Alex Riley is brilliant! watch BBC three 10.30 pm on Tuesdays. We blogged about Jimmy's food factory recently but Britains really disgusting food puts it to shame... not sure we'll bother blogging about Jimmy again! Alex is far more gritty and too the point.
We see him investigating the meat industry and now he's going dairy! He entered the dark world of trans fats and mocked Lidl's who's motherland, Denmark, has banned trans fats in all food. Lidls chosen charity was the British heat foundation, Alex completely picked up on that and took it to town. He sat in a bath full of Hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) and collected funds to help customers who may suffer from coronary heart disease.
The programme is bold but quite factual, Alex had a great response and Lidl agreed to remove all items containing HVO. Alex interviews Heather Mills who has been reported as saying she'd rather drink rats milk or dogs milk than drink milk from a cow. She believes we shouldn't drink milk from animals and uses an argument about pus being present in 'all' milk because of the use of growth hormones. Alex asks again if growth hormones are in all milk, which she confirms. This is incorrect. It is ILLEGAL in Europe to administer recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to dairy cattle. It is still allowable in the United States, but has become increasingly unpopular. Alex visited a great farm showing grass fed cows and managed to milk one pretty well.
He then went on the hunt for American products that contain dairy milked from US cattle that are legal to sell here in the UK. It was no surprise that the items he located with US dairy were processed foods that can endure the import time. He highlighted that these foods could contain milk from animals injected with rBGH. This was a valid point, but he seemed to get a little sidetracked on searching out these American products which have relatibvely low consumption levels in the UK and forgot to emphasise that the majority of the dairy consumed in the UK comes from cattle where the use of rBGH is forbidden. Of course most of this dairy is still pasteurised and nutritionally damaged. What's our suggestion? Drink high quality, organic, grass fed raw milk.
During his US road trip he found that the American farmers were not happy to talk about rBGH being given to their cattle, its so widespread but no one is happy to admit it. 14 million tons of hormone ridden milk. The hormones cause a range of health problems in cows. It forces cows to milk twice as long, which often causes mastitus. Mastitus is inflammation of the udder which results in pus build up, which can end up in the milk. The milk from these cows has high levels of hormones that are connected to cancers. Perhaps you may want to avoid US sourced dairy products if you are not sure whether this type of milk is used.
Alex meets with a massive chemical / pharmaceutical company called Eli Lilly who manufacturers a considerable amount of the rBGH used in conventional US dairies. The interviewee wouldn't drink any of the milk when asked too, but insisted it was safe. He then asks the questions, if its banned in Europe, why are we importing the products containing the harmful milk from the states.
Alex travels to Europe and visits an EU minister and asks him to consume some of the processed American food with the milk in. This was hilarious! Watching the guy prove his point was a real comedy moment. Alex referred to him as someone who was a crap food connoisseur!
He swiftly moved onto chocolate bars, but none of the big guns would chat to him. He noticed most chocolate was full of vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter. On further investigation he found many were using palm oil which sadly affects the orangatangs because of rain forests being cleared to make way for palm oil growth.He then noticed that some brands, including Galaxy were receiving an official 'rainforest friendly' stamp of approval even though they used standard palm oil not from sustainable sources. Turns out they are only required to use sustainable cocoa in order to receive this stamp, even if they are still contributing to deforestation by using standard palm oil in their products. Alex shows up outside Mars HQ, the makers of Galaxy, with a full lorry driven tanker of orangatang friendly, sustainable palim oil. He tries to sell it to them, but they were having none of it. However, before he left Mars did commit to make the switch to sustainable palm oil by 2015! Good work Alex. How much destruction will happen in the next 5 years as a result of this slow change. There was 400 tonnes of sustainable palm oil in Hull not being used at the time of the programme.
What did you think of the programmes so far? Were really enjoying it..