Back in Time for Dinner (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - Episode #1.6 - full transcript

Meet the Robshaws - Brandon, Rochelle, Miranda, Ros and Fred.

Let's go!

For one summer, this food-loving family embarked on an extraordinary

time-travelling adventure...

to discover how a post-war revolution in what we eat

has transformed the way we live.

That is just amazing. Look at them.

Britain has gone from meagre rations to ready meals at the touch

of a button in just 50 years.

But how has this changed our health...

We've got a pull out larder!



..our homes and our family dynamics?

I can't do it any more. This is what would make a woman break.

To find out, the Robshaws have shopped, cooked and eaten their way

through history.

It's 1974!

Whoa!

I think that is enough sugar now there, darling.

No, I hardly put any on!

Starting in 1950, their own home became their time machine.

Oh, my goodness!

This carpet hurts my eyes. Who designed that?!

Someone who was colour blind.

Fast forwarding them through a new year every day,

as they experienced first hand the culinary fads,



fashions and gadgets of each age.

THEY LAUGH

- Can I have some chips?
- You can have some chips.

Now, at the end of their time travelling adventure,

I'll be discovering the impact it's had on the Robshaws...

and giving them a sneak preview of what the future might look like.

Have you seen those worms in there?

I am kind of repulsed.

For the last five weeks,

the Robshaws have eaten only the food of the past,

living an accelerated version of the journey

we've all been on for the past 50 years.

Oh, God, look at that go.

We left them in 1999, celebrating the birth of a new millennium.

Now I'm going to be bringing us right up to date, discovering

how our food habits have changed since the end of the experiment.

And then, with a bit of luck and from what we know about the way

that food history unfolds, perhaps making a few predictions

about the way we're going to shop, cook and eat in the future.

We'll see how we've arrived at how we eat now

and how that is made up of the last 50 years.

You can kind of see the evolution,

so I think people are always curious about the future.

It's made me wonder a lot about the future.

I've become aware how much we're sort of ruled by trends,

by shifting culture and technology,

and all those sorts of things are going to carry on happening.

It's the constant changes the Robshaws experienced that

give us valuable insights into how our eating habits might

develop in years to come.

Throughout their time-travelling adventure,

the family's diet was guided by real meals

recorded in the National Food Survey.

This is bread and dripping, this is plain bread, this is bread

and pilchard.

Established in 1940 to ensure that people were getting enough

to eat under rationing, the food survey asked families to write down

what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week.

Mum 32, Dad 41...

In Bradford North in 1960, and it's corned beef hash.

The survey continued until 2000 and gives us an extraordinary insight

into how the eating habits of real families evolved over decades.

But to understand how we eat now and how it might change,

food historian Polly Russell and I have had to think again.

Well, the thing is, up until now, we've been very fortunate

because we've had the National Food Survey as a kind of basis,

a sort of detailed account of what people were eating

over the past 50 or 60 years,

and that's how the Robshaws are able to live their life.

For the present and for the future, we don't have that.

No, that's right. The Food Survey stopped in 2000

and the surveys that have replaced that, rather than using diaries,

look at till receipts to see what people are spending on food.

Just looking at receipts tells you what people buy,

but it doesn't tell you how they actually consume that food.

Cos we're just more concerned about people, aren't we?

It's not just about the money. The whole point of this programme,

the whole point of this series has been to...from the way people eat,

to learn about how they live, which you can't do from till receipts.

Yeah, that's right.

So our options are basically either to generalise wildly,

which I love doing and that always seems to work,

or to commission a new study,

which is what we've done.

So this is a bit like the National Food Survey

but it's, you know, this is the 21st century, so it's all got sort of different colours and fonts

and stuff like that, it's not just lists.

But basically, it's asking people what they had for breakfast,

lunch and dinner, the snacks between...

You can see this person had a Jammy Dodger biscuit

and a Blue Riband, so they were actually,

this is from the 1970s, this family.

And then what did he drink with that meal?

Who cooked or prepared the meal?

Cos I guess we want to know about whether women are still doing all the work, even now.

And then also we've asked them about shopping habits,

electrical appliances, what did they...? Were they using microwaves,

kettles or new exciting things we didn't know about yet?

It does give us snapshots of what people do.

With a bit of luck, we'll back up our wild generalisations.

So, Polly, this is, I assume,

one person's lunch in obesity-stricken Britain?

No, it is not one person's lunch.

This is a selection of different meals that people

have eaten from our study over the course of a week.

I think what strikes you is there's a great deal of variety

from all around the world.

It would have looked extraordinary to the Robshaws in the '50s

and the '60s, even the '70s.

And what it shows is we don't have a national diet any more.

If you'd looked at the diets of British people in the 1950s,

it would have looked very British.

Oh, and it would have been so boring,

and you'd look at it and think, "I'll eat that once.

"Please don't make me eat that every Monday, every Tuesday,

"every Wednesday."

I suppose one of the things you do see and you could pick up on this

in terms of a national diet is convenience.

It's all really quite quick to prepare.

The quest to save time in the kitchen was a recurring theme

during the Robshaws' journey through the decades.

When we began the experiment in the 1950s,

Rochelle spent over four hours a day cooking meals from scratch.

Bran's got absolutely no idea what it's like

to be in the kitchen for the whole day.

Basic equipment and ingredients meant even simple jobs

were time-consuming.

It's taking a bit of a while.

We'll probably be in 1954 by the time this boils.

The family's first fish finger offered a tantalising

glimpse of the future - convenience foods.

Wow!

The product is very convenient, I heat it up and that is it.

Nothing to do, nothing else to do. It's fantastic.

In the '60s, it took an average of an hour and 40 minutes

to cook a meal.

But over the decade, new time-saving technology...

Isn't it lovely?

It's really going to revolutionise my life.

..and innovative products started to bring this time down.

Oh, my goodness!

That's a totally new kind of food, isn't it?

Look at those!

Look, look, look at them, have you seen them?

Yeah.

