Food Unwrapped

Avocados, Eggs and Balsamico (2x7)

Air date: Jul 22, 2013

Does a happy chicken lay a tastier egg? How do the supermarkets get avocados 'ripe and ready'? And why does one type of balsamic vinegar cost 100 times more than another? Kate visits Spain on the hunt for avocados. There are nearly 4000 trees on a farm near Malaga, producing half a million avocados. They need to be picked to ripen, but then their journey to the UK includes a surprise pit-stop at specialist ripening rooms in the Netherlands. Jimmy keeps chickens on his farm, and believes that a better-kept chicken produces a tastier egg. But he's never put it to the test, until now. Jimmy visits one of the UK's largest chicken farms, which produces a range of eggs: caged, barn, free-range and organic. How do they live, and does that affect the taste? Jimmy believes the feed is crucial to the bird and therefore the taste of the egg. But in a blind taste test, can he tell a free-range egg from a battery egg? Meanwhile, Matt is investigating balsamic vinegar: what is it made from and why does it have such a wide price range? He goes to Modena in Italy, where balsamic vinegar was invented.