"For years, we've been able to take the food we eat for granted." "We go to the supermarkets and it's all there, at a cost that most of us can afford." "And then, of course, there's the huge variety." "But in the last few years, there've been warning signs that all that is about to change." "Last year, British families saw average grocery bills rise by £750." "There were food riots on three continents." "In Britain, we now import nearly half of what we eat and we face unprecedented competition for that food in a world with more people and changing diets." "I've discovered how the food we eat drains global water resources, how rising oil prices could lead to drastic adjustments to our diet and how climate change threatens food production at home and abroad." "Tonight, I reveal the global food security crisis and what it could mean for the food on our plates." "I've come to Ridley Road Market." "It's not very far, actually, from where I live - about a mile or so that way." "What I love about this place is that it's an everyday market, it's not a specialist market." "People come here to stock up on the food that they need for their everyday meals." "And there's a huge range here, a huge choice." "There's everything under the sun." "I'm not just talking the British sun." "It's the Mediterranean sun, the African sun, the South American sun, it's all here." "In fact, more and more of what we buy is being shipped in from abroad." "Two decades ago, we imported 20% of our food." "Now, it's double that." "Food expert Tim Lang believes that spells trouble." "We're competing with an ever-increasing global population with an appetite to match." "Food production will have to double by the middle of the century." "By 2050, there are going to be nine billion people on the planet." "We're struggling to feed people adequately at 6.7 billion people." "As countries get richer they trade up, they start consuming more meat, more dairy, more fish, more of everything." "The bad news is, the planet can't take it." "Are you saying this kind of era where, you know," "I can come here and get what I want, when I want it, at a price I can afford, are you saying that's over?" "I think the party is over." "The capacity of the world to produce as much abundantly as it has done is beginning to be squeezed." "Unless we change how we grow food, how we eat it, what we eat, how much we are prepared to pay for it, we're walking into crisis." "The demand for food right across the world is rising and because we import so much of what we eat, we're gonna be right in the thick of the competition for those food supplies." "So I'm setting off on a journey to see if world food production can keep pace with that rising demand and to see what effect it will have on us back here in Britain." "I'm starting out in Delhi, capital of India, the country with the fastest growing population in the world." "They're now facing problems in trying to feed an extra 17 million people every year." "And it's a situation we may even be making worse." "Over the last few decades, India's been seen as an agricultural success story." "In fact, the country is pretty much self sufficient." "That is, until now." "Just recently, things have begun to change." "In 2006, for example, the country had to import about six million tons of wheat." "I'm going to the Punjab to find out why." "This small state, about 200 miles north of Delhi, produces one fifth of all of India's wheat." "We must have been travelling for about two and a half hours now and it's been wheat field after wheat field, all ripe and ready for harvest." "It's little wonder they call Punjab the breadbasket of India." "But looks can be deceiving." "Food production here in this region is now under threat." "Punjab means the land of the five rivers, but many decades of intensive agriculture have started to drain the state dry." "I joined local farmer, Sukhdev Singh, to find out about the problems that he faces." "This is a fresh, fresh..." "Roti." "Just now you made it?" "Oh, it's hot." "Sukhdev is now forced to drill deeper and deeper down for water to irrigate his crop." "I like this a lot." "So, Sukhdev, how many wells have you had on this farm?" "Ten." "Ten wells?" "How deep is this?" "110 feet." "OK." "220 feet.220 feet, this one?" "So, that's the final one." "That's the one you're using now?" "550 feet." "It's 550 feet?" "550 feet." "But the deeper they go, the poorer the quality of water." "It's more salty and much less effective for irrigation." "Thousands of farmers in Punjab have been forced to borrow beyond their means to pay for the specialist equipment needed to dig the new deep wells and irrigate their crops." "Are you yourself in debt at all?" "Yes." "Does that worry you?" "In Sukhdev's own village, there have been several suicides in recent years." "It's similar across Punjab." "In fact, many farm workers are now moving out of agriculture altogether." "What does it feel like to see this land that you've known so well become like this, where it's become short of