That has just made my day.

The arrival of the freezer was another time-saving innovation,

heralding a host of new products that barely needed any preparation.

Oh, I have fond memories of cod in butter sauce -

it's one of the first meals I had with Brandon.

I thought they were quite sophisticated,

so I think the kids are in for a treat.

And by the '80s, the average cooking time for a meal

had shrunk to an hour...

- It's six minutes, isn't it, this one?
- No, it's five.

..if you bothered to cook at all.

But as the decades moved on, the Robshaws were starting to wake up

to the potential cost of faster and faster food.

The food that we were eating, it's got more and more processed,

more and more salt, more and more fat, more and more sugar in the diet.

Today the average time taken to cook a meal is just 20 minutes.

But in case even THAT sounds too long,

Polly's introducing the Robshaws to a brand-new food

that does away with the need for cooking altogether

and claims to be good for you.

By 2000, the food they're eating is much more convenient,

but it's also highly processed, highly manufactured.

In a sense, what they've gained in time,

they've arguably lost in terms of health.

Hello, Robshaws.

Hi, Polly.

How nice to see you in 2014.

Have you brought us something?

- I have!
- Sorry, I should...

According to some people,

what's in this bag is the solution to the inconvenience of food

and the problem of processed food being unhealthy.

A software engineer from San Francisco started to think that

food was a really inefficient way of delivering what the body needs.

Indeed, Rob Rhinehart seems to see food itself as an outdated concept.

It takes a little bit of perspective to see that food really is

made out of chemicals, it is reduceable,

and we can build a backup and we can change it and we can make it better.

Rhinehart came up with an alternative to his old diet of cheap junk food.

He claims his invention provides all the calories and nutrition

people need in liquid form,

removing the pesky need for traditional meals altogether.

Terrible name, though, isn't it?

Soylent, it's like sort of a cross between soil and toilet,

it sounds awful.

The name is sort of on purpose because...

LAUGHTER

..he wants it to

be almost anti everything we think about in terms of food.

Fans of the concept have developed their own versions of the drink

and the Robshaws are following one of their online recipes,

using whey protein...

249 grams - very precise.

- ..oats, psyllium husks...
- In it goes.

..choline bitartrate...

Let's have a sniff of it.

- LAUGHTER
- Oh, that's rank, isn't it?

Oh, my goodness me!

LAUGHTER

..potassium gluconate, calcium,

salt and ground-up pills of multivitamins D3 and K1.

All the things that you associate with preparing food,

like the delicious smells and the sizzling sounds,

it's just not there, is it?

You've got the sound of pills falling into a plastic jug.

Yeah, great(!) LAUGHTER

I just want to sniff this to see if it smells of anything.

Yeah.

It's meant to be drunk three times a day

and claims to totally replace the need for ordinary food.

It is actually making me feel slightly nervous.

- Is it?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Yeah.

But are you excited about the nutritional benefits of it?

I'm not excited. - No, not at all.

I'm starving, but this isn't food.

- Well, I think I'm going to try it first.
- OK.

Really, really quite unpleasant.

ROS: What does it taste like?

Do you want to do it at the same time?

LAUGHTER

Is it that bad? Have you tasted it yet?

- No.
- That's disgusting.

I...don't like it.

LAUGHTER

I just...

Quick, let's just clear all this away and forget about it. LAUGHTER

Could you subsist on it, every day?

I couldn't do it.

The way this is perceived is that the end, the purpose of eating food,

is just to enable you to carry on functioning and doing your job.

But food is about a lot more than that, isn't it?

It's not just a means to an end, it is an end in itself,

and that end is, you know, pleasure and giving pleasure.

And it seems, looking at our food study,

that most of you still get quite a lot of pleasure from eating.

In fact, on top of your three meals a day, you can't resist a snack -

a trend the Robshaws saw gradually evolve over the decades.

SHE GASPS BRANDON: 'There was nothing in between the meals, there weren't any,

'like, biscuits in the house or packets of crisps,

'or things to snack on.'

As soon as I get home, I'd usually have something to eat...

and I'm actually really, really hungry.

I'm missing crisps, chocolate, sweets, ice cream...

..just everything nice.

'70s was really

when we felt like snacks were coming back into our lives.

There were lots of new different types of crisps,

there were Pot Noodles.

HE SLURPS

We had a biscuit tin in the kitchen.

HE GASPS Whoo.

- I'm pleased about being able to snack.
- I've missed it.

In the '80s, new gadgets meant it was even easier

to treat ourselves between meals

Wow, we did it. Can you hear the bubbles?

- You can hear the bubbles.
- I don't know. Can you?
- Yeah.

What started as an occasional treat has snowballed.

Today, we're a confirmed nation of snackers.

In the years of the experiment that the Robshaws

lived through, the National Food Survey didn't even think it

was important enough to ask about, but that's all changed.

When we looked at our modern study,

it became clear that we all snack, all the time.

In fact, not a single respondent didn't snack over

the whole course of their food diary.

So let's take a look at some of the kinds of things the families

taking part in our food study were chomping down between meals.

A respectable showing of fruit - apples,

blueberries, some raw carrot...

..seeds.

Mmm, all very healthy.

One poor child was even eating raw seaweed.

But let's not beat about the bush.

Your most popular snacks are cakes, pastries, sweeties,

chocolate bars and ice cream.

But it's not just our habits which have changed,

it's the world around us.

It's impossible to avoid food.

It used to be a thing you had to make room for in your life.

At the beginning of the survey you had to shop,

cook and eat a meal three times a day.

Now, wherever you go, you're assailed with snack food.

You walk down the road and there's kebabs, and there's hamburgers

and there's fried chicken, and there's fish and chips, and there's...

Walk into a newsagent to buy a newspaper, there's chocolates and cakes.

You buy a coffee in a coffee shop - there are ten on every high street - it's not coffee

they want to sell you, that's not where they make money,

it's the 1,000-calorie blueberry muffin that you don't want,

didn't need, didn't even know existed 20 years ago, rammed into your face.

