Jimmy Doherty has blasted onto our screens in his new show "Jimmy's food factory". After digging about for some background information. We discovered he is a freind of Jamie Olivers and owns / runs a working farm: http://www.jimmysfarm.com/. He's no stranger to the screen, you may remember him from a previous show " Jimmy Dohery's farming hero's, pretty similar to the lovely Rick Steins Food Hero's.
In the first episode of "Jimmy's food factory" we watch him recreate cornflakes from scratch. The programme is well made and his sarcasm and humour make it easy watching. When handing around his final product to the public, he received mixed reviews. This is pretty normal, people are conditioned to like the mass produced supermarket branded products but they don't always realise why. In this case, Jimmy's flakes were only sprayed with the vitamin smoothie blend that he had prepared. Supermarket flakes are also coated in sugars, sweeteners and salt.
You can catch up with the episode here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nk0j5/Jimmys_Food_Factory_Breakfast/
He has started with breakfast (Cornflakes and Coffee) and will continue through the great British daily meals. You can catch new episodes Wednesday evenings: BBC 1 - 7.30 pm.
We'd love to hear your views, simply regiser as a user (If your not one already) and make your comments...feel free to comment after each episode.
30 million sandwhiches are consumed per day throughout the UK. Jimmy investiages sandwhiches and their popular fillers - Cheese & salads.
Supermarket bread -
Ingredients: Fats & Imulsifiers.wheat flour, water, yeast, salt, spirit vinegar, vegetable oil, soya flour, emulsifiers ( mono-and diglycerides).
The reason bread is able to stay soft for up to 7 days is because they reinvented bread back in the 1950's with the invention of the Chorleywood bread making process to mass produce bread. The bread is prepared in a giant mixing machine which beats it a a much higher intensity and along with some important bread improvers helps to incorporate large amounts of tiny air bubbles. The dough looks like a very elastic and stretchy marshmallow type material, nothing like handmade bread.
Homemade Bread -
Ingredients: Flour, water and yeast
His home baked bread was an improvement on supermarket bread, but was still made with highly refined flour and yeast. We recommend traditional sourdough bread ... see our grains guide.
Not sure what he was trying to prove by comparing the homemade to the factory produced bread. The homemade bread went mouldy in only a couple of days whereas the factory made bread was relatively soft and no mould was visible. Does this suggest to the viewer that the factory bread is better? There is a vital point that was totally missed. Which of the 2 foods did nature try to live off? Even his home made white loaf attracted bacteria life in only a few days while the factory loaf had not attracted any bacteria. Ntaure chose to live off the home made loaf - this is the food that could at least support bacteria life.
Salads -
This was surprising as they salad leaf farmers relied on more than just sprays and chemicals to keep the bugus and insects on their food crops. It was great to see some natural ways to combat pests, such as bats or planting the right supporting plants nearby that encourage ladybirds and other bugs which prey on aphids and other pests that attack the salad crops.
Salad crops produced on a larger scale are usually washed in a chlorine bath. Jimmy visited a good factory that chose to wash in spring water to reflect a natural process and used vibration plates and light detection to remove any final bugs that may have made it through. Sadly there are many salad producers who don't practice this way.
Tomatoes - simulated summers
These are grown in huge greehouses where they simulate a hot summer environment with the right heat, feed and sunlight. The costs of heating the large greenhouses was becoming too expensive and this supplier had to look into alternative heating methods. Wasted fruit, particularly bananas that were deemed too ripe upon entry into the UK were being re-used. Many of these were still green and perfectly edible, but did not meet the full green levels required by the supermarkets to make it through the lengthy UK distribution network.They were tipped into a giant masher and the pulp used to feed and huge bacteria plant. These bacteria were used to create methane gas on a vast scale which is then drawn out and used to warm the greenhouses. It is amazing how artificial environments can be created on such a vast scale here in the UK. The real question is does this support the natural way?
Cheese -
Processed cheese contains - 60% cheese
Ingredients: water, salt, milk powder, melting salts? = additive chemical. Turns cheese doughy. Although the cheese produced on the show was very pale and colourless, most is a deep orange. This must indicate that colours are likely used to replicate the look of cheese. This cheese can be sold for prices similar to real cheese made only from the curds that have been separated from milk. Yet processed cheese is 40% water and competes at a similar price. Although not highlighted on the show, suddenly a very obvious reason becomes apparent - profit!
What are Jimmy's objectives in this show? His bread experiement was unclear as to whether or not people should stop buying supermarket bread and return to traditional home baking.
Was he saying that processed cheese was good or a poor quality imitation? We've struggled to keep focused as the programmes progressed each week. This blog post may dry up as each week he lacks the nutritional knowledge to back up his experiments.
Nice chap though and you can't fault him for trying to educate.
What are your views?