water?" "How does it make you feel?" "Punjab's water table is dropping by as much as a metre a year." "Wheat production across the state has been in decline for a decade." "It's so easy to take this stuff for granted, but the water scarcity here in the Punjab is just a glimpse of what's happening in so many other parts of the world." "Already, more than one billion people do not have access to safe water." "Global water consumption is predicted to double every 20 years." "Indian author, Vandana Shiva, has investigated what this means for the global food supply we all depend on." "So, could water shortages actually be a brake on producing food for people, on agriculture?" "In particular communities, we've already crossed that point." "When I travel the length and breadth of my country," "I see villages where there are locks on the door and people have migrated because the disappearance of water meant the end of agriculture." "Within 15 years, world water shortages could reduce food production by more than the entire current US grain crop." "And we are partly to blame." "You've talked about India and the shortage of water but you haven't talked about the UK." "Is it at all relevant to us?" "I mean, we think we've got loads of water." "Countries like England are increasingly importing their food supplies." "If a farmer grows lettuce in Punjab, he is using ground water to make that lettuce grow." "When that lettuce is exported to England, it carries with it virtual water." "It carries a very heavy water footprint." "In effect, the UK and the rich countries, they have imported virtual water, which they are not seeing, but they have simultaneously exported drought." "In fact, most of what we eat draws down heavily on global water resources." "It takes up to 130ml of water to grow a gram of lettuce." "3.4 litres to produce one gram of rice." "And one gram of lamb can use nearly 15 litres of water." "Every one of us in Britain uses about 3,000 litres of foreign water a day and most of it in the form of food." "But water scarcity is not the only challenge." "There's another, largely unseen, unnoticed but crucially important commodity that threatens our ability to grow more food." "Well, it's lunchtime and I've decided to have lunch at a local pub and hoping to have a nice, wholesome meal." "But, you know, there's one hidden ingredient." "It's not going be on the menu, it certainly won't be in the recipe books." "But that hidden ingredient is crude oil." "Oh, look at that." "So, a meal like this, a lovely roast beef meal that I'm gonna have, is dripping in crude oil." "Someone's actually calculated that to produce a meal like this takes two pints of crude oil." "You need oil for the tractors and the transport." "You need oil to cook." "And what about the fertilisers and the pesticides?" "Oil again." "And then there's storage, processing and often oil-based packaging as well." "It can take up 70ml of oil to produce a 100g pork chop." "It's nearly double that for a 100g pack of cheese." "And a tomato grown in a greenhouse can use more than a third of a litre of oil." "In this country, we've got used to using as much oil as we want, whether it's jumping into a car, hopping onto a plane, as I'm about to do, or using loads of oil in food production." "But that isn't necessarily going to last forever." "Oil hit a record ¤147 per barrel in 2008." "It helped to push food inflation up to double figures." "Oil prices could reach ¤200 per barrel in the years ahead." "This is new territory for us." "But I'm heading out to the one country that has already experienced the kind of oil shock many are predicting for the rest of the world." "I want to discover what the impact could be on our food." "Until 1989, Cuba exchanged its abundant sugar production for cheap, imported, subsidised oil from the Eastern Bloc." "In fact, it was so cheap that Cuba pursued a highly industrialised, fuel-thirsty form of agriculture - not so different from the kind of farming you see in many British fields today." "After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the supply of crude oil pretty much dried up." "In fact, imports went down by about 50% and that had dramatic implications for food production." "It's as if the oil tap was suddenly turned off." "Cuba struggled to come to terms with this new reality." "And one of the first casualties was the range of food that had been available for people to eat." "I've decided that the best way to find out what it's like to live on a Cuban diet is to actually eat it." "So I've come here, to a normal family out in the suburbs of Havana." "You've got bananas over there." "A little chick here, which is rather sweet." "And a chicken coop." "It certainly has the feel of a place where they're trying to produce some of their own food." "The one thing I do hope is that for breakfast, they do have a very big, strong, black coffee." "Otherwise I'm gonna be in trouble." "Hola." "I'm George.Carmen." "Who's Griselia?" "Ya, ya." "Desiree.Desiree." "And I see you've got the