It's impossible to avoid food. It's impossible to avoid snacks.

Food is thrust upon us night and day

and it's left to us to make our own choices

about what and when to eat...

..and it's slowly killing us.

It's a far cry from the world the Robshaws found themselves in

at the start of the experiment,

when the government controlled their diet through rationing.

I feel, sort of, actually quite nervous

because it's the thought of the limitation of food...

so I'm feeling a little bit anxious.

There's your rations for the week.

- Oh, gosh, that's for the week?
- Yeah.

So that's just one egg for five people? Wow.

Food then was basically made to give you 2,000 calories

and nothing else.

It wasn't for pleasure, it was just bland and tasteless.

They're going to have some of this cold liver,

which, I have to say, has gone a bit green.

It's disgusting. I'm actually still hungry after dinner.

I ate, like, potatoes and bread.

It sounds quite filling, but it really wasn't because it

was...just bread and potatoes, and I don't really want to eat that.

- What was it? Potatoes, cauliflower and bits of liver - all cold.

What's not to like, you know(?)

There might not have been the choice they were used to from their

modern lives, but even the Robshaws could see that government control

of the food supply had its benefits.

Although I didn't particularly rave about all of the food, it was,

quite clearly, a healthier diet

than we had later on in the experiment.

Can you get your shears right round that green bit at the end?

Not my finger.

- Catch.
- Whoa.

The food was low sugar, low salt, and we had fresh vegetables,

so I think we came out of it actually feeling quite healthy, quite good.

- That was well nice.
- Is it really nice?

Food rationing finally came to an end in 1954,

but one place the state did

retain some control of our diet was in schools, where strict nutritional

guidelines for school dinners stayed in place for nearly 30 years.

MUSIC: School Day by Chuck Berry

Right, children, your 1950s lunch is ready.

What do you think of the food, then?

Not nice. Disgusting.

Do you think you might grow to love it?

ALL: No.

They might not have loved it, but it was unarguably good for us.

In the 1950s, children's diets were healthier than at any other

point in the experiment.

I think it was healthy, but not very nice.

As the decades moved on,

other factors began to influence the food we bought.

So have a look in the cupboard.

- Quite a lot more branded food.
- Uh-hm.

Where, in the past, the government has been in the kitchen through

rationing, what you're seeing now is the retailer, the manufacturer,

the processor coming into the kitchen,

muscling the government out.

So somebody else gets into your cupboard

and tells you what to eat, and it happens to be big corporations.

By the end of the 1960s,

virtually every British household owned a TV.

TV: Birds Eye fish fingers - double delicious -

that's something every eating expert knows.

Food manufacturers had a direct line straight into the consumer's home,

tempting him with delicious new products.

JINGLE PLAYS

TV: Bird's Angel Delight, the most delightful taste around.

In 1981, the last vestiges of state control of our diets disappeared...

when Mrs Thatcher's government contracted our school dinners

out to private companies and abolished nutritional standards.

Like many families, the Robshaws adopted the packed lunch.

Wait, wait, that's not helping.

- Yes, it is!
- That is hindering.

It's helping, Mum.

So you've got about eight minutes.

When you've only got a few minutes to prepare it,

you're going to throw in prepackaged processed food.

That's it, bye.

That's an area that the government really should take

care of, and I'm quite happy to have the state planning children's menus,

just as it plans children's education.

You wouldn't leave their education up to the parents, would you?

In 2005, minimal nutritional standards for school dinners

were reintroduced, and just last year, the government brought in

free meals for every child under seven.

If you are not a child, the government's role since

rationing ended has simply been to offer advice.

But is that enough?

Since the Robshaws finished their time-travelling experiment

in 2000, Britain has been in the throes of an obesity epidemic.

Nearly two thirds of us are now overweight or obese, that's a huge

drain on the National Health Service,

and life expectancy in this country

is in danger of coming down for the first time in 1,000 years.

It's a crisis. We obviously need to do something about it,

but what role should government play?

I set up my own fast food stall with Dr Oliver Mytton,

an expert on obesity, to try out some of the policies governments

in other countries have adopted in the fight against fat.

So when did this crisis start to happen?

Because I've been on this time-travelling experiment

with the Robshaws, from the '50s right through,

I hadn't seen it coming, particularly.

Suddenly, "Pow!" it's upon us. When?

Well, in terms of obesity,

we first really started to notice it in this country in the 1990s.

- Right.
- That was only when we started to measure it, and it's likely

that pattern had been happening for a period of time before that.

Fat tax is a phrase one hears banded around,

they've tried it in some countries,

it's a way of directly taxing the food that is making us fat.

How does it work? Can it work?

So, fat tax is all food taxes.

The idea is to tax unhealthy food items

and therefore discourage their consumption.

- Could we do it here?
- We could

and it's something that some people have suggested we do.

But it is controversial, a lot of people don't like it.

The food industry would probably have some serious reservations about

doing this because they're worried about how it would hit their sales.

It's harder to make money from sunny, healthy food,

and part of the idea behind food taxes is perhaps to start to

shift that balance, so selling healthy foods becomes more profitable.

Food taxes have already been introduced in parts of Europe

and are under discussion worldwide.

Figures range from the 10% already implemented in Hungary and Finland

to 40%, as proposed by some groups in New Zealand.

These taxes have seen consumption fall, though critics claim

people are simply switching to other unhealthy products.

The reason people eat these is because they taste good.

You have to confess.

I want to see if paying more for fast food would put the Robshaws

off buying it, so today I've slapped a fat tax on my burgers.

- My customers!
- Hello, Giles.

- Oh, my word, it's the Robshaws(!)
- Have you got a new job?

Yeah, it didn't pan out very well, the show...

and so they had to cut me out, so now I'm...

But it's good, I'm happy with my work.

Is anybody in the mood for a burger?

Well, I'm quite hungry,

but everything's got two prices, I'm noticing.

