and bashes
and all the sort of things that would happen
to preserved foods on ships.
The innovator who made the first successful tin cans for preservation
was a man called Bryan Donkin.
He set up the first tin-canning factory in the world in London...
..and the principles of canning he pioneered are still the same today.
So, the food goes in there.
First, he filled the can with food through a hole in the top...
So, now what we have to do is cover that hole.
Right. And solder that on.
Okey doke.
..and then added a lid with a much smaller hole.
So, now we've got everything closed except for one tiny little hole.
When he cooked the food inside the can,
steam could escape through the hole,
but it was then sealed up,
preserving the food inside the can.
And that's it. So, now the food in there is cooked,
all the bacteria are killed
and because it's now sealed, no new bacteria can get in.
Exactly, yes.
And it's preserved with all its nutritional
and vitamin values intact.
That's the key part of it,
that the nutritional value is completely preserved, yes.
So, the tin can was born.
By 1818, Donkin's factory was supplying the navy
with almost 24,000 cans a year,
including soup, meat and vegetables, all rich in vitamins and minerals.
The nutrition of the British seamen was hugely improved
and this humble invention saved thousands of lives.
Back in Wigan, my three vital ingredients
are being brought together for the first time in the filling hall.
The beans are dropping down from blanching,
tomato sauce is coming from the kitchen next door
and the cans are travelling from can-making
on the other side of the site.
I'm following them to meet filling operator Jason Lowe.
This is the start of the process, Gregg.
We get the cans from can-making,
they come down the gantry and they go straight into the bean head.
The blanched beans arrive at the rotating bean head
and fill up the small round compartments on top.
Then they drop into the waiting cans below.
On average, 465 beans into every can.
It all happens so fast, I'll just have to take their word for it.
Hundreds and hundreds of cans just flashing in front of your eyes.
So, you don't add the tomato sauce yet?
No, the tomato sauce is at the next step.
Can I see the sauce going in?
Yeah, of course you can.
This is what we call the sauce filler.
It happens at a rapid pace, my friend, doesn't it?
Endless sauce being put on.
The cans are passing at such a rapid rate
that the sauce has to be squirted in at high pressure.
How many of these running?
We've actually got six other lines all working flat-out.
After the sauce, we've got the beans in the can, the sauce in the can,
then it puts a lid on.
Here in filling, the can ends are stacked into a machine by hand.
Whatever you do, don't drop it
or else we'll end up with all them can ends everywhere.
How long do they take to pick up if I get it wrong?
I don't know, but I'll time you if you do.
Yeah!
Finally, the cans are sealed,
but I've just realised the beans haven't been cooked.
They're not cooked yet, are they? No, they're not cooked yet.
Them beans are blanched.
They get cooked further down.
Inside the tin?
Inside the tin.
The beans and the sauce are cooked together in a sealed tin?
Yes. Already sealed up?
Already sealed up. Not cooked yet?
Not cooked yet.
Does that sound right to you?
That's our process, Gregg.
Now, I'll be blown. Who knew that?
No-one would ever dream that those beans go into that can uncooked.
Cooking them once they're in the can kills any bacteria
that might be inside, preserving the contents.
And Cherry's been finding out exactly how long
tinned food will last.
If you're anything like me, tins are bought for a rainy day
and then they end up at the back of the cupboard, gathering dust.
But how long can they sit there and still be OK to eat?
If they're past their best before date,
they can still be used as long as they're not dented, punctured,
swollen or rusty, but is canned food as nutritious as fresh?
To find out, I'm going to the Health and Life Sciences Department
at the University of Coventry.
First, I've brought them a tin of tomatoes
14 months past its best before date.
Dietician Carla Phillips is going to measure the amount of vitamin C
in the tinned tomatoes and compare that to fresh ones.
We've got some fresh tomatoes here, so we need to blend them down
and then we can extract the vitamin C.
Here we go.