coffee on." "Griselia." "You're a star." "Thank you, this is what I've been waiting for." "Thank you." "That is good." "Bueno." "So, what are you going to have for breakfast today?" "That's it?" "No eggs, no bread?" "That's it." "We're not gonna have any more to eat because Griselia doesn't eat anything more at breakfast." "So, this is my breakfast." "I've got the whole of the day ahead and I'm gonna start it with this." "Anyway, it's great coffee." "Griselia and her family get most of their food in the form of government rations." "This provides the basics but offers very little in the way of luxuries." "What they do have, they spread very carefully through the day." "Later that morning, I visited a local farm." "I joined the workers as they headed in from the fields to enjoy the fruits of their labour." "This is part two of my Cuban diet, lunch." "Now all I've had, it's gone midday, and all I've had so far are those cups of lovely coffee." "But that was all, coffee." "I've come to a workers canteen and I'm gonna eat as the workers do." "Hola." "So, can I have my lunch?" "Gracias." "It feels vaguely like I'm in some kind of institution." "A bit like going back to boarding school." "The potatoes don't look too bad." "That's very tasty." "Black beans and rice." "It's OK." "I mean, I wouldn't want to do this every day." "But it's OK." "At the time of the oil shock, average calorie consumption in Cuba dropped by about a third to dangerously low levels." "Since then, they've actually bounced back and now eat just a little less than us here in Britain." "The biggest difference is that we get about three times more of our food energy from animal products like meat and dairy." "The Cuban diet is much less fatty than ours and it requires less fuel to produce." "So, if we in Britain do face big oil price increases, this diet could make us healthier and wealthier." "But the big question is, would we actually like it?" "I'm reserving my judgement until I've had my last meal of the day with Griselia and her family." "Griselia, these bananas." "Are they from outside?" "Si." "Ah." "The eggs are also from your own chickens?" "Si." "That's great, thank you." "I'll have the egg, lovely." "The rice and the beans, how many times a week do you have that?" "So don't you get tired of rice and beans every day?" "No." "Anyway, I want to, erm... thank you very much for cooking this meal for me today." "You know, from the morning, when you gave me coffee, to give me energy, and now, to finish my day - thank you." "Griselia's making one of her coffees for me." "It gives me a chance to talk about the food that I've had, well, all day." "And what was nice about this evening was that the fried bananas came from the tree here, the eggs came from the chickens that are being reared in the garden." "It was great to be eating something the family produced." "The downside without any question is that, erm, it was exactly the same as I had for lunch." "Erm, there were the beans and the rice." "And there's no meat." "And listening to Griselia and her family, that goes on week after week." "Now, the reason they do it is because they have to do it." "Cuba had to change." "It had to change its diet, because suddenly they had to produce things without oil." "Now some people say that back home in Britain, we might face a shock a bit like that." "But the idea that we'd be able to change our way of living, change our way of eating, like families here, well, I can't really see that." "It would be a terrible shock to the system." "So, if we don't want to switch to a Cuban-style diet, but we're faced with a future oil shock, something will have to change." "We might have to find new ways to grow food that are less dependent on oil." "Again, maybe we can learn some lessons from the Cuban experience." "I'm heading out to San Antonio, it's about an hour's drive from the centre of Havana, going in one of these trucks turned into buses which all Cubans use to get to the rural areas." "I'm gonna talk to a man who claims he knows how to produce plenty of food in a world running out of oil." "For generations, the countryside out there was devoted to one thing and one thing only, and that was to produce crops for export - sugar, mainly." "Now there are people saying that situation has to be reversed." "The Cubans have got to start producing their own food and depending on themselves for the food they need." "20 years after the oil crisis, and despite the changing diet," "Cuba still imports about half its food." "Fernando Funes is working on a new low-oil, high-yield approach to farming, that he believes could make Cuba self-sufficient, and may have lessons for all of us in the future." "It certainly looks very different to the vast, single-crop fields you see in Britain." "Here, there are rows of different plants growing side by side." "Animals can be reared on farm waste, and they're also used to work the land." "It's like agricultural mix-and-match." "Every bit of land is used, maximising production." "What is so good