I've added a tax of 40% to the food,

and my menu shows the prices before and after tax.

Imagine a future world in which there is a fat tax

and food that's going to make you fat is going to cost more.

So, where it says, for example, five quid for a cheeseburger,

it's actually not five quid, it's seven quid,

cos the more fat there is in it, the more you're going to have to pay.

- Can I have some chips?
- You can.

- How much are the chips, can you remind me?
- £2.80.

£2.80. And is that, that's the fat tax price, is it?

- Yeah, that's a lot.
- Is that worth it?
- No.

No. So you're not going to have chips, after all? How about that?

You see, it works. Brilliant. So OK, no chips for the kid, great.

- Ros, what do you think?
- I want a hamburger.

The trouble is that there's five of us. I actually haven't got

enough money on us to get five hamburgers at that price.

- That is over... That's like £30, isn't it?
- Yeah.

You're going to be looking at about £30, £35

and, if you want sugary drinks,

you're probably going to be doing a 50.

- Yes.
- I can't get over that. £50.

One hamburger, one cheeseburger and one chips.

So on your cheeseburger, would you like some gherkins?

- ROCHELLE LAUGHS Do they cost extra?
- No,

they don't, cos there's no fat in them. Some lettuce?

- Yes, please.
- Yummy, healthy lettuce. No tax on the lettuce.

That looks fantastic.

So that is £16.10 for two burgers and some fries.

- That's painful to do that.
- Does it take you back to the '50s?

Because you had basically... At the beginning of the experiment, you had

the government telling you what to do, what you could and couldn't eat,

and then in the '70s and '80s and '90s, you could eat whatever you wanted.

And now you are back in a world where the government controls what you eat, is that...?

- It strikes me that this is going to affect people on low incomes more, probably.

- But what about if we taxed unhealthy food and we used that

money to subsidise healthy food, so the average effect would be nothing?

Yeah, that'd be good.

Would that drive you from unhealthy food to healthy food?

- I think it would nudge you, wouldn't it?

Which is the idea, I suppose.

- Perhaps one of the concerns with taxing food is

if people have less money to spend on other food items,

do they cut back on healthy food items like fruit and vegetables?

But perhaps we ought to be a bit more targeted in what we go for

and sugary drinks have been one thing that have been particularly

implicated with obesity.

Can I get a Coke?

LAUGHTER

Whether or not they move on these taxes,

- they're going to have to do something, aren't they?
- ROCHELLE: Yeah.

I think, because we cannot control ourselves, having the government

control what we're eating now, it would probably be quite a good thing.

I mean, it's a pretty sort of paternalistic view, isn't it?

- You're handing over these... - It's maternalistic.

It's maternalistic.

The idea of government intervention in our diets is one lesson we

could take from the past...

But I think there's another - about the way we shop.

With no car, and nothing but a larder to keep food fresh,

shopping locally was the only option for Rochelle in the early '50s.

Living without a fridge is the hardest part.

You can see that it would have been absolutely necessary,

it's not through a particular choice,

but you would have to go shopping every single day.

Although it took up lots of time,

Rochelle could also see the benefits.

I think the good bit about shopping locally in the '50s,

sort of, experiment was that you would see the same face every day,

you would start to have a connection with whoever's selling you the food.

I've come for my liver.

SHE LAUGHS

In the 1960s, Dave Myers delivered the Robshaws' first fridge

- Ta-da!
- Oh, wow.

When we got a fridge,

I remember how delighted Rochelle was with that.

It made a difference to shopping, you see,

you didn't need to shop every day.

It's really going to revolutionise my life.

For the first time, they could stock up.

Newly popular supermarkets offered a one-stop shop

for all their groceries.

Welcome to shopping, 1960s-style.

'When I first went into a '60s supermarket,

'I thought it was really exciting.'

There's just so much to look at, isn't there?

There's just so much to look at. It's absolutely extraordinary.

The new self-service system transformed the way they

shopped for food.

I felt that we were much more in control of what we chose

and I really enjoyed it.

Later in the experiment, I became a bit more

cynical about supermarkets, but when I first encountered them,

I thought, "This is fantastic. What's not to like?

"All these options. You can just, just get it, choose it, grab it."

By the 1980s,

the Robshaws did all their shopping at the supermarket.

- ROCHELLE:
- On the supermarket shelves,

a lot of the produce is now in plastic.

I'm definitely going to have a chicken madras

and I'm not giving any to anybody else - I'm just saying that now.

You couldn't see what you were buying any more

because it was sort of hidden in a box, so you're buying a picture.

You're buying a picture of something.

I'm seeing this with new eyes.

By the 1990s, supermarkets had supersized.

Their combination of low prices and massive choice seemed irresistible.

I do think this is amazing.

This whole aisle, which must be about, like, 20 metres long,

is all different varieties of cheese.

But even just the cheddar... It is a wall of cheese.

It is a great wall of cheese, it's probably visible from space.

'But for Rochelle, it didn't feel like progress.'

It was almost shocking in the amount of food that we

could pile into the back of the car

and I didn't find that a particularly pleasant experience.

It was just more and more boxes and plastic bags.

See, so much of this stuff is perishable. We'll have to...

If we don't eat it soon, we'll have to just chuck it out.

You are going to end up eating more, but simply by the fact that it is here.

In the '90s, you think, "Oh, we're just going in the car to

"get some shopping," because that's what we've chosen to do.

But everyone's doing it, you're actually just following a herd.

You don't realise it, but you are just completely falling

in line with the spirit of the times.

When we left the experiment in 1999,

it seemed as though the rise of the big supermarket would be inexorable.

But in the last 18 months,

an extraordinary change has taken place.

At the end of 2014, the amount of money being spent in the big

four supermarkets went down for the first time since 1994.

Our study holds a few clues

as to why the big supermarkets might be in trouble.

The last I left Rochelle, it was big out-of-town superstore shopping, it was killing off the high street,

everyone was going to the supermarkets.

