(SIZZLING) Meat has been getting a lot of bad press lately. The World Health Organisation recently announced that eating some types of meat can cause cancer. And there's new research into how it's linked to heart disease. It seems as if meat has become public health enemy number one. So, how worried should we be? Some think we shouldn't eat meat at all. But it seems most of us in the UK still love it. 98% of us are meat eaters. This is the average amount of meat we eat each year in this country ` around 54 kilos. And it's this breakdown ` more processed meat than anything else; a fair pile of red meat; and an increasing quantity of chicken. I love it all. Even uncooked like this, you can see all the potential dishes you could make. And I wanna carry on eating meat. But I'm determined to get to the bottom of what it is about it that's bad, what's good, how much should I be eating, and is there any of this that I should avoid? I'm Chris Bavin. I'm a green grocer by trade and a carnivore by nature. Like most of us, I want to be sure I'm eating the right things. So I want to see if I can keep meat in my diet and stay healthy. Hello, chaps. Could I have a Posh Cheese, please? I've teamed up with top scientists to put meat under the microscope and examine it as never before. We follow 40 volunteers on a groundbreaking study to find out exactly how much meat is good for us. You're probably cutting out about that much saturated fat from your diet every week. We reveal an unlikely lean super-meat that won't break the bank. I would never have put that in my mouth if I knew what it was. Would you not? No! We discover a way to dramatically reduce the health risks associated with processed meats. This is the extract which prevents the formation of the cancer-causing compounds. (CHICKENS CLUCK) We test whether paying more for chicken makes it any better for us. You're telling me that there is little difference between an organic chicken that's coming in at �6.50 a kilo and a bog-standard supermarket chicken? (CROWS) 'And I come under close examination...' Bottoms up. '...to find out how our gut bacteria could improve our heart's health.' This is what's going on inside my body right now. It's quite a weird feeling. (GRUNTS) Boom. Fresh or processed, red or white ` how does meat measure up? It's a real nutrient powerhouse, isn't it? (SIZZLING) I wanna be able to enjoy eating meat without having to worry. I wanna separate the fact from the fiction, the science from the scare stories. I wanna find out the truth about meat. Copyright Able 2017 (UPBEAT MUSIC) The first thing I want to know is ` what are the benefits to eating meat? How much good does it do us? I eat meat because I enjoy it. But like many of us, I suspect, I've never really thought about what I get from it. What does meat do for us nutritionally? I've teamed up with nutritionist Sue Baic to find out. Hello, Sue. Hi, Chris. Right. How much spinach am I putting in here? Good handful. Meat contains a lot of different nutrients, so I thought it'd be interesting to actually see what other foods match the nutrients that are in meat. We've taken over a sushi bar to set up a guessing game. What I want you to do is to pick the dishes you think match the nutrients found in this steak. The volunteers have 20 different dishes to select from. They must guess which foods and how much of them equates to the nutritional value of this one 8oz steak. Eggs, definitely. That's an emphatic start, isn't it? All these foods are good sources of a range of different vitamins and minerals. Our contestants can choose whatever combination they like. I sell fruit and veg, so I know a little bit about food and nutrition. But I've gotta be honest ` I don't know how many or what variety of dishes you'd need to choose to match the nutrients found in the steak. I'm quite intrigued to find out. Cornflakes have iron in them. It's not as easy as it looks, is it? No, it is not easy. We'll have the spinach off. One spinach, sir. Think I'm gonna pick these prawns because of the protein that's in them. I don't think it's popcorn. I think put the nuts back. But the nuts have got the fat in it. Nuts are definitely the best sort of protein. MAN: Cheese. Yeah? Not gonna eat that bit, but I'll just take it anyway. So, you've got Brazil nuts and peanut butter? I have. Boiled eggs, spinach, cheese and some baked beans. Yep. Finished? Yep. You sure? SOME: Yes. Final answer? Final answer. WOMAN: Yes. Time to see if they've chosen wisely. Sue, how did they do? Yep. You've got three sources of protein there. So, the nuts have got protein in, the soy mince has got protein in, and the eggs. But you'd need seven and a half eggs to get the same amount of protein that's in that. You also mentioned the iron, and youse had spinach for iron, didn't you? The iron in spinach is not as easily absorbed as the iron from meat. So we need to add some vitamin C ` so something like orange juice or an orange or berries to the plant food to make the iron easy absorbed. (SAMBA MUSIC) In fact, to match all the nutrients present in this steak, you'd have to gather quite a buffet ` and in these quantities. Around a kilo of prawns to get all the zinc ` good for energy and growth. Some Brazil nuts to match the selenium for a healthy immune system. Two to three bananas to get the potassium. An egg to match the vitamin D. And to get the iron you need for red blood cells, you would have to eat a whole bag's worth of spinach. There's a lot of stuff up there... Yeah! ...instead of getting one steak. That's pretty cool. There's an awful lot of stuff in the steak. You'd rather have a steak. I'd rather have a steak! (LAUGHTER) And I thought you'd need a few of the dishes, but I didn't think you'd need that array and, in some cases, quantities to get the nutrients that you find in a steak. Meat's very nutrient-dense, so it can be quite hard to replace the nutrients unless you think quite carefully about how you're going to do it. And it's not as simple as just cutting the meat out and having the potatoes and the vegetables. You actually think, 'What am I gonna have as the centre of my meal instead?' Is there one thing that's quite difficult to replace? Well, I'd say the iron is meat is particularly difficult, cos it's a very well-absorbed source of iron. And in the UK, about 20% of women have got low intakes of iron, so from that point of view, red meat's quite useful. It's a real nutrient powerhouse, isn't it? It is. So eating red meat like steak clearly has plenty of benefits for our health. But do the positive effects outweigh the negative? I want to look at the good, the bad and the ugly of many different types of meat. And next, I'm going to confront the less appetising side of processed meat, because it's been grabbing a lot of headlines. Take a look at some of these. READS: 'Processed meats do cause cancer ` World Health Organisation.' 