Scientist Andrew Reid puts our tinned and fresh samples
into a liquid chromatographer
to separate and measure their vitamin C levels.
So, the results show that the fresh tomatoes that we bought today
have the same vitamin C level as the tinned tomatoes.
What?! I'm completely gobsmacked.
Well, we can explain that because these would have been tinned
as soon as they were picked
and these fresh tomatoes might have been hanging around in a warehouse
before they went to the supermarket,
so the vitamin C content will degrade from these fresh products.
So, canning preserves the nutrients,
whereas in fresh food, they continually degrade.
Next, the lab has found another can to test.
It's, er, slightly out of date.
What? 45-year-old can of Skippers.
Oh, it comes with a key.
I think you put that bit in there. Yeah, I think so.
These fish haven't been out of bed for 45 years. I know.
Absolutely.
Theoretically, there's no limit on how long fish
can be kept nutritionally sound in a can.
That is absolutely incredible.
They look fresh, they smell fresh. Mm-hmm.
But what I would like to know is,
are there any hidden microbes in there?
We shall find out.
To see if the fish is still safe to eat,
microbiologist Dr Daniel Amund places samples on Petri dishes
that need to be incubated for microtesting.
The results will take five days.
As a dietician, would you recommend cans?
Absolutely. They're a great way of helping us to meet our nutritional
requirements. You know, if we buy fresh fruit and vegetables,
then they can stay in our fridge
and if we don't use them up quick enough,
then the nutrients can become less over time,
but tinned vegetables will really keep the nutrition
locked in for longer.
So, fresh is wonderful if eaten quickly,
but cans are a fantastic way of getting good food into our body
very conveniently. Absolutely.
And the old tin of Skippers?
After a sample was incubated in a Petri dish for five days,
it showed no signs of bacterial growth.
So, remarkably, after 45 years, the fish is fit to eat.
But before you eat any food from out-of-date cans,
make sure the can is intact and in good condition
and the contents look and smell OK.
Back at the factory,
it's been 52 minutes since I released my beans from the bag.
They've already been blanched and sealed inside the can.
Now, it's finally time to cook them.
Cooker manager Greg Leach is responsible for cooking
three million cans of beans every day.
Welcome to the surreal world of bean cooking.
Where's this steam coming from?
We've got a massive boiler plant on-site.
It's generating the steam
and it's pumping it through pipes straight into our cookers.
Mate, how many beans are you cooking?
So, on all five cookers, probably about 800,000 cans
every eight hours.
This is a sci-fi movie, isn't it?
Well, you can feel it moving below, all those reels bumping around.
One big drive cog pushing everything.
Just like a household pressure cooker,
steam is used to raise the pressure
and the temperature inside the cooking chamber.
There are five chambers in each cooker
and inside each one is a giant corkscrew,
which continuously turns,
moving the cans from one end of the chamber to the other.
The movement mixes the beans and sauce inside the can
and the heat from the steam cooks them.
Seven minutes later, they move on to the next chamber.
So what we do is we send it up one way, transfer it,
send it all the way back, transfer it again,
send it all the way back up this end.
Why don't you just make a great big pot of beans and sauce,
cook it up, stick it in a can?
Well, we can't guarantee that there won't be bacteria in that product
when we've cooked it up and we're sealing that bacteria in a can
and caused a spoiled product or dangerous product
on the other side of the process.
21 minutes at a high temperature and pressure
kills any bacteria inside the can
and means the beans will be good to eat for at least the next 16 months.
That's why it's perfectly preserved.
That is the beauty of canning.
It controls bacteria.
A lot of responsibility on you here.
Yes. You could argue that this might be the most important bit.
It is, it is.
It guarantees our food safety, it guarantees our quality
and it guarantees the shelf life.
We do this correctly, when you open a can in eight months or ten months,
it'll be as good as the day we made it.
So it turns out that baked beans aren't actually baked after all.
They're cooked using steam.
Mate, what it takes to give us beans on toast, eh?