I know, partly because you reflect it a little bit in the study,

but also my own life, that the internet, online shopping, means that the

massive weekly shop feels to me like it's not the thing that it once was.

Yeah, that sort of going to the supermarket and your car actually,

you know, groaning with the amount of shopping you had, seems to be over.

What we're seeing is perhaps the death of the weekly shop.

And when you look at the study, you can see some of that in the way

that people are actually reporting their shopping habits.

This woman has said, "I don't tend to do full shops, only now and again."

They just call on supermarkets a few times to stock up,

so in and out of shops rather than doing that once a week thing.

It seems like people are sort of ducking

and diving between online, a bit of supermarket,

and then topping up on the high street in the smaller shop.

Online grocery shopping took off in 2000

and was heralded as the future.

BROADCAST: Every day, 4,000 customers order their shopping from Tesco

through its internet site, sending a list via computer to a local store.

100 supermarkets, mainly in the south,

have the equipment to receive such orders.

Today Tesco announced, by the end of the year,

300 stores nationwide will supply online shoppers.

Internet orders are displayed on a trolley computer,

collected and then delivered by staff.

Tesco claims a million people will use

the service by the end of the year.

But supermarkets swiftly realised online wasn't great news for

their profit margins.

The genius of the supermarket was that we

as customers drove to the shop, we picked the goods off the shelves,

we put them in the bag, we drove them home and then we unpacked them.

They didn't have to do anything except put it on the shelves.

- We did all that work.
- Yeah.

Online shopping's different.

Suddenly, the supermarket has to bear the cost of choosing the food,

picking the food, putting it in the bag and also transporting it.

Now that changes the cost basis for supermarkets.

So, less profit, is that why they're failing?

Yes, online might be one reason that they're struggling.

But also, snapping at their heels, are these discount supermarkets.

The rise of shops like Aldi and Lidl has been a big news story

over the last couple of years.

So you've got a Waitrose bag, Sainsbury's,

a Tesco's bag, but you're also shopping at Aldi.

- Why?
- Yes. Though beforehand, conveniently you could go to one shop

and get loads and loads of stuff,

you're finding you're spending a heck of a lot of money.

Whereas if you could split it between two shops,

and one of those being Aldi, you save yourself a heck of a lot of money.

Aldi arrived in the UK more than 20 years ago.

It may have far fewer products than a traditional supermarket,

but that gives Aldi huge buying power with suppliers.

Discounters like Aldi are stealing a march.

What's happening here on these aisles is sending shockwaves through

an industry already grappling with huge change.

But the internet and discount supermarkets aren't

the only things that are changing the way we shop.

I think there's another, potentially more interesting, transformation afoot,

which may mirror the way things happened in previous eras,

where a small number of foodier people get into a way of doing

things which gradually become mainstream.

And I think it's beginning to happen in the way we shop for food.

So I've brought Rochelle to my local high street to see

if I can persuade her that this is the future.

I don't know really how that small local shopping

can fit in really well to a busy lifestyle.

You see, I think it can. I think the supermarkets are dying,

the big four supermarkets are all losing money,

their shares are all down, people are doing more and more of their

shopping online, people aren't going to the out-of-town superstores.

In the spare time we have that is made by doing the main

shopping online, that leaves room to buy bread, fish,

meat, you know, the daily things people need to buy locally,

and so there is a resurgence of local shops.

And I think that might well be the future,

as we've learnt in this series, where the middle classes with

a few quid lead, the masses do eventually follow, whether that's

fast food, frozen food, microwaves, curries, you know...

And I think because poncy middle-class people like me

are starting to go back to local butchers and fishmongers,

- that's how the future might be.
- Right, I'll follow your lead.

Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe you'll think the shops are rubbish.

There's been an astonishing 25% increase in the number

of independent food shops since 2012.

Our first stop is the new fishmonger run by Jonathan.

- How's business here?
- It's been really good.

We opened July 1st this year.

Things are looking really nice, really comfortable now, yeah.

For me, shopping more locally is about "How easy is it to do?"

I live down the road. Walk in, boom, and you've shopped really quickly,

and that's convenient, isn't it? I mean, you're open late...

Yep, Tuesday through to Friday, until 7.30pm.

There's a good burst at school run time, and then from 5pm

through to 7.30pm is probably 40% of the day's trade.

- Right.
- If not more.
- It's almost like a Mediterranean sort of idea,

isn't it, shopping late?

'Later opening hours have made them more convenient,

'but I know Rochelle will need convincing about the cost.'

You don't have to be particularly well off to come in here

and buy a bit of fish.

The things the supermarkets sell that we sell as well,

we're priced almost identically.

Are you? I was going to ask, who comes in, is it just rich people?

No, not at all, no. People from all walks of life come in.

This came up this morning from Newlyn,

that's a really cracking bit of whiting.

And how much would that piece of whiting cost?

That piece of whiting, I'd say about £4.

What would you do with that, then?

That just needs seasoning, a little smattering of flour

and frying in butter.

Everything needs frying in butter, effectively,

makes it anything taste good, really, doesn't it?

THEY LAUGH

OK, well, I think I'll maybe have two of those.

- Two of those? OK.
- Yes, please, yeah.

- Brilliant, OK, lovely.
- Thanks very much.
- Thanks very much.

Thank you. Cheerio.

One of the factors driving customers back to local shops

is that we want to have confidence in our food again -

especially in our meat.

- Good morning, how are you?
- Hi.
- Good to see you.

How is business, how's it working out?

We've had a really good start here.

Lots of local shoppers, people have really taken to us, which is nice.

People, you know, they want to be able to trust what they buy,

and I can tell you where all these animals came from,

where the farm was and how they're bred, and that's what we do here.

This kind of reminds me of what it was like when I did the '50s

- and I'd go locally to my local butcher.
- Yeah.

The importance of knowing where their meat came from

was brought home to the Robshaws in the 1990s when BSE,

known as mad cow disease, became a national talking point.