'Health chiefs put processed meat at the same level as cigarettes.' 'Sausages as bad for you as smoking.' 'Processed meats linked to cancer.' I mean, these are seriously scary headlines. After reviewing more than 800 studies, the World Health Organisation has declared that processed meat is a definite cause of bowel cancer. Around 16,000 people die of bowel cancer in the UK each year. When I saw these headlines, it really made me think twice ` and I'm not the only one. What I wanna know is ` how scared should we actually be of processed meat, and should we be considering ditching it altogether? (UPBEAT GUITAR MUSIC) I'm in Borough Market in London. Lovely. It's a meat lover's heaven here and enough to make me want to forget those headlines. I wanna get to the bottom of exactly what is processed meat and why it's so bad for us. Hello. 'I've come for a butchery lesson.' Good. Nice to meet you. And you. And you. Hugo Jeffries is a specialist butcher and charcuterie. Ever seen half a pig before? Uh... no, I don't think I have, actually. Oh, well, welcome. This is it. Hugo is gonna take me back to the basics of meat processing. One pig, one butcher, lots of knives and a few extra ingredients. One of the things I wanna found out is ` what makes this lovely looking pig into a processed meat? Because it's not processed in this format, is it? No, this is very much in its rawest form. Um, what makes it processed is when it's had something added to it, be it flavour, salt, sugar, preservatives. Before we get to the processing part, we've got to chop it up. So, the first thing we're gonna do is separate our half carcass into three more manageable pieces. (UPBEAT MUSIC) That should just crack open. Pull it through. (GRUNTS) Blimey! Boom. You butchers make us green grocers look like, um... wimps, don't it? Oh. That's it. Whew! Right. That's like a workout, innit? (LAUGHS) You can do the rest now. Nah, I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah. 'You've got another hundred.' (LAUGHS) We make processed meats from most animals, but we do get many of our favourites from the pig. Ham, sausages, salamis, and the breakfast staple we're going to make today. That's bacon. Yes. Should be familiar to everybody. Very, very recognisable. Yep. Absolutely. Lots of fat as well. Lots of flavour. Processed meat is basically meat that's been modified in some way to make it last longer or change its taste. We need to go and grab or salt, sugar and nitrite. We're processing this bacon by curing it, adding a mixture of preservatives to extend its shelf life. The nitrite ` why do we use that? Safety reasons. It's the only known preventative of the spores of clostridium botulinum, which can be toxic to human beings. The preservative sodium nitrite is an effective way to kill the bacteria that can lead to botulism, a deadly form of food poisoning. But it's also the ingredient at the centre of the health warnings about processed meats. Now, we're simply going to transfer that on to here. So whack it on and give it a good rub. That's all right. Chuck it all on. Processed meats have now become the UK's favourite choice of meat. Give it a good massage. Massage it in? Yeah, that's it. We're eating over 30% more now than we did in the 1970s. After a couple of weeks, it turns into the bacon we've got over here. That looks great. - (SIZZLING) - That noise and that smell ` I mean, that's fantastic, isn't it? Gets it going. You can see why, uh, vegetarians fail when it comes to bacon. CHUCKLES: Yeah! It's the one thing, isn't it? It's the Achilles heel. Absolutely. There we have it. OK. Using fingers? Yeah, yeah. Why not? Good stuff. (SNIFFS) Oh, that's` (SNIFFS) That smells tremendous. Despite the nitrite, processed meats like bacon do still have nutritional value. It's a world apart. They contain the same nutrients as fresh meat. Oh. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Just for that, you can have the last piece. (LAUGHS) I want to understand just why this preservative, the sodium nitrite, is a problem when it comes to all my favourite processed meats. (CURIOUS PIANO MUSIC) Professor Gunter Kuhnle is a food scientist at Reading University. I'm hoping that he'll explain to me why nitrite is harmful... and if there's anything we can do about it. OK, Gunter. I've heard so much about nitrite and nitrate. But what's the problem with them? Well, the problem is that nitrites have a role in our food ` they're there to preserve, and they're there to make sure that the food is safe to eat. The problem is that nitrite doesn't only protect us from spoilage in meat, but it also increases the risk for cancer. OK. So, that is quite ironic, then, isn't it, that they're in our food to protect us from the food going off and the bacteria that may occur in food naturally,... Yes, yes, yes. ...but yet they're harmful to us as well. Exactly. They can react with the stomach acid and all the things you find in meat to form compounds which are cancer causing. As we digest these processed foods, the nitrite in the meat combines with the acid in our stomachs to create the chemical compound. It's these compounds which can be cancer-forming. This liquid should change colour in the presence of nitrite. Pure concentrated nitrite makes it turn vivid pink. When we add a whole range of processed meats ` ham, sausage, chorizo, bacon, corned beef ` to the same liquid, the pink tell-tale