I use quite a bit of canned food when I cook.
I use tinned tomatoes for pasta sauces
and I use tinned fruit when I make a crumble.
There are some people, however, that turn their nose up at canned food.
They think it's common.
Well, those people would be surprised to know
there was a time when canned food in your larder
was the absolute epitome of poshness.
I'm on a quest to find out where our passion for baked beans began
and, rather surprisingly, that story begins at the Queen's grocers.
In the mid-19th century,
Fortnum and Mason in London were the leading supplier of tinned goods
to the British Empire, supplying their luxury tins
to the wealthy and military officers touring overseas.
In 1886, an entrepreneurial American by the name of Henry Heinz
arrived here with a single suitcase full of samples
of seven of his newest varieties, mostly condiments like ketchup.
By all accounts, he was astonished to hear the purchasing manager say,
"I think, Mr Heinz, we'll take the lot."
15 years later in 1901,
Fortnum's were the first to sell a new Heinz product - baked beans.
But the ambitious American wanted much more.
He intended to take tins to the mass market.
And his baked beans were at the forefront of the revolution.
Polly Russell is a food historian for the British Library.
SHE LAUGHS Thank you. One beans on toast.
Lovely!
Tell me, how is it that food that started out as a supreme luxury
ended up being something that we all eat?
Well, I think Henry Heinz has got to take quite a bit of credit
for popularising tinned food,
particularly things like baked beans.
So in 1905/1906,
here is one of the earliest adverts for Heinz
and here you see the workers streaming out of the factory,
coming towards this sort of wholesome bowl of baked beans
and it says, "What a hunger the morning's work has given you
"and how little time you have to satisfy its cravings.
"You want something cheap, ready and sustaining."
I find it quite extraordinary, really,
that we took to something like baked beans.
I mean, this bears no resemblance
to any traditional British food before it.
No, you're absolutely right. This is not a traditional food.
This is a completely different food.
And how long did it take, you know, to move from a completely new food
to something that we take for granted?
Baked beans are first introduced into Britain
in the late 19th century.
By the 1920s, Heinz has got its first state-of-the-art factory
and baked beans are actually being produced in this country by 1928
and what you see is that sales are doubling
every four and a half years.
And that's how baked beans conquered Britain.
We now get through more than two million cans of them every day.
In just one hour and 27 minutes,
my beans have been blanched, laser-checked, put in a can,
covered in tomato sauce
and sent spiralling through a pressure cooker.
They've been cooked with the lid already sealed on,
so, every two hours, a team of experts take a can
off the production line and taste it,
checking the texture of the beans and the flavour of the sauce.
As soon as my beans get the green light,
it's time to put a label on them.
Today, that's Hayley Wright's job.
There's a hole in the wall where the cooker is
and they come straight through to you.
Yeah. How many?
We package over three million a day.
These are still really warm. They are warm.
These are straight from the cooker.
This is the way that we normally label.
A machine sprays each can with a mist of glue
and sticks on a label.
It's all carefully monitored.
The light that you can see shining is actually a camera.
That is taking a photograph of every single label that's applied.
That's to make sure that every label has been stuck on straight.
Are my beans finally ready to go?
They're almost ready to go.
We just need to do a couple more quality checks.
You're kidding me! No, I'll just show you.
Listen, they're cooked, they're in the can - they've got to be OK!
Let me just show you our final quality check.
So, we need to ensure that the beans have got a vacuum.
What we mean by a vacuum is that the end is actually in a concave
so if you feel that, it's a nice tight vacuum that's in the can.
If a can gets knocked or dented, creating a hole,
the vacuum will be broken
and the bottom of the can will bulge outwards.
Luckily, the factory have a way of preventing
any of those from getting through.
Right. I've opened that just a little bit, right?
Yep. And now I'm going to push the lid down so the machine can't tell.
Yep. That looks like a sealed can, right?
Correct. But you reckon now the bottom will have changed.