'The so-called mad cow disease may pose a threat to humans.'

It puts you off a bit, doesn't it?

You wouldn't be happy giving Fred a load of beef

knowing that there's not, how safe that beef is.

How would you possibly feel safe giving it to him?

But I don't like it, I don't like those farming methods.

The fact is, we know that...

..the food chain is violated at various points.

Our trust in food was rocked and the bad news kept coming.

In 2013, we learned that some supermarkets had sold us horse meat

in convenience products labelled as containing beef.

'More beef products were revealed to contain horse DNA yesterday.'

'If you are just about to pop your dinner in the microwave,

'don't be put off by the news tonight -

'that's the official government advice.

'They say we should keep on eating processed beef,

'even though they don't actually know what's on our plates.'

People are really keyed up now with food and I think

they're starting to realise that, you know, cheap food comes at a cost.

We're enjoying a little sort of resurge of people

coming back to the farmer's market

and, you know, coming and buying fresh meat,

which is really heartening.

People kind of wanted to learn from these scandals,

why was it a problem, why were cows going mad,

why were sheep getting foot-and-mouth and things like that,

and they wanted to talk about what they were buying.

And we saw a movement, people coming back to independent shops

so they could speak to somebody and say, "What have you got?"

Now, there are people who will be watching who would think,

knowing where their meat came from, how they were bred and everything,

this is a kind of poncy middle-class interest.

Is that the case at the moment?

I don't think it is a middle-class thing, it's about knowledge.

It's about people wanting to know what they're eating,

wanting to be secure in what they're spending their money on,

and you can come and buy what you want.

You haven't got to buy four lamb chops if you only want to eat two.

So you're contributing to less waste, then, do you think?

Yeah, absolutely.

Less waste, good value, extended opening hours,

I'm sold on local shopping as the future.

But have I managed to convince Rochelle?

I hope very much that we can,

you know, resist the temptation of going to the supermarket.

It's not like it's sort of like in the '50s, the housewife going out

to buy food just for her family in-between the hours of daylight,

now you can shop locally at any time, and it is a pleasant experience.

It adds something to your life.

It's not just where they shop that's been affected by their time travel.

The Robshaws have changed the sort of food they're buying.

One of the things we've taken away from the experiment as a whole

is that we do have a regular veg box delivery now.

This idea of good, fresh vegetables, that's really influenced us.

- Veg box.
- Veg box.

- Nice and colourful, isn't it?
- Hmm.

Getting it seemed to be quite important,

and just, it seemed to be an expense that I wanted to sort of...

prioritise.

Living through the experiment,

the Robshaws saw a dramatic shift in their diet,

from fresh ingredients...

to food that was increasingly processed.

What do you think of this?

This beef curry is actually a little bit dry and powdery.

With advances in food processing enabling novel new products,

they were only too happy to embrace the appliance of science.

We're all part of a massive experiment.

Our food is being changed from a traditional

to a new technologically-based diet

and we don't know what the consequences of this are going to be.

Isn't it amazing how it does this?

I'm pouring into the Pot Noodles now, everybody. It's bubbling.

See that? Bloop-bloop-bloop!

- The cheese is quite bright orange!
- Yes!

That's the '80s for you, everything's bright orange.

Nobody could do that.

I do quite like the food that I've been eating in the '80s,

but it's not exactly the healthiest of foods.

The family's visit to an organic farm in 1996 was a wake-up call.

- OK, so we're going to jump out and look at some lettuces.
- Great.

- So that's a cos lettuce.
- It's fantastic.

It's really, really beautiful.

They just don't look as kind of...

'For me, it was standing in Guy Watson's field'

and just seeing food again, as it is, in its sort of raw state.

It took us almost full circle to the '50s.

The outer leaves are the most nutritious, where it's green.

It's really got flavour.

'Tasting that lettuce fresh from the field, and it was so flavoursome,

'that is when I thought, "I'm not eating enough fresh food."

'That was my Damascus moment.'

Why on earth are we eating processed food?

Two extremely fine leeks...

The Robshaws are trying out new ingredients

and Rochelle is finding a renewed enthusiasm for cooking.

- What do you call that?
- Kohlrabi.

- Are they English?
- It's not very English-sounding.

- Looks like a teapot, doesn't it?
- Yeah, it does, actually.

Short and stout, here's its handle, here's its spout!

"The Winter Minestrone."

HE LAUGHS

We are replacing the turnip with...

- Kohlrabi.
- Carborabi...
- Carborabi?
- What did I say?

- You said, "carborabi"!
- Carborabi!

Before they started their time travel, Rochelle worked full-time

and Brandon did the lion's share of the cooking.

When I first went into this experiment, part of me

was kind of fed up with work,

and I kind of thought, "Ooh, it'll be very nice to be at home."

- Bye, Rochelle.
- Bye, Brandon.

'All those years of women struggling to get out of the home,

'I'm putting myself back into it.

'I think what I had completely underestimated was the fact

'that it is all hard work.'

I suppose this is what would make a woman break.

I didn't really, really want to be at home 100% of the time.

In the mid-'70s, Rochelle got a part-time job...

- You're back. How was your day?
- Hello!

- It was good, thank you.
- Did you enjoy it?

- Yeah, I did enjoy it, yeah.
- Oh, well done.

..but was still cooking virtually all the meals.

- What about supper?
- Haven't really thought about it.

- No, and you haven't, have you?
- No.
- No. And you haven't?

- No.
- Right, better get on with it, hadn't I?

Once we sort of hit the manic-ness of the '80s,

life becomes a hell of a lot harder because you're out working

and you're also doing a lot in the home.

You're just part of a system, that you have no freedom,

'you have to, you know, you're just caught up in this

'manic-ness that is kind of overtaking you.'

- Could someone get me the scraper for this?
- Yeah.

In the 1990s the balance finally began to be redressed.

I do feel that Brandon is getting much closer

to his contemporary role in the kitchen. He's happy to be there.