about having, say, 20 different crops on the same land?" "This kind of farming, that combines crops, many different crops, and livestock and so on is able to capture energy from the sun and to make a better use of water and nutrients." "This kind of farming can be more efficient and more productive." "How efficient is it in terms of what goes in at one end and what comes out at the other?" "In the conventional way of farming, about five calories are necessary to produce one calorie in terms of products." "In this kind of farming, biodiversity makes possible to produce about five per one calorie input." "So that makes, by your calculations, this kind of farm 25 times more efficient." "Yes, that's true." "With this kind of agriculture," "I am completely sure that we can feed our population." "What that means in layman's terms is that you can produce 25 times more food on the same land with the same oil." "You don't use fuel-thirsty tractors." "Actually, you couldn't fit them in between the rows of plants." "And you can produce a lot of food in a small area." "But this kind of farming is not a miracle solution." "You need many more farm labourers." "In Britain, that would mean millions of people working the land." "And it would also push up the price of food dramatically." "So why would we in this country even consider such a radical transformation?" "Fernando, I can see why Cuba had to change - because it's a poor country and it ran out of cheap oil." "But what about a place like Britain, why should Britain change?" "Well, do you have oil forever?" "It takes a leap of imagination, doesn't it?" "To go from what I've seen here, the Cuban experience, to something we'd recognise back home in Britain." "But the fact is, our farming is intensive and our farming is heavily dependent on oil." "And some time, it'll run out for us, too, and we're gonna have to find our own solution to that challenge." "Britain is now a net importer of oil." "And two years ago, when soaring petrol prices sent the cost of food through the roof, we, too, got a hint of what might be in store for us." "A fuel shock can quite quickly become a food shock." "So, if, as some believe, global oil reserves are now running out, we may have to completely rethink our heavily-mechanised form of agriculture." "But beyond oil, beyond water, there is an even bigger threat hanging over all of us." "Climate change." "Dr Rajendra Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of his organisation, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, in 2007." "Now, you've dedicated your life to talking about climate change." "How worried are you about the knock-on effect on food production?" "Well, there's every reason to be deeply worried about this." "It's a combination of impacts of climate change that are going to have either a direct effect on the yields of agriculture or just your ability to be able to grow certain crops." "In the case of, say, the United Kingdom, extreme events, including droughts, floods, huge quantities of rainfall in a short period of time, are certainly going to have a major impact on the production of food." "In the case of India, we've estimated that every one degree increase in temperature could lead to 5% to 10% reduction in yields." "As early as 2020, several countries in Africa are likely to suffer a decline in yields of some crops by up to 50%." "So there is every reason to be quite worried about food security for the world." "What do you think it'll feel like to a family in the UnitedKingdom when food supply starts being affected by climate change?" "The first thing that will happen is that prices will increase." "There will be periods when perhaps what they want to eat may not even be available." "Worldwide, we are not going to have enough food to feed all the people." "I mean, you are really going to end up with massive conflict and disruption of peace in several parts of the world that can't leave anybody untouched." "It's one thing to hear people talk about climate change." "What I want to do now is find out what it might look like on the ground." "And that's why I've come here, to Kenya." "I'm going to meet some people for whom climate change isn't about predictions and forecasts." "For them, it's already a struggle to get from one day to the next." "Droughts in parts of Kenya have become four times more common in the last 25 years." "The country has just suffered its third failed harvest in a row, and the worst drought in more than a decade." "And some of the worst-hit have been the Masai people, who've herded livestock in this part of the world for centuries." "I'm driving through Masai country, and that means cattle country." "At least, that's what it used to mean." "These plains here ought to be teeming with livestock, and" "I've been driving for miles now and I've hardly seen any cattle at all." "Chief Sammy Taraki is a leader of a Masai community of about 9,000 people who live some 75 miles outside Nairobi in the Rift Valley." "In your life time, how has the