Inside the Factory Show Summary, Upcoming Episodes and TV Guide

Gregg Wallace visits a factory with a menthol scent - the Polos factory in York, which produces 32 million mints every day and contributes to the 19,000 tonnes of mints per year that the UK consumes.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits the largest sugar beet factory in Europe and helps to bring in the harvest on one of the last surviving peppermint farms in the UK. And Ruth Goodman explores the clever marketing that persuaded many people to purchase minty mouthwash.

Gregg Wallace visits a Yorkshire team that churn out up to 90,000 vegan sausages a day! Heck have been making these bangers since 2018, and the process is surprisingly futuristic.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers how Canadian soy beans are transformed into protein-packed tofu, and she heads to the Scottish coast to harvest a vegan superfood of the sea.

Historian Ruth Goodman uncovers the green shoots of the vegetarian movement in Britain and the high price that British sailors paid when deprived of their five a day.

Gregg Wallace explores the Vale of Mowbray pork pie factory in Northallerton, Yorkshire, which began making pork pies in 1928. He visited the factory in May 2022, following production of their 75g snack-sized traditional pork pie – of which they make 425,000 every week.

Cherry Healey reveals hacks for the perfect vegan shortcrust pastry, makes piccalilli as a pork pie accompaniment, and learns how to drive one of the HGVs that transport food products every day.

In Cornwall, Ruth Goodman fishes for the history of one of Britain's most unusual pies, the star gazey pie, and she explores the story of powdered egg during the Second World War.

The red double-decker bus is a global icon. They carry millions of passengers every day across the capital and are as synonymous with London as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. Now, Gregg Wallace has special access to a factory in Scarborough, Yorkshire where they build this famous people mover. But the bus that Gregg is helping to produce is a little bit special, because it's fully electric.

Gregg helps the factory across all stages of the bus's construction, including operating a crane to lower the bus's steps in place, adding the anti-slip lino, riveting and gluing the walls and wiring the electrics - before taking on the nerve-wracking task of driving the finished bus out of the factory.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits a bus windscreen factory where she gets to grips with the construction of tough laminated heated windscreens. And in the main bus factory, she helps to give the bus its bright red coat of paint. She also visits an offshore windfarm to learn how turbines convert wind into watts that could one day power the electric buses.

Historian Ruth Goodman learns about London's earliest double deckers and the vital role they played in the First World War.

Gregg Wallace visits a huge vacuum cleaner factory in the heart of Somerset. This 32-acre site is a hive of activity where 1.2 million vacuums are made every year. Gregg is following their biggest seller, the Henry vacuum cleaner in bright red.

He starts with head of operations Stuart Cochrane, who is taking delivery of 25 tonnes of clear polypropylene pellets. They are transported to the factory floor via a spaghetti junction of pipes and then mixed with a red colouring agent. A massive moulding machine heats the plastic pellets and forces them into a drum-shaped mould under 300 tonnes of clamp pressure, the equivalent weight of 24 London buses. There are 47 of these huge moulding machines in the factory, churning out a total of 5,000 vacuums every day.

Next, Gregg's vacuum needs a bit of personality. The famous smile was drawn on for the first time as a joke by an employee at a trade show, but it attracted so much attention that it quickly became a permanent fixture. It is created using a process called PAD printing. Silicone pads are dipped in ink and pressed onto the surface of the moulded plastic ‘face' to create the eyes and smile, after which it is cured under heat to dry the ink.

With the drum and face moulded and printed, and wheels made from moulded recycled plastic, the bottom half of the vacuum is assembled in less than a minute. Timing is crucial - the drum is still hot from the moulding machine, so the wheels must be slotted in before the plastic cools and shrinks.

Now for the top half of the vacuum cleaner, which starts with a moulded motor housing. The motor needs power, so Gregg meets with wiring section manager Nathan Bandy at the loom assembly station. Nathan explains that the wiring loom is a cluster of cables that connect to the on/off switch, transmitting electricity to the motor.