signs of the presence of nitrite is revealed. It's an unnerving site, as research has shown that eating processed meats like these every day increases your risk of bowel cancer by 18%. So, please, dress up. Yep, OK. But there might be some good news. Come in. And Gunter's going to show me. Along with his colleague Dr Cheng, Gunter is trialling a formula which can combat the negative effects of the nitrite. They're trying it out on a nitrite-light sausage. Into a traditional sausage mix, they add the special concoction. So, this is the secret ingredient, is it? This is the extract which allows us to reduce the amount of nitrite which then prevents the formation of the cancer-causing compounds. Right. OK. So this is very important, then? This is very important, and this is really the result of several years of research. Wow. The main part in there is a green tea extract, but there are other extracts, plant extracts, in there. Gunter's secret mixture means that he can cut the amount of nitrite he uses in his sausages by half. And in studies, this has also had a dramatic effect on the levels of cancer-causing compounds in the gut. We found that people eating these sausages, the amount of these compounds was much, much lower than if they ate a sausage which was produced based on normal recipes. You just a handle to control the release. And here, it can go explode. (LAUGHS) Right. OK. Well, we don't want that, do we? Not too tight, not too loose. I'm a bit nervous about this. Gunter is two years into the trial, and he's hoping to have a commercial version of his formula ready in the not-too-distant future. We have tested this on hams. We have tested it on different types of sausages. But it could be implemented in all kinds of different meat products. So, I suppose the only thing left to do is to cook them and eat them and actually see if people can taste the difference. Yes. Yes, of course. Taste is very important, because we want to get the consumer to actually like this kind of meat product and eat it. (UPBEAT GUITAR MUSIC) I'm up in the students' union for my taste test. Excuse me, chaps. Do you mind if I interrupt your game for a moment? I reckon some free sausages should go down quite well here. Got a couple of sausages. Would you like to try them and tell me what you think of 'em? Is that all right? The reduced nitrite sausages are on plate number one. The others are normal sausages. And if you could try the second plate for me, that'd be great. I think this one is more tasty. The second one was slightly more tasty? Maybe more spice. I don't know what's inside, but it's more tasty. Both sausages. Both are quite nice, yeah. That one's a bit nicer. OK. Didn't have as much flavour. The second one didn't have as much flavour? Yeah. Ah, that's interesting. So, so far, actually, very positive. Good evening, ladies. That one's more exciting. The first one's more exciting? Yeah. In what way? Um, more depth of flavour. Well, a success for Gunter's nitrite-light sausages. They've got the thumbs up on taste, and they're better for us. It's just a shame we can't buy them yet. But hopefully they, or an equivalent, will be available soon. For now, though, if we want to keep eating processed meats, just how risky are they to our health? I find the figure that eating just 50g of processed meat every day can increase your risk of bowel cancer by 18% really quite sobering. So I did a little bit of digging to try and make sense of what that risk actually means. And risk analysts have made a calculation that really brings it home, and that's by comparing bacon with smoking. They say that eating one bacon roll with two rashers of bacon can shorten your life expectancy by the same as smoking four cigarettes. So, is processed meat worth the risk? I must admit ` I think I'd struggle to cut bacon out of my diet completely. But maybe we should look at it as more of a treat than part of our daily diet. And if you do eat processed meat every day, be aware that it comes with a risk. These figures are based on studies of large numbers of people and their long-term processed meat eating or smoking habits. No one is saying that eating processed meat is as bad as regular smoking. Processed meat causes less than 3% of the total of all cancers, while tobacco causes more than 25%. So, what about the cancer risks of unprocessed meat? No processing, so no nitrite. Does that mean we're safe to tuck into fresh red meat? The bad news is ` although the WHO report doesn't put it in the same category as processed meat, it still believes red meat is probably cancer causing. And how you cook it could be part of the problem ` and part of the solution. (UPBEAT MUSIC) When the sun comes out, nothing quite beats a good barbie. (SIZZLING) But I wanna find out how this style of cooking affects the meat. So we've set up a barbecue challenge in the park. Today's alfresco cooks, the Welburn family, have been split into teams. It's the men, Bill and his son-in-law Sebastian, versus the women, Katherine and her daughter Julie. Right. OK, guys, I've split you into two teams, and I'm gonna set you a simple challenge of cooking me the perfect steak. You've got 10 minutes to do it. Off we go. Game on. Do you do much barbecuing? Ah, now and again, you know? Yeah? Yeah. Yes, looking good. Oh, that looks fantastic. (SIZZLING) What I haven't told them ` the winning team won't be the one that's cooked the tastiest steaks. It'll be the ones that cook the safest steaks. I've asked a chemist rather than a food critic to come along and help me judge these steaks. Martin Rose in an expert in food contaminants and how to cook meat safely. Right. How have we gone? All done? Yep. Perfect. All done? Fantastic. Well, look, these look good enough to eat, but unfortunately, we're not gonna be eating them. Martin, what are we gonna be doing with them? We're gonna do some chemical analysis on these to see just how safe they are. We've set up a mobile lab to analyse our steaks. What we are looking for are chemicals called PAHs. PAH is a Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon. It's a class of chemical, and it's formed in smoke. It's