weather, the climate, changed?" "SPEAKS NATIVE TONGUE:" "If the weather had been normal, if the climate had been normal, what would this area around us look like now?" "So, Chief, what's happened to your herd of cattle, what's happened to them?" "Is this, is this yours?" "Yes." "After Chief Sammy had shown me his rather bedraggled herd, he took me to see the remains of the hundreds of animals he's lost to drought over the last few years." "This is a bull." "A bull.Yeah. It's a small bull." "This was a milking cow." "It died with the calf." "This was the calf.That was a calf?" "His calf, who also dies." "When a cow dies, what does that do to you, does it make you sad?" "Ah, very much, very much." "When you see a cow dying, you feel like dying, too." "'What I witnessed here is a tragedy for one man and his people." "'What it could symbolise for the future, 'is disaster for whole nations and their citizens.'" "The experts who say climate change is a key factor behind the problems in Kenya, believe it could also hit food production in more developed countries." "Warm, drought-prone areas of Australia, Argentina and the United States are at risk." "And they're all countries from which we buy a good deal of our food." "Half the world's population could face a climate-induced food crisis by the end of the century." "Blessed with a temperate climate, the consequences for us here in" "Britain are unlikely to be so extreme." "But even our food production will not escape untouched by climate change." "I'm on the Leckford Estate in Hampshire." "It's a farm of about 4,000 acres that is owned and run by the Waitrose supermarket chain." "More than 1,000 Fresian cattle produce more than five million litres of milk a year." "Apples, pears, mushrooms and cereals are also grown here." "Farmer Iain Dalton told me that global warming is already having an effect." "What are we looking at?" "This is wheat.How much is there here?" "There will be 200-300 tons in this pile itself." "It's got a lovely feel to it." "Just before Christmas, this was worth £85 a ton." "If you go back 12 months, it was £185 a ton." "Erm, it costs me about £130 a ton to grow this." "So at the end of the day, looking forward, how do we decide what to put in the ground?" "Are you saying that there was a point a few months back that if you sold it then, you'd be selling at a loss?" "Absolutely." "That's one of the issues farmers have to face, this volatility." "We do seem to be more recently getting huge amounts of volatility." "And what it does to me is make it very difficult to decide what to grow next year." "And that will affect the yield." "Can you put any of that volatility down to climate change?" "Yeah, I think you can." "We've been growing apples on the farm for the best part of 70 years, and we are seeing this trend to earlier springs." "What we've had is a very wet and cold winter, after a run of very mild winters." "And it's this changeability, this volatility." "We seem to set another meteorological record every other month these days." "And I think that is all part of global warming." "You accept the arguments about climate change." "You're saying you can see it on the farm.Yes.For me, as someone who just shops, and, you know, goes into the supermarket, am I gonna have to change my taste, my lifestyle in any way, do you think?" "I think we as a society do have to start thinking about what we do and how we do it." "There is only one planet, there is only a limited amount of the resources we use." "We will have to reduce our own consumption." "If we keep going as we are, we'll need two or three planets, never mind one." "There is something quite comforting watching this tractor go up and down in a very methodical way." "It's all planned, it's all organised." "And yet, listening to Iain, his life is so unpredictable." "He went from being a farmer who was making money on wheat in one season to a farmer who was losing money on wheat in one season." "He is absolutely convinced that global warming, climate change, is playing a part in making his life as a farmer much more difficult to predict." "And therefore, from our point of view, making it much more difficult for us I suppose as consumers, to be able to rely on people like him and know that year in year out, they're going to be producing" "the quality and the quantity of food that we need." "'So, you have a perfect storm of climate change, 'rising oil prices, water shortages and a growing population." "'Together, they add up to a global food crisis." "'As a major importer, Britain is at the mercy of an international food market." "'A poor global harvest two years ago led to a rise in the annual British 'shopping bill of £750, and even rice rationing 'in some British stores.'" "Around the world, it also pushed an extra 40 million people into hunger, triggered riots and even toppled a government." "That's ringing alarm bells in political circles." "Food security is no longer just a problem for farmers or supermarkets." "It's a problem for government." "Hilary Benn