With so many electrical and mechanical parts in each vacuum, the factory has its own on-site testing centre. Gregg can't quite believe his eyes, as everywhere he looks, they are being put through their paces. It is like a torture chamber for vacuum cleaners!

Back at the factory, the top half of Gregg's vacuum is coming together, and the shiny top cover is emerging from another moulding machine.

Next, Gregg is sent off in search of a set of ‘wands' for his vacuum, and project manager Roy Poole has the magic touch. The wands start life as 422mm stainless steel tubes which are fed into a machine that reduces one end by 1mm and stretches the other by 1.75, so they will slot neatly together to form a solid link between the brushes and the hose.

At last, the components can be brought together at the final assembly station, and it happens fast! The lower housing forms the base, then the motor with a jacket of acoustic wrap. The upper motor housing drops in on top with the reeler and ten-metre-long cable coming in above, before it is all finished off with the shiny cover. The machine is plugged in and powered up to check the suction reaches a precise 225 millibar. Gregg is stunned to see that all the components come together in less than 30 seconds, before they're checked, boxed up and sent to the dispatch area.

The storage and distribution centre is 21,000 square feet, the size of nine tennis courts, and from there, the boxes of vacuums roll down a clever chute to one of the ten trucks that leave the factory every day, each carrying nearly 1,000 machines.

Gregg Wallace visits the Denby factory in Derbyshire, which has been making pottery since 1809. We Brits drink a staggering 195 million mugs of tea and coffee every day, so Gregg is following production of one of the factory's best sellers, the Halo Heritage mug.

Every cup and pot in this historic factory starts life as a giant 100 metre-long mound of clay. Operations director Dean Barlow explains there are 100,000 tons of clay in this enormous pile, enough to last the factory about 20 years.

Gregg Wallace visits a factory tucked away amongst thatched cottages in the village of Wollaston, Northamptonshire. It may be a tranquil setting, but this factory has been making boots for 120 years, producing footwear for policemen and pop stars alike. Gregg follows every step of production of a pair of original Dr. Martens 1460 leather boots, so called because the factory started making them on the 1st of the 4th 1960.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets to grips with the speedy machines that use 350 metres of yarn to make a single pair of shoelaces. She also learns how to make a pair of children's wellies and test that they're fit for the muddiest puddles.

Historian Ruth Goodman reveals the story of a British shoemaker that elevated ladies' shoes from risqué music hall performers of the 19th century to gracing the feet of the Queen of England. And she explores the origins of football boots as well as the England team's boot emergency at the 1950 World Cup.

Malt loaf has been a popular teatime treat for more than 80 years; these days we get through a staggering 130 million of them every year. So to get to grips with how this sweet and squidgy cake-cum-bread is made, Gregg Wallace is rolling up his sleeves to get stuck in, following a production line of massive dough mixing, mind-boggling tin filling and intensely hot baking.

Meanwhile, historian Ruth Goodman reveals the surprising story of a British baking company that cooked up the first business computer, as well as visiting Cambridgeshire to find out how wheat flour was ground the traditional way, until the Victorians' demand for white bread brought about the demise of Britain's iconic windmills.

We eat them for breakfast, pack them in our lunch boxes and enjoy them for dessert; here in the UK we spend £1.4 billion a year on yoghurt pots. Gregg Wallace visits a factory in rural Somerset that produces one million pots of it every 24 hours. He meets the herd of Friesian cows that provide the milk, sees how the milk is processed and has a bacterial culture added, and watches how the extraordinary packing process takes place.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey helps out with the UK's biggest blackcurrant harvest, trying out plant based alternatives to milk and visiting a factory that makes food-safe yoghurt pots from 100% recycled material.

Also, historian Ruth Goodman hops on board the story of the electric milk float and tackles the contentious origins of the cream tea.