- Oh, I tell you what, that's really nice.
- Is it? Oh good.

Really nice, yeah.

With the pressure off, cooking could become a pleasure again.

Oh, that's wonderful! Hang it up on the tree.

Hang it on the tree, baby.

That's so good.

'I am cooking more and I don't know if that's'

because I had felt that there were these

sort of like rows of other mes behind me now telling me what to do.

Well, this is going to be a nice chunky soup.

It can't be chunked. It says chopped.

Oh, don't... Look, who's making this, us or Guy Watson?

Look, everybody likes a succulent chunk of leek.

- If you really loved me...
- Yeah?
- ..you'd chop 'em fine.

No, no, it's because I love you

that I want to give you really nice leeks.

You just feel like you've acquired that little bit of extra

knowledge all the way through, so it's just sort of made me

take more interest in it.

Oh, that just smells so delicious, doesn't it?

- Dad?
- Yeah?

It's very vegetable-y.

It's really nice.

It is nice.

It tastes really good.

- You can see it looks healthy.
- Hmm.

Where with the normal soup, it just tastes really salty.

When you get one out of a tin, it tastes,

like the whole soup tastes the same.

But this, like, you can taste each little different part of it.

Since the experiment ended, we have been eating together more, haven't we?

It creates a space for conversation, doesn't it?

It's just about being able to make a connection

with somebody that you care about and that you love.

'It's very much made me appreciate how food affects family life,

'and you can see that as food changed, our family habits changed.'

You can never have too many Pot Noodles.

HE LAUGHS

Fast forwarding through 50 years, the Robshaws saw sit down family

meals become a rarity as informality crept in.

The sort of order of sitting and eating at the table,

which we'd done in the '50s and '60s, was broken up.

You close the door and press time...

The arrival of microwave ready meals revolutionised family dinner times.

I'm going to play with my Nintendo.

This is the very first evening when everybody is eating differently.

You're standing up, she's sitting... They're sitting over there, Fred's in the other room.

We're all sort of dispersed and displaced...

and the microwave's doing it.

But you do gain in convenience. It's quite nice.

But what is the convenience?

Well, you know what the convenience is.

It's very quick and it minimises the washing up.

Watch this.

No washing up. How's that?

Pushed for time in the 1990s,

the Robshaws barely sat down to eat...let alone with each other.

And if every meal is informal, eaten on your lap in different

rooms of the house, then you lose something.

THEY CHAT

By the end of the experiment, we'd learned that it's very nice

and it's very, very healthy and good to come together as a family

and eat round the table several times a week.

I hope that will always be a constant in the future, that we won't lose that.

Where and when the Robshaws ate might have changed dramatically over

the 50 years of the experiment,

but there was one constant ingredient.

- Is it a slice of pork?
- Yeah.

Meat.

What we are looking at here is a family of five's weekly meat

consumption in 1955, just after rationing.

This is the sort of quantity they were eating, largely of beef

and pork, carcass meat, stuff that was on the bone,

and today's, specifically 2013,

but it hasn't changed much in the last couple of years.

Basically, and surprisingly to me, the same amount of meat.

- It just looks different, lots of processed stuff.
- Yeah.

The key difference is here they didn't have chicken very often.

This sorry little thing represents what would have been

a very small amount of chicken, two or three a year

because this was expensive and not a thing that people ate very much.

Here, lots of boneless, skinless chicken breast.

The cost of chicken, totally driven down by changes in technology

and new ways of farming,

have meant that people can afford to buy an inordinate amount more

chicken than they would have been able to do in the past.

- ARCHIVE:
- 'Not many years ago,

'the chicken was an expensive luxury for special occasions only,

'but today it's an easily available and comparatively cheap food,

'ready to be popped into the oven.'

The arrival of factory farming in the '60s made chicken affordable.

- Hey, look what I've found. Frozen chicken.
- Wow.

Look at that. That's the first time we've had it in this experiment.

It is, yeah.

In our normal lives, chicken is just a...

It's a kind of everyday thing, isn't it?

And new processed meat products mean that much of the meat

we now consume would be almost unrecognisable to a family in the '50s.

Clearly this glut of meat is not a situation that can last.

In the future, meat supplies might be a problem.

I think that's right because, as populations grow globally,

there's a huge pressure on the amount of meat that is produced

because as developing countries get richer, people start adopting

Western-style diets and they tend to consume a lot more meat.

So that it means in countries like China, for example, in the

'last 70 years, there's a fourfold increase in meat consumption.'

- So demand across the world will drive up the price of meat?
- That's right.

If that continues, what will change is we will be paying a lot

more for it, and we've got very used to having, particularly these

kind of highly processed meats, being really very inexpensive.

So if we're going to carry on eating this sort of quantity of meat,

we're going to have to pay for it in terms of price,

but also in terms of environmental cost as well.

The hunt is on for an alternative source of protein which

doesn't cost the earth.

I want to give the Robshaws a final futuristic dinner

and serve up a radical alternative to meat.

I am actually quite intrigued as to what this is going to be.

This is going to be the food of the future.

What do you think it's going to be?

Do you think we might be eating more things from the sea?

No, because I think everything from the sea will be dead.

There will be things along the journey that you've had,

the time travelling,

which would have been surprising for you to have eaten.

The arrival of new tastes and flavours

has been a continual theme for the Robshaws.

In 1963, even garlic was an alien ingredient.

Oh, bolognese! Oh, wow.

- I'm excited.
- Are you?

- Can we start?
- Can we start?

One of the things we learned from the experiment I think was how

quickly something can go from being exotic to being completely normal.

So when we had spaghetti bolognese in the 1960s it was like, wow,

we've never had anything like this with the spaghetti

and the garlic, and it's so different.

See that. That's how good it is,

people are actually scraping the dish.

But, you know, within a very few years,

that's just a normal British meal, and that seems to happen a lot.

In the '70s, their first curry added chilli and spice to their diet.

To me, this is just fantastic.

This is just like a kind of party going on in my mouth.