is the minister responsible for food and agriculture here in Britain." "What's it going to take to feed the world, feed Britain?" "We know that we're gonna have to grow more food, with a changing climate and probably less water being available." "And I think any government has got to take that very seriously." "I think looking at what happened last year - the food riots, the rise in prices - we've got to take responsibility now to ensure that people have enough food to eat." "So those food riots could be a sign of what could happen in the future?" "Er, I don't know what's going to happen in the years ahead." "But I do believe that what happened in 2008 was a wake-up call." "So what are the challenges that Britain faces looking into the future?" "Well, to be able to produce more food." "And the way to ensure that world has got enough food supply in the years going ahead is to get our own agriculture production up, and encourage it, but to get it up in the rest of the world, as well." "We need to eat a healthy, balanced diet, because we have a problem with obesity in this country." "And we live in a world where a billion people are overweight, and a billion human beings go to bed hungry every night because they don't have enough food to eat or they can't afford it." "So it's going to be a big, big challenge." "So you do get a sense of urgency, a sense that food is moving up the political agenda." "What was it Hilary Benn was saying, that we've all been given a wake-up call?" "What that really means is that we'll all have to start thinking more about what we eat, and where it's come from." "Because not only is our appetite consuming a huge proportion of the world's resources..." "It isn't doing us much good, either." "The great British diet is a mess." "More than half of us are overweight, and the rate of morbid obesity doubled in just ten years." "'It seems to me that food security isn't just about getting enough food." "'It's also about getting the right sort of food, and at the moment, we're not." "'I want to find out where we're going wrong." "'And I'm starting out by looking at exactly what I eat myself." "'I've filled in a detailed seven-day food diary.'" "And I've come here, to the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, to get a verdict on my diet." "I'm gonna meet Susan Jebb." "She's one of the country's top experts on nutrition." "And I'm rather hoping she hasn't noticed those extra beers I had at a school reunion." "So we can understand a bit more about your nutritional needs," "I'm gonna measure your height and weight." "I feel like I'm being recruited into the army!" "That's perfect." "And if you just duck out from underneath..." "Can you cheat?" "23% of me is fat?" "Almost a quarter." "That's actually pretty typical.Is it?" "!" "I don't think you should be worried about that as a cause for concern!" "It sounds horrible!" "We've now analysed this, and your overall fat intake is very close to the population average.Right." "But I wanted to focus a bit more on saturated fat." "And your saturated fat intake is about 11% of your total energy." "That's really close to the recommendation, which is 10%." "And miles better than most of us manage!" "Many people are consuming too much saturated fat, from high-fat dairy products or from meat, particularly processed meats - things like sausages - which tend to have a much, much higher proportion." "People in Britain eat the equivalent of about 25 kilos of lard in saturated fat every year." "If we're thinking about sugar, there's the sugar that's in fruit and vegetables." "But there's also the sugar that you add to your food, like your coffee." "I knew you were gonna say coffee." "Well, yeah..." "Erm..." "And, you know, many people do add sugar to drinks, but it's also added for us by the food manufacturers." "The real issue is that added sugar adds calories, but it doesn't add any other nutrients to the diet." "We each eat 6.5 kilos of sugar every year." "Looking at your salt intake, you're looking at something like 6.5g a day." "Whereas the average is more like 10g a day." "Why am I having less salt?" "I think it's because your diet's really strongly based on fresh food, cooked from raw ingredients." "There's relatively little processed food in this food diary." "Each of us eats an average of more than 2kg of salt in processed food every year." "Heavy salt consumption can increase the risk of high blood pressure, with a greater danger of strokes and heart disease." "It isn't rocket science." "What Susan's analysis of my food diary shows is that home-cooked food using fresh ingredients is often a healthier bet." "But even though the choice of fresh products must be bigger than it's ever been, processed and prepared foods are still flying off the shelves." "Perhaps the key is the size of our supermarket bills." "Now, I don't eat a huge amount of processed food, but then again," "I don't really have to worry about the cost of it either." "What I need to do is see food shopping through the eyes of a family