Gregg Wallace visits the biggest cider factory in the world, which produces more than 350 million litres each year. The scale of production blows his mind as at each turn he's confronted with huge machinery and incredible processes. He visits Birchley Farm in Herefordshire, at the heart of cider country, before heading to the mill at Ledbury to help sort the apples. At the factory itself, he learns about the fermentation process and the critical role of yeast, before being shown the vast scale of the bottling process, which sees 833 bottles cleaned and filled every minute.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey explores how the factory is creating new orchards of a sweet apple variety called Scrumptious through the ancient technique of grafting, as well as revealing how a by-product from the brewing industry, CO2, is vital in the manufacture of fire extinguishers.

Historian Ruth Goodman traces a Victorian apple-breeding boom with Dr Annie Gray, recreating one of Queen Victoria's favourite baked apple desserts. And she learns how it was British scientists and cider makers - not French champagne makers - who were the first to put fizz in a bottle.

Gregg Wallace is in Ireland at an enormous liqueurs factory that produces 540,000 bottles a day. He follows the production of cream liqueur from the arrival of maize to make Irish whiskey right through to dispatch of the finished liqueur. It is the show's longest ever production timeline, taking more than three years. Along the way, Gregg learns that it is the barrels whiskey is matured in that create around half of its flavour and discovers that a milk protein is the secret to mixing cream and whiskey together.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at the plant where 85 per cent of Ireland's bottles and jars are recycled. They process 500 tonnes every day. Cherry also investigates the science behind aperitifs. There is nothing special in these beverages that stimulates appetite - it is something common to all alcoholic drinks. Cherry puts it to the test with a team of rugby players and discovers they eat 8 per cent more – or an additional 320 calories – when alcohol is involved. Cherry is also getting a lesson in the rules of whiskey, learning that single malt must be made from 100 per cent malted barley from a single distillery, whereas bourbon must be 51 per cent maize, and blends can be the product of a mix of grains from different distilleries. The one thing they have in common is that they must be matured in wooden barrels for a minimum of three years in order to be called whiskey.

Historian Ruth Goodman is getting spiritual with the history of liqueurs. She learns that their origins are to be found a world away from funky downtown bars. She visits a former monastery and discovers that the drinks were invented by monks looking for the elixir of life. Ruth also visits a distillery in Ireland, where she learns that 100 years ago Irish whiskey held an astonishing 60 per cent of the global whisky market. Today, it is just 5 per cent. This drop was largely due to resistance to adopting the modern column still method of distillation.

Gregg Wallace is in France at an enormous foundry that produces a cast iron pot every five seconds. He follows production of casserole dishes from the arrival of 20 tonnes of crude iron right through to brightly coloured orange pots. Along the way, Gregg tests his mettle by taking a sample of molten iron at 1,550 degrees Celsius. With only a heatproof visor and gloves as protection, he dips a ladle into a bubbling cauldron and pours the white-hot sample into a tiny mould. He also discovers that the coloured enamel they protect their pots with is made from glass.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is in South Africa visiting one of the largest iron ore mines in the world. Nine miles long by three miles wide, it produces a staggering 670,000 tonnes every day. Cherry rides in one of the biggest dumper trucks in the world. Seven metres tall and packing 2,500 horsepower, it collects 65 tonnes of freshly mined rock and dumps it in to a processing plant. Days later, the iron ore is taken away from the mine in a two-mile-long train. And Cherry is rooting out the science behind cooking the perfect casserole. It turns out that when it comes to cooking time, longer isn't always better.

Historian Ruth Goodman takes a journey through time, learning how one-pot cooking evolved. From communal ovens during the industrial revolution through to 1970s slow cookers, technology influenced how people prepared simple meals. Ruth also visits the birthplace of the industrial revolution in Shropshire to discover how casting iron in sand moulds democratised our kitchens by producing affordable cookware.