present in soot, and we found out about these first of all in the 1700s when chimneysweeps were getting an increased case of cancer. barbecues provide the perfect conditions for these chemicals to form. First, high temperatures. The chemicals form as the food chars. Second, fat dripping on to the embers burns and produces more of them. And third, smoke, which is full of PAHs and plasters them all over the food. In our park lab, we can extract the PAHs from the two steaks. When put under UV light, the extracts become fluorescent. The brighter the tube, the higher the level of chemicals. There's very little difference between these two steaks. Both clearly have PAHs in them, and this isn't good for our bodies. How do other cooking methods stack up? Cos you can burn food in any cooking method, can't you? I know I can. Any cooking method where you burn the food and you can see the bits of soot, the bits of carbon, you're likely to have some PAHs there. Barbecues, there's a lot of smoke, you've got flame, it's a lot less controlled. You're a lot more likely to get PAHs formed. So, it's particularly barbecuing that seems to have a problem with PAHs. But there might be something we can do about it. Time for round two. We've got two options here. So, we've got a marinade, so you can marinade the steaks before cooking. Or we've got wood chips, so you can use wood chips as opposed to the charcoal. OK. So, I want you to and cook me two more steaks, and then we'll see whose is the safest, yeah? Yeah. Off you go. (UPBEAT ACOUSTIC MUSIC) This is my kind of marinade. It's made of beer. I think there'd be, like, a shield on the top of the meat. OK. So you think because it's being coated with something that that will protect it, maybe, from the smoke and the flame... Yes. Yeah. ...and the make this a safer steak? Yes. So, what about the wood chips? It's still generating smoke, isn't it? Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see, actually, if the amount of PAHs in it are lessened. Well, will be interesting to see. 'Back to the lab...' There you go. '...to measure the PAH levels of the second set of steaks.' Right. So, we've got the results of the new, safer steaks you've cooked for us. And whilst we saw on the steak that you cooked with the wood chips lower levels of PAH, the outright winner was the steak that was cooked in a marinade. Wasn't expecting that at all. The beer marinade has notably reduced the chemicals in the meat. The brightness is much lower. And when compared with one of the first two steaks we cooked, the difference is even more obvious. The marinade has reduced the level of PAHs by more than a half. We'll have to think of a new way to cook meat on the barbecue now. It's easy enough. It gives extra flavour with marinades. So, do's and don'ts for barbecuing ` don't char the meat too much. Smoke and flames are bad. Do use a marinade. It protects the meat from the smoke ` and beer works really well. Wood chips soak up the fat, but ideally use a gas barbecue and control the temperature. With these simple steps, you can barbecue with confidence. There are other ways to be really safe and confident about the way you cook your meat. It's common knowledge that meat has to be cooked properly to be safe, and that's because meat can be contaminated with harmful bacteria. But the heat of cooking kills them. So why is it OK to eat a rare steak but not to eat a rare burger? Well, that's down to where the bacteria hang out. They're generally on the outside of the meat, so the searing of the steak kills the bacteria and the inside is absolutely fine. But with a burger, what's happened is it's been minced together prior to cooking, so the bacteria could be mixed throughout the whole burger. So the advice is ` when you're cooking a burger at home on the barbecue or whatever, make sure you cook it really thoroughly. (SIZZLING) Even if you cook it right, there is still a crucial question ` just how much red and processed meat should we be eating? Could I have a full breakfast, please? The UK government currently recommends we eat no more than 70g a day of either processed meat or fresh red meat like beef, lamb and pork. This is based on giving us the maximum nutritional benefit while limiting the risk of bowel cancer. Full breakfast, beans and tomatoes. Interestingly, there's no limit on white meat like chicken. Here, my love. Oh, thank you very much. I've got no idea what any portion of meat actually weighs. So that's what I'm gonna test. So, just how much meat do I have here in my pretty standard cooked breakfast? So, that's one rasher of bacon. That's 30g. Two of those, and you're very nearly at your limit already. Let's have a look at the sausage. 48g. One sausage is 48g. So you can see how you can very quickly get up to that limit. On this plate, I have 159g of processed meat. That's more than double my 70g daily allowance ` and I'm only just out of bed. Before weighing out a lot of those meats, I would've said that I wasn't eating a huge amount. But actually looking at that has quite surprised me. Knowing you could have over double the limit in one meal, maybe I'm eating more than I thought. And I'm not alone. Here in the UK, four in 10 men and one in 10 women eat not just 70g but more than 90g per day. (SIZZLING) (CURIOUS MUSIC) The guidelines about how much red and processed we eat are based on weighing up the risk of bowel cancer versus all the benefits meat brings us. But there's another important reason to be aware of how much of these types of meat we're eating. They've also been linked to heart disease. But what is it about meat that can cause heart problems? And will reducing the amount we eat help? That's exactly what they're testing in a major new experiment here at Nottingham University. 