Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

TellyBox: The Honest Supermarket

The Honest Supermarket - What's Really in Our Food? Picture Shows:  Dr Hannah Fry.
The Honest Supermarket - What's Really in Our Food? Picture Shows: Dr Hannah Fry.

People spend almost £190 billion a year on groceries but can we really tell what’s in our food? This is why BBC’s The Honest Supermarket is here to help…

Can we really trust the supermarkets and do we always know what’s in our food? Well the BBC’s Horizon series’ recent offering, The Honest Supermarket, is here to help. It’s easy to think of the word “fresh” meaning the food is “only a couple of days old”, that fruit and vegetables are harmless, and that when we walk out of a supermarket carrying more than we intended to buy, we only have ourselves to blame.

The Honest Supermarket (still available on iPlayer), sifts the fact from the fiction when it comes to our groceries. The team of scientists, led by mathematician and TV presenter Dr Hannah Fry, set up a supermarket with all the food labels rewritten to be slightly honest as to what’s really in our food.

We spend almost £190 billion a year on groceries and for every £1 we spend, the big name supermarkets get 77p. And with this hypothesis – whether the big stores can be trusted – the team starts their experiments.

They test various things, including whether there’s more bacteria in bottled water compared to tap (answer is yes), whether fresh or frozen fish is better (after seeing their test, it’s definitely frozen, which doesn’t spoil as easily), if “natural” really does mean healthy, and how much the supermarkets influence our decisions.

The Honest Supermarket.

The first experiment is perhaps one that affects us all, considering we buy more than three billion litres of it a year – whether bottled water really is better than tap. And the lab scientist doesn’t hold back – bacteria is more likely to be present in bottled as it hasn’t been treated with chlorine and we have lots of germs in our mouth. Also, there is a 90% chance we are consuming microplastics, and the damage to our bodies is yet to be determined as the World Health Organisation recently commissioned a review into its potential harm.

Then there’s the misleading wording that we are accustomed to, such as “natural mineral water”, which means it’s from a reliable, verified source with labelled mineral content, “spring water” comes from a verified source but the mineral content doesn’t have to be declared.

The team also explored whether “natural” really is what it says. Turns out the word isn’t legislated and food companies and supermarkets can say anything is natural, good or wholesome without needing to prove it. The only phrase that is legislated and must be scientifically proven is “low fat”.

The most eye-opening, however, was the fish test which concluded that several shops and suppliers aren’t storing the fish properly upon catching them, meaning they lose their flavour and quality by the time they’re in shops.

This show offers many more enlightening revelations and it is well worth a watch – even just to gawp at the BBC’s inconsistency with presenter Fry, who is pregnant and short-haired in some scenes, yet not visibly pregnant and has long hair in others. Perhaps conducting an experiment of her own?