Gregg Wallace is in Leeds, at an enormous mattress factory where they produce 600 bouncy beds every day. He follows the production of pocket-sprung mattresses from the arrival of hard steel right through to soft bedding heading out of dispatch. Along the way he learns how lengths of metal are stretched into thin wire and coiled into springs which are placed into individual pockets. And how the mattresses are designed to wick sweat away from our bodies with the help of natural fibres like hemp and wool.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning whether there are benefits to be had from taking an afternoon nap. She meets up with a sleep scientist who tells her that we should be making time for a snooze rather than reaching for a cup of coffee. To prove his point, he runs an experiment which demonstrates that reaction times can be improved by a short sleep. 20 minutes is the optimum nap time - any longer risks falling in to a deep sleep which is difficult to wake from. And she is visiting a sheep farm where she sees how wool is shorn and discovers its amazing anti-bacterial and fire-retardant properties, which make it perfect for lining a mattress.

Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the origins of the modern mattress. She lies down on a straw stuffed sack which the lower classes would have slept on in the middle ages and learns how steel transformed our bedtime habits, first with the 'innerspring' and then with the more comfortable 'pocket spring' technology. And she learns how a famous Scandinavian inspired home store is responsible for our enduring love affair with the duvet.

Gregg Wallace is in South Shields at a clothing factory where they produce 650 waxed jackets a day. He follows the production of water-resistant jackets from the arrival of 500-metre-long rolls of undyed cotton through to dispatch. Along the way, he sees the fabric dipped into baths of wax heated to 95 degrees Celsius and learns how a 23-piece pattern is used to create a complex 3D jacket jigsaw.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning about the science of staying dry. She finds that it is easy enough to waterproof a fabric by coating it in a non-permeable coating. But while this stops water getting in, it also stops sweat getting out. The key to comfortable rain resistance is a breathable membrane which contains microscopic holes, big enough to allow steam to escape, but too small to let rain drops in. Cherry also visits an umbrella factory, where manufacturing methods have barely changed in 150 years. She helps transform a simple wooden stick into a top-notch canopy using saws, pliers and needle and thread.

Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the fishy origin of waxed jackets. She visits a remote Scottish harbour and learns how these weatherproof coats were born out of oil covered sail cloth which seamen adapted into garments to keep out the worst of the weather. She also visits Edinburgh and learns how an English King played a key role in the popularity of that favourite Scottish fabric, tartan.

Gregg Wallace is in Gateshead at a cheese factory where they produce 3,000 tonnes of spreadable cheese every year. He follows the production of jalapeno chilli flavour cheese from a 28,000 litre delivery of milk to 5,400 squeezy tubes. The process begins in a traditional way – by making cheddar. He learns about the microbiology responsible for splitting milk into curds and whey and forming this hard cheese. He then chops 344 kilos of cheddar and gouda to make the base for his squeezy cheese, and puts it in a huge blender with whey, water and other ingredients in order to stabilise it and keep it soft and spreadable.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is finding out how bacteria are responsible for the huge variety in smell, taste and appearance of different types of cheese. She learns that some smelly cheeses contain the same bacteria that are responsible for stinky feet. In cheese the odour is a by-product, a sign that the bacteria are silently changing the internal texture and taste of the product. She also learns the scientific rules for making perfect cheese on toast. It is all about medium sliced white bread, with precisely 50g of grated medium cheddar, set an exact 18 centimetres from the grill.

Historian Ruth Goodman is finding out how cheddar, originally just one of hundreds of regional varieties in the UK, became the predominant hard cheese world wide. She discovers that it is down to a Victorian cheesemaker called Joseph Harding who first standardised production methods. She also makes a batch of processed cheese, using Kraft's original 100-year-old patent recipe.

Gregg Wallace is in Burton upon Trent at Britain's biggest brewery, where they produce 3 million pints of beer a day. He follows the production of Britain's best-selling lager from raw barley to finished cans. Along the way he gets to grips with brewing terms like mash, wort, grist and coppers, and learns how 0.2 millilitres of yeast is enough to make 1.3 million pints alcoholic. In this high-volume factory he marvels at a machine that can fill 165 cans in just 5.5 seconds.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning how four basic ingredients – water, malted barley, hops and yeast – can be manipulated to make dark, heavy ales, light, fragrant lagers and everything in between. She is also uncovering the secrets of the perfect pint in a scientific study which shows that drinking beer from a curved glass makes it taste fruitier, while a frothy head and a higher temperature also improve flavour. Which is a win for the traditional British warm pint.