40 volunteers have signed up to a three-month project to see whether cutting down on meat reduces their risk of heart disease. Taking part involves being an enthusiastic carnivore, eating meat at least five times a week. What is it you love about eating meat? Barbecuing, especially. I love the texture; I love the flavour. You can't replace a big, juicy steak. I have meat pretty much twice a day. For the study, they are reducing their red and processed meat intake by half. It's meant some tough choices about what to do without. Things like mince, there are some really good substitutes out there. But things like bacon, nothing compares to bacon. Yeah, doesn't come close. Yeah. The volunteers are already partway through the 12-week study. They've been asked to keep food diaries both before and throughout the experiment. We're showing them just how much meat they were eating before they started to cut down. What do you think when you see this all laid out like this now? I'm hungry. You`? - (LAUGHTER) - You're missing meat. John was eating a whopping 1.3 kilos of meat over four days ` almost five times the government's recommended limit. So now you've started to reduce your meat consumption, could you go back to eating this amount of meat? Absolutely. Yep. I love it. Looking at it makes me want` I'm struggling quite a lot. (LAUGHTER) I thought there'd be shock and horror, not whetting your appetite. Adam was getting through just over a kilo of meat in four days. How does it look? Could be worse, apart from one day of gluttony. CHUCKLES: What happened there? It's probably on offer or... I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I had a` Your date didn't turn up. A bit of a, like` (LAUGHS) Yeah. Vine's pork-heavy diet ` still a red meat ` took his intake up to a kilo. What have you missed most? I love my pork belly and crackling and stuff like that. So that's probably the thing I missed the most. The link between red meat and heart disease is well known, but not the effects of cutting down. The study is being run by Professor Andy Salter. So, what is it about eating meat that could cause heart disease? There's a variety of suggestions around. Almost certainly the major one is the amount of fat in it and the type of fat which is associated with it, particularly with red meat. It's relatively rich in saturated fat, which we know potentially can put the level of cholesterol up in your blood, and that's probably the major factor. A high saturated fat diet increases your cholesterol, and having a high cholesterol increases your risk of heart disease. So, how many different types of fat would you find in this steak, for example? OK. So this piece of steak will contain the three main classes of fat in different proportions. So, for a piece of steak like that, it would contain about this much of the saturated fat, which, as you can see, is solid at room temperature, and this is the thing that will raise your cholesterol. But it'll contain about an equal amount of what we call monounsaturated fat, and that's potentially relatively healthy for you. You get it in olive oil and rapeseed oil and things like that. But there's a reasonable amount in there. What there's much less of in a piece of steak like this is the polyunsaturated fats, such as` this is sunflower oil. But that's about how much polyunsaturated fat you get in a piece of steak like this, so it's not a lot. But this is the really healthy fat. This is the one that actually fights against the saturated fat and tries to bring your cholesterol down again. Right. OK. So, this one is bringing your cholesterol up. Yep. This is the saturated fat. Yeah. And then the polyunsaturated fat is actually trying to reverse the effect of that. But unfortunately, this is probably twice as potent at increasing your cholesterol as that one is at decreasing it, so you have to eat twice as much of that to counteract it. And there's a` And there's a lot in there anyway, so it's all stacked against you. Andy has deliberately set achievable targets for the group. It's up to them how they halve their red meat intake each week. He wants to see if these moderate diet changes have a significant effect. The volunteers are having blood tests taken throughout the experiment to measure any changes in cholesterol levels. Do you think it's gonna show you what you're hoping for? Well, despite having a long career in science and some knock-backs, we're always optimistic, so we really hope so. Uh, I have every reason to believe there will be some change. How big it is, we'll have to wait and see, but I'm optimistic. Brilliant. Well, I, for one, am certainly looking forward to the results, so thank you very much. OK. We'll find out later in the programme how the volunteers get on and what eating less meat means for their health and their hearts. (SIZZLING) The very latest research suggests that it may not only be the saturated fat in meat that can cause heart problems. Scientists have just discovered a mysterious substance linked to heart disease in the guts of meat eaters. I'm offering up my body to science to find out what exactly goes on inside me when I eat red meat. I've come to a hospital in Leicester, where some groundbreaking discoveries have been taking place. Cardiologist Professor Toru Suzuki has studied over 1000 heart disease patients. And he found that the most serious cases had high levels of a substance that can only come from meat. So, we looked at patients who have acute heart failure. And in these patients, we find that patients that had higher levels of this substance have poorer outcomes later on. He's going to demonstrate where the problem lies using my body. It starts with treating me to a meaty breakfast. Hi, Chris. Oh, wow. Breakfast. So, why did you choose steak, Professor, for me to have? Well, we'd like to choose red meat, a lot of muscle content. And so I think this would be ideal for the conditions that we would like to see. The substance he's looking for is created when the meat reaches the gut. So next, I've got to swallow something a little less digestible ` a tiny camera. It goes inside your digestive tract, and we take pictures along the way. Right. OK. And that's perfectly safe, is it? Yes. I hope so. (LAUGHTER) I've never used one of these. It looks like a pretty cool bit of kit. That just leaves the little detail of... eating this. (CURIOUS MUSIC) Not quite as small as I would've hoped. Here we go. Bottoms up. I'm quite used to being filmed from the outside, but... this is the