where price really matters." "I'm meeting the Flood family from Cambridge." "Gregg and Denise have three children " "Cody, aged three, Megan, aged seven and Macauley, aged eight." "Gregg has recently lost his job, and the family have had to make cutbacks." "I'm just down the road from where the Floods live, and this is where they do some of their food shopping." "Denise and Gregg have agreed to join me and we're gonna go in and look at some of the choices they have to make on a limited income." "Hello, you must be Gregg." "And Denise, hello." "And this is, what's your name?" "Cody.Hello." "Cody's got the shopping list, then!" "Yes, Cody has it." "Shall we go and do it, then?" "Yep, OK." "'Top of the list is bread." "'Almost all of the bread any of us buy is actually a pretty high salt-processed food.'" "What's next?" "Crisps.Hang on a minute, this is 12 packs of crisps." "For 85p.So that's 7p, 8p for a packet of crisps." "That's incredible, isn't it?" "Yep." "Do you, erm, ever kind of check what's in them or anything?" "I don't, as a general rule check what's in them." "You never really have the time, do you?" "No." "Not when you're shopping with the children.Potatoes, isn't it?" "Potatoes, yeah!" "'Tinned baked beans can count as one of the target of five portions 'of fruit and veg a day.' How much is it?" "35p." "Gosh, 35p." "And look at this - 29p!" "I mean, that's incredible, for two litres." "Yep." "But I tend to stay away from fizzy colas, because my children will bounce off the walls." "So what are you gonna go for?" "Robinson's." "That's over a pound." "I know, but in this situation," "I prefer them to have the healthier option." "So, Cody, where are the bananas?" "'We in Britain eat about half the fruit and veg that we should." "'And on average, people on the lowest incomes eat the least.'" "Thank you, good boy." "So, do you get these every time you come shopping, bananas?" "Most of the time yeah, cos Cody has a love of bananas." "Sometimes you have to go over the limit a bit for healthier things for them." "And is this slightly over the limit, really?" "Probably, yeah." "'The bananas cost about 12p each - nearly double the price 'of the packets of crisps that the Floods bought.'" "That's £7.79, please.Thank you." "Thank you very much. £12.21 change and your receipt." "Lovely, thank you very much." "We head back home with the groceries for a family meal." "'I suppose this is what food security actually means 'in practice for British families on a budget - a 'convenient meal bought for well under a pound a head, 'from a selection of well-stocked shops.'" "Thank you very much." "So what have we got here?" "Erm..." "We've got lasagne." "Lasagne, I can see lasagne." "Beans." "We've got beans and we've got waffles." "So is this a kind of fairly typical meal?" "Yeah, this is definitely one of the favourite meals of the family." "They all like pasta dishes, so it's easier to do something that you know they all like." "These lasagnes, they were £2 each." "We've used two what they class as family-sized lasagnes for the whole meal." "And I think there's still quite a bit left in the kitchen!" "It's an easy meal to do when they come home from school." "And this one never waits!" "'When every penny counts, as it does for the Floods, price can trump everything else.'" "But are there hidden costs in these kind of processed products?" "I asked food researcher Dr Corinna Hawkes to analyse the meal for me." "I think this reflects a sensible choice by a family on a budget." "It's too high in salt." "The fat content is quite high." "But it's not too bad nutritionally." "What's most notable about this is it lacks fresh fruit and vegetables." "I know what was on our plates - lasagne, potato waffles and beans." "But what were we actually eating?" "What lies behind the small print?" "If you look on the front of the packet, it says lasagne and it says minced beef." "But if you look on the side, the mince beef is around 10% of the sauce in it." "But there's a lot of other kinds of ingredients in here as well, that fill that out, like modified maize starch, salt, like sugar, like palm oil." "Here in the beans, we have sugar, again modified maize starch and salt." "And what these ingredients do is that they fill out the product, but most importantly, they make it retain its consistency when it's thawed." "They're the ingredients that give it a nice, brown sheen on top." "And they're found in numerous, numerous products." "So, ingredients like this bulk out the food, make them look good, and help to extend the shelf life." "But they aren't necessarily very good for us." "Potato waffles are mainly potatoes." "Their second largest ingredient is palm oil." "And what's important about this oil is it's the cheapest oil you can get." "So if you are a food manufacturer wanting to make your waffles for the lowest price that you possibly can, you want to put palm oil in them." "Cheap oil, salt and sugar can add flavour without adding much cost." "The product is then carefully aimed at