Historian Ruth Goodman is asking why Burton became the centre of brewing in Britain in the 19th century. The answer is that it is all in the water. The hard water there was perfect for brewing flavourful stouts and porters. While its position on the canal network made it ideally placed to transport finished beer round Britain and beyond. She is also finding out how beer got its stereotypically blokey reputation, despite the fact that brewing was traditionally a female profession. It is all down to the introduction of hops in the 15th century, which turned beer making from a cottage industry into an industrialised process.

Gregg Wallace is in Lowestoft, at an enormous factory where they produce 450 tonnes of frozen food each day. He follows the production of frozen potato waffles, from the arrival of 25 tonnes of potatoes right through to dispatch. Along the way he discovers how they make a monster amount of mash and marvels at the technology which stamps out a million identical waffles every 24 hours, each weighing 68 grams and exactly 15 mm thick.

Meanwhile Cherry Healey is learning about the differences between waxy and floury potatoes and finding out which spud you should use for which job. Small waxy potatoes are best in salads and boiled, while floury potatoes produce the best mash and roasties. She's also asking whether, in these carb-conscious days, we're unfairly demonising the potato. At King's College London she meets a dietician who runs tests which show that the potato, gram for gram, has more vitamin C than beetroot and carrot and more potassium than banana. Keeping hold of these nutrients isn't easy. But Cherry is delighted to discover that skin-on wedges, as long as you go easy on the oil, are a nutritional winner.

Historian Ruth Goodman is myth busting Walter Raleigh's connection to potatoes. She discovers that he couldn't have brought them back from North America, because there weren't potatoes there until 20 years after he died. Instead the credit must go to Spanish explorers and an enterprising French chemist called Parmentier, who popularised this exotic new vegetable. She also meets one of the inventors of the potato waffle, who shows her how Mr Whippy ice creams were the inspiration behind this teatime treat.

Gregg Wallace explores the Manchester factory that produces 700,000 toilet rolls a day. He begins 940 miles away in Sweden, where the raw material - wood - is harvested from a sustainable forest of one billion spruce trees. Most of the wood is used for timber, but the offcuts are turned into sheets of wood pulp. Gregg follows this pulp to Manchester, where he learns that two types of wood fibre - long and short - are required for a loo roll, to give it strength but also softness. He watches as 3,750 kilos of fibre are combined with 34,000 litres of water and sprayed into a 40-metre-long, 11-metre-high paper-making machine. It takes just four seconds for the watery pulp mix to be transformed into soft, dry paper. It is then rolled onto a 1.2 tonne supersized toilet roll known as a 'mother reel'. Each one of these gives birth to 25,000 individual toilet rolls.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at Britain's oldest toilet factory, where they churn out 1,000 loos a day. And she gets the bum deal of following the flush through the sewers and water treatment works of Brighton, finding out how sewage is cleared of debris, grease and bacteria, and transformed into clean water in a little over an hour after flushing. She has a cheeky encounter with a high-tech Japanese toilet and heads to Cranfield University to see a prototype toilet that does away with the need for water altogether. Could this be the toilet of the future that gives one-third of the world's population access to efficient sanitation?

Historian Ruth Goodman finds out what was used to wipe with before the invention of toilet paper. She discovers that the weapon of choice in the American midwest was a dried-out corn cob. And that it wasn't until the 1930s that toilet paper was guaranteed 'splinter free'. She is also in myth-busting mode, finally laying to rest the idea that Thomas Crapper invented the modern toilet. She heads into the House of Lords to check out an 18th-century flushing toilet, still in use today, and discovers that the Great Stink of 1858 expedited a period of sanitary invention that led to the toilet we know today.