And, you know, I've broken out in a sweat because of it and I...

That's what I wanted, you know, I love that.

Why is it that men felt the need to test themselves with the curry?

I mean, women weren't impressed by that, I'm not impressed by that.

But I mean, I don't know, what is that about?

And by the '90s, adventurous British diners

were even bold enough to try raw fish.

I've been wanting fish for like 50 years.

And now you finally get it.

Loads of it, raw. That is really... I don't know what I think of that.

Just to see these sort of bits of raw fish going round

and round was really foreign and felt really different.

It did feel that that was a very sort of extreme eating experience.

Perhaps not as extreme as this one though.

I'm serving a protein-packed menu of international flavours

and no meat in sight.

- See all those worms in there?
- Oh, delicious(!)

- Oh, they're bugs, aren't they?
- Yeah, absolutely.

Insects have been hailed as the solution to our meat problem.

Full of protein, low in fat and packed with nutrients,

they are already part of the staple diet in parts of Africa and Asia.

Two billion people in the world,

that means one third of the population of the world,

is already eating insects.

They can become a sustainable source of food

and I think their importance is going to grow.

I start by boiling them, to about five minutes boiling them,

then after that I have to make my sauce,

which is tomato-based sauce, then they are crispy now.

They have no aftertaste.

It's just really a beautiful, very,

very nice taste.

Once we have developed better technologies for farming insects,

they have really large potential for becoming a major food source.

Today we're having Mexican spiced cricket tacos,

Asian worm stir-fry,

buffalo worm tart...

..and cricket kebabs.

So, Rochelle, what do you think about eating insects?

What's your first reaction to this food?

I am kind of repulsed really.

I really don't fancy eating it at all.

They're just staring at you with their little eyes.

But the fish stares at you.

I must say, these little worm tarts, I don't like the look of those.

LAUGHTER

- Come on, Fred, you take it away first...
- You're the bravest.

- I'm going to try...
- What are you going to eat?

Is he going to try the stir fry...with the buffalo worms?

That's really disgusting.

What's it like?

Mmm, delicious.

- Is it? Is it OK?
- Hmm, yeah.

They're not disgusting? You'll happily have them for your dinner?

If I didn't know what they were.

Worm tart, have a quiche, have a worm tart.

- No, no!
- Look at this delicious taco. Who can do one?

- Brandon, you can eat anything.
- Yeah, I'll do one.

Oh, look, they're trying to climb out...

LAUGHTER

Just quickly, hastily...

Ugh!

Well, they're dead, aren't they?

It's savoury in a kind of slightly earthy way. As I say...

MasterChef! That's a fantastic description.

I have to say, I feel inclined to remove the wings.

It gets a bit stuck. We've all got to do it.

One, two, three, go.

I can't do it!

It's not the taste, it's the...

When you scrunch down on them, there's a slight squeak...that's...

This is the future. This is how it's going to be.

I'm just not sure if I am disgusted by it because I think, oh,

I've only ever seen these sort of wiggling about, sort of live,

or the fact that I'm just not used to it.

A lot of it is to do with the fact that we

think of insects as carriers of disease.

We think of worms, maggots as things that inhabit rotting food.

Locusts do terrorise communities and strip crops and are disgusting,

- and that's why we don't want to eat them, isn't it?
- Yes.

I don't really want to go there unless I'm sort of...

- Dying?
- Dying, yes!

I don't think you'd ever think you'd be coming home from work

and you'd think, "Great, we've got centipede tonight."

It just... It doesn't taste nice enough to make me think that.

I think we ought to get the next course and see if it can be any help.

Their plentiful supply makes insects a no-brainer,

if we can overcome our revulsion,

which is where our second course comes in.

It's not really just cookies, is it?

We are serving up burgers made from a mixture of beef and insect protein

and cookies made with insect flour.

- Take a burger.
- Take a burger.

That actually tastes really nice.

Yeah, here you can't taste the insect at all, can you?

And what about for Miranda and Ros?

It solved my problem with the wings and the eyes, but it's just got

a kind of aftertaste in the back of my mouth, and I don't know whether

it's my brain going, "There's an insect, so it has to taste nasty."

I don't know. If we hadn't been told,

I wonder if we'd have just scoffed our way happily through this.

Maybe this is the way that you make eating insects acceptable.

I don't think it's the best meal we've had,

but I don't want to have a kind of kneejerk reaction against this food.

It could be the way forward.

Can I just say that Fred has eaten his way through half a burger

and two biscuits, knowing, knowing what is in them,

so maybe it is a generational thing.

# Da-da-da! #

In Britain, we have undergone a revolution in the food

we eat over the last 50 years -

the Robshaws have witnessed those changes close up -

it is an experience that has had a profound effect on all of them.

At the beginning of the experiment,

I never would have tried to eat an insect,

but I'm definitely more willing to try more foods.

It does feel good to be more adventurous.

I feel really, really lucky to have done this experiment

because like, I'm 15,

but I've been in the '50s and that's just pretty cool.

Whoa!

'As a family, I think we've come full circle and we're taking'

the best parts of what we've experienced into the future.

'We'd learnt, throughout the experiment,

'that obviously food is essential' to life,'

you need to eat to live, and you might as well enjoy it.

But I think, even more important than that, we learnt that food is

an important part of nurturing people you care about.

If it's even as simple as taking them a cup of tea,

or if it's cooking a proper meal and all sitting down together

in the evening enjoying it -

all of those things, I think, are ways of showing love

and caring for those who are close to you.

- Cheers to the end of the experiment.
- Cheers.
- You did well.

Whatever we're eating in 50 years, whether it's insects,

nasty vitamin drinks, or good old egg and chips,

I think it's fairly safe to say that

food will go on binding families together as it has for generations.

'I think the experiment's made me realise that sort of, for me,'

'part of being a mother is to try and create memories,

'and part of those memories would be around food,

'and eating and creating meals.'

Food is something to be celebrated and enjoyed every day.