low-budget customers with very obvious price markings." "But there's even more to entice the consumer." "On the lasagne here, you put "no hydrogenated fats"," ""no artificial colours, no GM ingredients."" "That's not actually saying a lot." "It's just meant to give the idea to us that this is a healthy product." "So you've got the low price, combined with this idea of healthiness, and you think this is a good value product." "But even though £1 isn't much for 12 waffles, you can buy fresh potatoes for even less." "All that marketing must be working though, because about half of the potatoes we now eat in the UK are processed products, often with added fats, sugars and salts." "These processed foods can be more profitable for manufacturers, because the added ingredients are shipped in from the cheapest sources around the world." "And, unlike most fresh products, there's a very long shelf life and very little wastage." "The drawback for us as consumers is that we often don't know where our food has come from." "It's not always clear exactly what we are eating, and it certainly doesn't seem to be doing our health very much good." "And if that weren't bad enough, it seems the rest of the world is playing copy cat with our questionable diet." "I'm in Mexico City, because it offers the starkest warning possible of just how quickly the wrong kind of food can take an effect." "Obesity rates here have increased by 150% in the last ten years." "In fact, over the next few years, Mexico looks set to overtake America as the country with the biggest obesity problem." "Food and agriculture expert Dr Peter Rosset has made his home in Mexico." "He told me about the transformation he has witnessed in his adopted country." "The traditional Mexican diet, a wholefood diet, was a very healthy diet - beans, a variety of vegetables, fresh fruit, a wholecorn tortilla... 30 years ago, 40% of all arable land in Mexico was used to produce maize, or corn, as we know it." "At that time, Mexicans got more than a third of their food energy from maize - much of it in the form of traditionally-prepared tortillas." "As wholegrain tortillas are replaced with industrial tortillas, we basically have plain white starch, like a white bread instead of a wholewheat bread." "We have the problem of replacing fruit-based drinks, which are part of the traditional diet, with soft drinks, like Coca-Cola." "Mexicans now drink an average of 68 litres of soft drinks a year - more than any other country in the world." "The Mexican diet has gone down the tubes, and Mexican health is paying the price for that." "People become susceptible to a risk of obesity and diabetes because of the impact of junk food on human health." "They have a choice - they can eat their old-fashioned tortilla or they can eat their new tortilla." "They can eat their fruit-based drinks or they can eat soda pops." "A tremendous amount of money has been spent on convincing Mexicans to change their diet." "Children have been targeted by junk food advertising, and the promotion in school diets of processed foods." "So we have a whole series of factors in which people are either manipulated or no longer have affordable access to the traditional diet." "Do we see this change of diet happening elsewhere in the world?" "Definitely." "The change in diet that Mexico is experiencing is typical of what's happening to many other countries." "Maybe Mexico had it first, but it's something that's happening everywhere." "After meeting Peter, I headed out to Central de Abasto on the edge of Mexico City." "It's said to be the biggest wholesale food market in the world, and it's piled high with fresh produce." "When you see all this wonderful fruit and veg - traditional, nutritious products" " I find it profoundly depressing that we in the rich world have exported our deadly diet to countries like Mexico and so many others." "So the way we consume food, the way we produce food, seems to have caused a health problem right across the world." "If I had to sum up what I've learnt so far, I think it's this - that much of what we eat isn't doing us any good." "And just as important, it isn't doing our planet any favours, either." "Right across the world, there's a struggle to keep up with the growing demand for food, and that's got implications for a country like ours, because we buy in so much of what we eat." "Ensuring there's food security, and by that, I mean not just enough food, but enough of the right kind of food - well, I think that's going to be one of the greatest challenges we face as a country, as a world, in the years ahead." "On the next stage of my journey around the world's food hot spots," "I'll be visiting Senegal, to see how our growing appetite for fish is stripping the ocean bare." "I'll investigate whether our thirst for fuel is taking food from the mouths of the hungry." "And I want to find out why a wonderfully fertile country like" "Britain is only producing 10% of all of the fruit that we eat." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"