Gregg Wallace is in the Netherlands at one of the world's biggest sauce factories. Its annual output is a quarter of a million tonnes of condiments, and more than 50 per cent of this heads to the UK. Our passion for sauces sees us consume 40 million kilos of mayonnaise every year. Gregg follows its production from a farm near Arnhem, where 23,000 free range hens produce the eggs, to the factory, where he is wowed by an egg cracking machine that can separate the yolks and whites from 1,700 eggs a minute. In the mayonnaise factory 'kitchen' he discovers how the delicate process of combining oil and water - known as emulsification - is performed perfectly every time on huge 480 kilo batches.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is making the glass jars Gregg needs for his mayonnaise. She is at a vast factory in Maastricht, where a furnace holding 250 tonnes of molten glass has been running continuously for the last 11 years. Cherry is also on the trail of another of our favourite sauces - soy - not in Japan, but south Wales, where a factory churns out bottles and sachets of organic sauce to a 2,000-year-old recipe. And the secret of its taste? A special mould called Koji.

Historian Ruth Goodman discovers how Brits fell in love with mayonnaise. She traces it back to the introduction of the bottled sauce in the 1960s and samples a series of unusual mayonnaise dishes, including the 'frosted party loaf' - a glorified club sandwich covered in mayo and cream cheese. Ruth is also on the trail of Worcestershire sauce and investigates the traditional story of its origin, as told by Mr Lea and Mr Perrins.

Gregg Wallace is in London at Europe's largest biscuit factory, where they produce 80 million biscuits every day. He follows the production of chocolate digestives, from the arrival of 28 tonnes of flour right through to dispatch. Along the way, he discovers that the biscuits are shaped by a bronze roller costing up to ten thousand pounds, and that the chocolate is added to the bottom not the top of the biscuits, meaning we are all eating them the wrong way up.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is on the trail of that chocolate. At the refinery in Manchester, she learns that it is transported in heated lorries kept at 50C to stop it solidifying on its way to the factory. She also discovers that this is the most expensive ingredient, at around £2,000 per tonne. And she is in Nottingham University's sensory lab, where she finds scientific proof that dunking your biscuit improves its flavour and that tea is the best liquid to dunk in. Cherry takes to the streets to see if that stacks up in the real world.

Historian Ruth Goodman investigates the link between biscuits and digestion. She finds references in Samuel Pepys's diary to biscuits being a cure for flatulence and digestive discomfort and discovers that in Victorian times it was thought that biscuits could cure everything from typhoid to scarlet fever. She also takes a look at an antique biscuit baked at the beginning of the 20th century - one of Huntley and Palmer's notorious army biscuits. These dry hard biscuits were supplied as rations to five million British soldiers on the front line in the First World War.

Gregg Wallace receives a load of tea leaves from Kenya and follows their journey through the factory that produces one quarter of all the tea we drink in Britain. Gregg turns his 20-tonne batch into 6.9 million bags. Along the way, he discovers that there can be up to 20 different teas in your bag and that the recipe for the blend is altered every day, measured against a standard created in 1978.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers the secrets of the tea leaf in an African tea-processing plant. She learns that 40% of each leaf is made up of chemicals called polyphenols. She is surprised to find that white, green and black tea are all made from the same leaves. She also discovers that the bag surrounding your tea is not ordinary paper, but a highly engineered fabric made up of hemp, wood and polypropylene. She watches as a 60-kilometre-long roll is produced. And she gets some scientific tips on making the best possible cup of tea with a tea bag.

Historian Ruth Goodman investigates tea adulteration. In the 19th century, there were eight separate factories in London which existed solely to dry and recolour used tea leaves. She discovers that it was 'honest' John Hornim who put that right and ensured we could trust our tea. She also finds that in the military during the Second World War, armoured divisions had to leave the safety of their tanks to brew up - a habit that resulted in many casualties. She climbs on board a modern-day tank to make a cup of tea with a boiling vessel, the innovation that solved this problem.