first time I've been filmed from the inside. (LAUGHS) It's quite a weird feeling. This is actually what's going on inside my body right now in real time. That's, uh... That's an incredible bit of kit. We can actually see particles of the food I've just eaten inside the stomach. Yes. Yes. So, what's this dark area here? That's part of the steak that you had. It's starting being dissolved inside the stomach acid. When meat is broken down by digestion, certain types of bacteria in our gut produce the harmful substance. It's known as TMAO. It's believed to contribute to the hardening of the arteries. With the professor's heart patients, higher levels have been found in the most acute cases. For those people that have heart disease, I would recommend that we try to lower their levels. Reduced red meat intake would be a logical choice. The professor has found that the gut bacteria of vegans don't produce TMAO. It's only found in meat eaters. So if you have a heart condition, this study would strongly suggest you should cut down on red meat. But how wary of TMAO should the rest of us without heart disease be? Knowing what you know, having studied this and having studied thousands of people,... Sure. Sure. ...do you still eat red meat? Yes, I do. You do? Yes, I do. I find that very reassuring. How often would you eat red meat? Two, three times a week. Really? Yes. If you're happy to eat red meat occasionally, then I think that's, uh, good enough for me. (BOTH LAUGH) There's food for thought here. The research hasn't been done yet on whether TMAO has a negative effect on the heart or arteries of a healthy person. But whilst red meat scores well in terms of nutrients, there are clearly health issues that need to be put in the balance too. (CURIOUS MUSIC) Interestingly, a move away from red meat is the overall trend in the UK. Over the last 50 years, the quantity of lamb we eat has dropped by 60%. Beef eating has dropped by 25%. But we are eating much more... (CROWS) ...chicken. We consume a staggering 335% more chicken now than we did 40 years ago. (CROWS) We started to eat more chicken in the 1970s, when battery farming made it much more affordable. It took off in popularity as a lean and healthy choice of meat. We now eat 3.5 million birds a day. There is a huge variety of different sorts of chicken now available. From the cheapest standard ones to the more expensive ones, like organic, free-range or corn-fed, obviously the way they're reared impacts the welfare of the bird. But if we just look at it from a nutritional point of view, is it worth spending more money? I've come to Sterling University to put chicken to the test. Joining me is nutritionist Dr Laura Wyness, who is going to help me get 'abreast' of the facts. Is it still the meat that we should be eating? Absolutely. I mean, chicken in general ` chicken breast, chicken thigh ` are low in fat and low in saturated fat, so it's a lean meat to have. But there's a wide range of different types of chicken to select from. So is all chicken equally healthy? To answer that, scientists here at Sterling have tested the fat content in five types of chicken. A cheap supermarket chicken ` A corn-fed bird that costs... A free-range supermarket chicken at... A top-end organic supermarket chicken at... And finally a foraged-diet farm bird that costs... So, Laura, what did our tests show us? Well, surprisingly, there's not actually much difference between the different types of chicken in terms of total fat and saturated fat. You're telling me that there is little difference between, you know, an organic chicken that's coming in at �6.50 a kilo... Yep. ...and a bog-standard supermarket chicken that costs �2.55 a kilo. I mean, there's a huge difference in cost. If you are on a tight budget and just want to opt for the cheapest one, you're still getting very similar nutrition in terms of fat content when you go for the cheapest one as opposed to the most expensive one. And which one had the most fat? The chicken thigh from the corn-fed chicken actually had the most with 4.8g per 100g of fat. And then the lowest in fat was the free-range chicken breast with 1.1g of fat per 100g. From our small sample at least, in terms of low fat content, there's not that much between them. But the free-range just has the edge. The next test was for fatty acids. Omega-3, of course, is good for us, but we should avoid too much omega-6, so we have looked at the ratio between the two. So, in terms of the omega-3 to 6 ratio, how did these chickens compare? Well, quite surprisingly, the corn-fed chicken had less beneficial ratios. Compared to the free-range and the cheapest, they came out more beneficial in terms of the ratio of omega-6 to 3. CHUCKLES: So corn-fed chicken isn't faring very well here. So it's higher in total fat, and the ratio of omega-3 to 6 isn't as beneficial for us. So, actually, this is the least healthy option here, is it? Ever so slightly, yeah. So, we may associate the yellow corn-fed birs with being healthier. But, in fact, corn adds no nutritional value to the chicken. It is added for colour and flavour. I, like so many people, would've assumed the more you pay for something, the better for you it is. But having seen those test results, if you're only looking at it from a health perspective, you can buy the cheaper chicken, safe in the knowledge that nutritionally, it's pretty much the same as the more expensive ones. Chicken is a lean and healthy choice. But for a low-fat diet, go for breast, not thigh, and lose the fatty skin. If the welfare of the bird matters to you, as it does to me, you can choose to pay a bit more. But these results suggest you don't have to break the bank to eat healthily. (CROWS) (MOOS) People have lots of reasons for choosing not to eat meat at all. Many avoid it because of concerns around animal welfare... and the big moral difficulty of killing an animal to eat it. You know, we are a nation of animal lovers, but yet we're also a nation of meat eaters. It's quite a conflict. Today is the day I've been slightly dreading. I'm going to come face-to-face with the slaughter process. My wife's a vegetarian, and