Yes. I'm going to make a little scrape in it.
All right, that's ours.
Put it back in the machine. OK.
The can passes through a sensor which checks its bottom.
Even the smallest bulge will indicate there's a leak in the can
and it would be rejected.
HE LAUGHS That's ridiculous!
That's not the neatest,
but that is in the top three neatest things I've seen today.
Canned food is a great way to eat on a budget,
but does that mean you have to compromise on taste?
Well, Cherry is conducting an experiment to find out.
I've taken over the restaurant of a swanky hotel in Richmond-upon-Thames
and invited a group of foodies to help me with a tasting.
These people think they're coming here to check out the new menu.
Well, I've got a bit of a surprise for them in the kitchen.
Their meal will be coming from tins.
I'm conducting an experiment with Jack Monroe.
Hi, Jack, nice to meet you.
I'm Cherry. Hi!
Jack's a food writer known for budget-friendly recipes
and thinks canned foods have a bit of an image problem.
We get bombarded with messages
and especially these days from, like, health gurus
and health food bloggers
and I think there's just a slight snobbery around using cans,
if I'm honest. Yes.
Today, Jack's hoping to persuade me and our discerning diners
that canned food can be as delicious as fresh
and at a fraction of the price.
I'm an avid supporter of the tin.
You have a CAN-do attitude.
I like it!
Jack's going to produce a two-course gourmet meal for our guests -
croquette de poisson and then chana masala.
All the ingredients will come from cans,
apart from some herbs and spices which will add flavour,
but costs should still be minimal.
That's what I'm going to do and hope that they love it, too.
So, put me to work cos I'm not the world's best cook,
but I can work a tin opener.
Excellent!
First, the croquette de poisson -
fishcakes made from tinned sardines and a value can of potatoes.
I've never used a canned potato in my own home.
Are they cheaper than normal potatoes?
Actually, yes.
You're looking at 30p for a kilo of tinned potatoes
or 70p for a kilo of fresh potatoes.
That's amazing! Somebody's already done the hard work for you.
They're peeled, they're parboiled,
they're ready to go and they're half the price.
The potatoes are mashed together with the sardines along with flour,
parsley, a splash of lemon juice and paprika.
The most expensive ingredient is the tinned fish
and even that is only 40p a can.
What size is the average boutique fishcake?
I think quite small.
Yeah? Yes.
Look at my baby!
The fishcakes seem to be shaping up OK,
but I'm not sure the curry, also assembled entirely from tins,
will be as appetising.
Tinned chickpeas, peaches, spinach, tomatoes,
along with a chopped onion,
garlic and some herbs are all simmering away in one pot.
Now that we've added a few herbs and spices,
it's really starting to smell and look amazing.
I can't wait to see what they're going to make of these.
Fingers crossed they like them.
Here we go! It is ready!
Let's see if our starter makes the grade with our discerning diners.
All right, bon appetit!
Cheers! Cheers!
For me, the flavour of the sardine fishcake
is as good as any fresh equivalent.
I love it!
Thanks. You would never know that was from a can.
But what do our guests think?
I thought it was really yummy.
The flavours were really well integrated.
There was a lovely texture, little bits of potato.
Fantastic. It's lovely.
I thought it was really, really nice.
I enjoyed it.
Could maybe have done with another four, but, you know.
But not everyone was impressed by the recipe.
What I missed was a bit of heat in it.
Chilli, maybe.
But it's a good start.
The fishcakes passed the taste test.
Will our curry made from tinned chickpeas,
spinach and peaches fare as well?
Enjoy!
It is jolly good. There's lovely aromas coming through.
Yes, exactly.
It just tastes really, really fresh.
Light and clean tasting, yeah.
Generally, nice textures and flavours in the mouth.
The meal has definitely won over the educated palates of our diners.
Time to come clean about our recipes.
Well, this is chef, Jack Monroe. Well... Hi, I hope you enjoyed it.