Gregg Wallace helps to unload a tanker full of sugar from Norfolk and follows it through one of the oldest sweet factories in Britain to see how over 500 workers, as well as some mind-boggling machines, transform it into over a hundred million individual sweets within just 24 hours. He discovers how the factory that produces Lovehearts could be the most romantic in the world because one in four of the people who work there are in a relationship with each other, how they make 5,000 Fizzers a minute using a tablet-pressing machine that uses 3 tonnes of pressure to create each sweet, and meets the man in charge of making three quarters of a million Fruity Pop lollies every day.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is let inside the research and development department and experiences for herself how hard it is to come up with a new product, as she attempts to invent her own version of sherbet using citric acid and sodium bicarbonate. She also finds out how they put the letters in seaside rock by making a giant version and then stretching it to the right size, and is given special access to the Fisherman's Friend factory in Lancashire to discover how a local family turned a niche product into a worldwide success.

And historian Ruth Goodman investigates how sweets were first invented and discovers that, in the Middle Ages, they were used as a medicine and thought to reduce flatulence. She also finds out about the human cost of Britain's sweet tooth in the 18th century and how an abolition movement instigated a sugar boycott which helped to end the slave trade.

Today in the UK we get through more than two million cans of baked beans every day, with the average UK household consuming 10 tins of canned food a week. Gregg Wallace helps to unload 27 tonnes of dried haricot beans from North America and follows them on a one and a half mile journey through the Heinz factory in Wigan - the largest baked bean factory in the world - making more than three million cans of beans every 24 hours.

He'll discover how a laser scrutinizes every single bean; how the spice recipe for the sauce is a classified secret known only by two people; and, most surprisingly, how the beans are not baked at all!

Meanwhile Cherry Healey follows the journey of her discarded baked bean can through a recycling centre and onto the largest steelworks in the UK, where she watches a dramatic, fiery process that produces 320 tonnes of molten steel - enough to make eight million cans.

She also takes a can that is 14 months after its ‘Best Before' date to a lab at the University of Coventry and is amazed when tests reveal it has the same Vitamin C levels compared to fresh tomatoes. The lab also proves that a 45 year-old tin of Skippers is still fit to eat.

And historian Ruth Goodman looks at how tinned food was invented to improve the nutrition of sailors to prevent them developing scurvy on their long voyages at sea. She'll also relate how Henry Heinz first marketed baked beans in the UK in the early 1900s - making them a family favourite.

Gregg Wallace receives a load of corn fresh off the boat from Argentina and follows its journey through the largest breakfast cereal factory in Europe as it is cooked, milled and flavoured to become Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. He discovers how they can produce more than a million boxes of cereal every 24 hours and distribute them all over the UK, Europe and across the globe, as far away as Malaysia.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey finds out about the immunity-boosting powers of vitamin D, which is added to many of our breakfast cereals. One in five of us is deficient in the sunshine vitamin and yet the latest research shows that having optimum levels can potentially prevent you from getting the common cold by up to 50 per cent. Cherry also discovers the effect that skipping breakfast has on our cognitive function - studies show that breakfast skippers perform seven per cent worse in attention tests - and she also follows the production of the nation's best-selling cereal, Weetabix, and learns how every single grain of wheat that is milled for these wheat biscuits is grown within a 50-mile radius of the factory.

Historian Ruth Goodman sits down to a Victorian breakfast of lobster and pig's head to reveal how the average Victorian was gorging down a mind-boggling 4,500 calories a day and that breakfast cereal was invented as a healthy alternative. She also discovers that when it comes to advertising cereal, nostalgia certainly seems to pay - the six top sellers in the UK today were all invented more than 30 years ago and the cereal industry is now worth over one and a half billion pounds.

Gregg Wallace is inside one of the world's largest chocolate factories in York to discover how they produce a staggering seven million bars a day. He'll follow the incredible 24-hour journey - from bean to bar - of one of our best-selling chocolates and meet the team of people who work around the clock to keep up with that demand.

Cherry Healey gets hands on with the hundreds of workers on a production line in Derbyshire where the millions of chocolate boxes they produce every year are still surprisingly handmade.

Historian Ruth Goodman delves through the chocolate archives to find out what it was like working in the factories before the machines took over, and she meets the people who found love on the production line.