she was horrified when I told her I was coming to an abattoir. I think she's secretly hoping this might convert me to a vegetarian. CHUCKLES: And do you know what? It could well do. This abattoir in Somerset is one of 336 across the UK. 2 million animals are slaughtered every month in this country. I'm going to be guided through the process today by Dr Phil Hadley, an expert on livestock welfare. I've never been inside an abattoir before, and we are starting in the area where the animals wait to be killed. OK. So, this is the lairidge, and the animals, on arrival, they're kept here until, uh` until the time that they move into the stun box. This point's very important, because here the official veterinarian who's on site checks every animal to make sure that they're fit and healthy for slaughter, and also it gives the animals the opportunity to rest and settle back down, because what we don't want is any stressful situation for the animal, cos that has a negative effect on the meat quality. Keeping the animals calm is a priority. When they're fearful, animals release a distress chemical, cortisol, and this affects the quality of their meat, making it both tougher and look discoloured. So, if these animals aren't treated, you know, properly right up to their absolute final stages, that not only has an effect on the quality but will have an effect on the value as well. On actual value. Yeah, yeah. Cos you'd end up with cuts. Instead of going into a retail pack where you expect to see a bright-red product, if you've got a dark product, it ends up going into processed products. So, a bit of that dark cutting straight away will wipe �200 or �300 off the value of the carcass. I'm reluctantly going to watch as these two animals are killed. So, you're ideal is that your first one walks through and the rest just follow in a streak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're about to go through. I'm a bit apprehensive about seeing this. Now I'm gonna go see the final stages. I'll see you on the other side. Well, I don't really know how I feel about that. I mean, it was very quick. It seems humane. It's almost done in an instant, but, yeah, actually seeing it happen is quite strange, I must admit. I'm` I've got mixed emotions about it at the moment. Within just minutes of being killed, the cows are through to the butchery room. It's gone from being an animal to being meat in literally seconds, and now when you look at that, I mean, although the process might have been a bit gruesome, actually, what you see now is not dissimilar to what you would see at a butcher's shop or, you know, cuts of meat that we recognise to eat. To feed our demand for meat in the UK, each year, we slaughter 2.5 million cows, nearly 11 million pigs and almost 15 million sheep and lambs. I'm kind of glad I've been here today. It hasn't quite turned me vegetarian, but I will certainly appreciate and value meat more now. Having seen the animals arrive and then be killed and now being butchered, it only seems sort of fitting and respectful to the animal for us to utilise and use as much as possible. An overlooked part of each animal which has fallen out of favour in this country is the offal. Surprisingly, offal can be one of the most nutritious parts of the animal. It was once a staple of the British diet. Not now. Consumption has dropped by a whopping 80% since the 1970s. I'm wondering whether we can change our minds about eating parts of the animal that we've all but given up on in this country. I'd like to know whether offal meat can not only be good for us but whether we can actually be convinced to eat it. (CURIOUS MUSIC) I'm in Edinburgh to meet one of Scotland's top chefs. Dedicated offal champion Neil Forbes. He has a treasure trove of offal meats to show me. All right. Wow. What have we got here? Starting with ox tongue. CHUCKLES: What would you do if that was on your plate? How would you feel about that? Well, possibly not looking like that. It doesn't look overly appetising, does it? It doesn't really, does it? The ox kidney, the lamb ` they're two different types, but it's just got that lovely, clean, glossy, beautiful, I mean, really kind of beefy... Smell, smell, smell. The pig's trotter, classed as an offal, and is something which would be put in a stock pot. Is there one that's a real standout, nutritionally-packed piece of meat? I'd be going for the lamb's liver, definitely. Yeah? That, for me, is just a thing of beauty. Look at the sheen and the gloss. It's got this lovely, fresh aroma. Yeah. And there is little or no fat on that, but it's so full of goodness. The most nutritious and lean offal tends to be the organs like heart, kidneys and best of all, liver. It's high in protein and low in saturated fat and packed with vitamins and minerals. And vitamins... And when it comes to B12, needed by the nervous system, there is 50 times more B12 in beef liver than there is in beef meats. We're going maybe a little bit too pre-packed and a little bit too safe with a chop and a steak. 'Try something different,' is what I'm saying. I'm persuaded, but can we convince the people of Edinburgh? Neil is cooking up some offal delights to test on an unsuspecting public. A few knobs of butter, of course. We have two dishes ` braised kidneys and sweet breads, the throat glands from a lamb. So, how do you think people are gonna respond today? Oh, I dunno. I think we're gonna get a mixed bag. I'm thinking, ooh, perhaps a 50/50 split. Roll up, roll up. Who's up for a meaty treat? Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Just chuck that on. To stop people rejecting it just because it's offal, this will be a blind test. No peeking. Could I just check nothing's alive? Nothing is alive. We promise you. Nothing is alive, darling. Don't worry. We want to sell it to them on the taste alone. It's like spicy kidney... Yeah, it's lovely. ...with thyme on it and mustard and... But it tastes good? Yeah, yeah. It tastes like elephant. Elephant?! Have you eaten elephant before? It kinda tastes like` smells like the zoo. 