Would you like to see what Jack used to make your food?
Yes. Yes.
You might be slightly surprised at this... Ready? ..or disgusted!
Ta-da! Wow.
Yes!
Jack specialises in making meals on a very low budget.
Would you like to tell us how much it cost per head to make that meal?
So, your fishcakes came in at 17p-a-head
and that included your parsley garnish and your lemon wedge.
Your curry came in at 27p
and it included your little bit of coriander as well.
And the potatoes on the side came in at 9p each.
So, that two-course meal cost about 60p a head.
I am impressed. I am impressed.
I've been really pleasantly surprised by today.
I have to admit I think I was a bit of a can snob before,
but Jack has really broadened my mind
to substituting some items into my everyday cooking
to bring my family food budget down without sacrificing on taste.
Most enjoyable.
Back at the factory, my finished can has been labelled.
Next, it's wrapped and stacked onto a pallet by two dancing robots.
But before the cans are sent out to the supermarket,
they pass through the factory's national distribution centre.
Almost all Heinz products made at their UK factories are stored here.
As well as beans, soup and spaghetti made at this factory,
the warehouse will also store everything from tomato ketchup
to salad cream.
Paul Andrews is head of logistics for this mammoth operation.
Oh, my word!
What on earth?!
It's amazing, isn't it?
That's just breathtaking.
In this warehouse here, we can store 70,000 pallets of products.
And, imagine, on each pallet, there's roughly 100 cases.
This is the largest food storage site in the UK.
It's warm in here.
Do you heat this warehouse?
No, we don't need to at all.
These beans that have come in here today,
they're still warm from the factory so, actually,
all the heat from the product is heating the warehouse here.
No way!
The heat I can feel, because this is markedly warmer than out there,
is just the heat from the cooked beans?
It's just the heat from the cooked beans.
Is anybody driving those cranes?
These cranes are all automatic.
I don't like it. It feels eerie.
When the pallet comes in, it sends a message to the crane,
telling the crane to pick up that pallet
and then go and locate it in the warehouse.
Times 70,000 pallets!
Mate, this is just food on a giant scale.
That's what it takes to feed the nation.
Just two hours ago,
I was hoisting my bag of beans into place
and releasing them into the factory.
Now, they are under the control of these giant cranes.
The pallets of cans are stored in the warehouse for 17 hours
while final quality tests are completed...
..before being rolled out, ready for departure.
Take it out and stick it on a lorry.
Off it goes.
All of these coming past me are all going to shops -
a constant conveyor belt into our kitchens. Into your kitchens.
Never-ending.
They make three million cans of baked beans here every single day,
but then when you think about it, there's hardly a kitchen
in the whole country that hasn't got a tin of beans in it.
It's the only product I know that we would happily eat
for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
What I didn't realise is the incredible technology
that goes into making such an inexpensive and everyday item.
I suppose, in a way,
it's quite fitting that the country that eats the most baked beans also
has the biggest baked bean factory on Earth.
Beans made at this factory in Wigan
will go to homes all over the UK,
with the north-west taking the crown for the biggest bean-eaters.
They also head to Ireland...
and Europe.
In fact, all over the world,
as far away as Nigeria, India
and Australia, who eat more baked beans than any other country
outside the UK.
Last one?
Yeah. All done?
Thanks, mate. Thank you very much.
There -
3,000 tins of beans on that lorry
and I saw those beans come in, dried, from North America.
But who knows?
In a few days, someone might be dipping their chips into them.
OK, let's go!
BEAN and gone.
Next time...
Wheels!
..I'll be visiting the UK's largest bike manufacturer...
You're part-man, part-bicycle now, aren't you?
HE LAUGHS I think I'm robot now.
..to have a go at building my own...
So, that's...
that bit.
Let's go, let's go!
..and Cherry gets some Olympic tips...
So, if you want to make yourself as small as possible.
..that'll transform everyone's bike ride.
She looks faster already.
Woo! All right!