'Tastes and smells like the zoo.' Is this`? It's a spider. It's not a spider, is it? It's not a spider. Nice? You enjoy it? Yeah. Yeah, not bad. And you, madam? Um... yeah, I could eat it. Yeah. Is it a nice flavour? Not great, not bad. And Mum? I love it. It's liver. There we go. What's your thoughts? It's quite tasty. You liked it? Mm-hm! You've been eating sweet breads. Oh cool! Do you know what that is? Yes. (LAUGHS) Do you know what sweet bread is? Oh no! Is it some sort of testicle? (LAUGHTER) Though sweet breads can be classified as testicle, you're lucky. These are not testicles. They're throat glands, aren't they? Yeah, these are from the thyroid gland. Oh! (LAUGHS) So you're absolutely fine. Veal? It was, in fact, kidneys. I would never have put that in my mouth if I knew what it was. Would you not? No! Why not? Just because it's kidneys. Actually` They're actually tasty. If the taste and health benefits of offal don't convince you, then the price just might. Cost per kilo, offal cuts like liver and kidneys are less than a tenth of the price of a supermarket steak. For me, offal ticks all the boxes. It's full of flavour, you're utilising the whole animal. It's cost-effective, and it is fantastic nutritionally. The majority of people that tried it either enjoyed it or at least weren't horrified at the prospect of eating it, so maybe we should all be eating more of it. (POIGNANT MUSIC) This is the very moment... Audrey understood that more than 20,000 Kiwis were paying the actual wholesale price of their power, but she was still paying whatever fixed price her power company felt like. (SIZZLING) I'm back at Nottingham University where the three-month 'eat less meat' experiment has come to an end. The scientists here wanted to find out what effect halving the consumption of red and processed meat has on the risk of heart disease. Nice to see you both again. MAN: Hello. You all right? I've joined the volunteers to get the results. And did you cheat? No. Not at all? I made sure I didn't cheat. No. Was it difficult all the way through or easy? Sorting out menu ideas was difficult. And my aim was just to cut it out so when I did have, you know, a bacon sandwich or whatever on a Sunday, I knew that I was safe with it. After a while, like, it wasn't that bad, to be honest. This study has been run by Professor Andy Salter. OK, everybody. I know that you're all desperately waiting to hear some results from the study and all the hard work that you've done. So, one of our hypotheses was that the consumption of large amounts of red meat was associated with a consumption of lots of saturated fat. And, so, going from your regular intake, which is on that table, to about half the amount of red meat you're eating, we reckon that you've reduced your saturated intake on a weekly basis by about that much every week. Per week? Per week. So 12 lots of that over the whole of the study. 12 times that amount? That's` I mean, that's shocking isn't it? That's a lot. That's incredible, isn't it? Yeah. What makes this saturated fat so dangerous is that it raises the levels of so-called bad cholesterol in the bloodstream. This can lead to the risk of heart disease and stroke. We tend to have two types of cholesterol in our blood. We have bad cholesterol, so-called LDL cholesterol, which increases your risk, and we have good cholesterol, the HDL cholesterol, which decreases your risk of heart disease over your lifetime. Having assessed blood samples taken throughout the study, Andy can reveal for the first time the effect of meat reduction on cholesterol levels. So, in terms of your good cholesterol, the first thing I can tell you is ` that, actually, for the whole group did not change significantly over the 12-week period. However, with the bad cholesterol, the LDL cholesterol, the cholesterol that increases your risk, we saw an overall drop. We saw a drop in the group as a whole of about 10% in your bad cholesterol. Interestingly, the volunteers who started with the highest levels of LDL also saw the biggest drop, an impressive 18% reduction in the bad cholesterol in their blood. So by doing this, you can actually have a fairly significant and positive impact on your health and your life expectancy? Absolutely. If you could consistently reduce to this sort of level over a period of years rather than months, which these people are doing, then it starts to have that impact. As you get older, as you get to my sort of age, then that really is significant in terms of the likelihood of you having a heart attack perhaps in the next 10 years. These kinds of reductions in bad cholesterol have a real-life impact. They can lower the risk of developing heart disease by up to 30%. I didn't think there'd be that much of a drop in my bad cholesterol, certainly in a short period of time, I have to say. So, yeah, I'm pretty surprised. Yeah. It's great to be able to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol through just your diet. I definitely am going to cut down the amount of meat. CHUCKLES: I'm not gonna get any younger, so I think reducing my red meat consumption might be something I'd consider doing now. It perhaps will remind me every now and then that if I'm tucking into too many steaks in a week that perhaps I should have the fish instead off the menu rather than the red meat. This study suggests that cutting your red meat eating by a moderate, manageable amount can have a big impact on your health. I've come to the end of my investigation into the science of what's good for us in meat and what's not. I've learned that red meat is an unrivalled single source of essential minerals and vitamins... but that we should definitely be cutting down on it and processed meat to reduce our risks of heart disease and cancer. Surprisingly, the meats that give us the cleanest bill of health are the most affordable ` offal... (CROWS) ...and fresh chicken. I've learnt some stark facts about the health risk associated with eating meat. There is no getting away from it. But I've come away from it feeling reassured. You can reduce the negatives pretty easily and still enjoy meat, and with a few changes to your habits, you can still make meat a healthy choice. Captions by Jake Ebdale.