3 December 2009 | Steve Bagshaw

BBC Three, Monday 9pm 

The first in this new BBC series Britain’s Really Disgusting Food: Meat quickly set about doing what it said on the tin. According to presenter Alex Riley: “I wanted to see how low manufacturers were prepared to go without breaking the law.” In other words how cheaply the meat products can be made. 

And it was pretty low. We soon learned that a lot of products don’t actually contain very much meat (47 per cent, the legal minimum for beef products, and 32 per cent chicken in a chicken Kiev). 

Or they contained the bits you wouldn’t expect – or want, including beef hearts, chicken skin and the delicious-sounding connective tissue. 

More strangely, some of the meat isn’t found where you’d expect either, such as chicken parts in some hot dogs. And most disturbingly, some of the cheaper products – which anybody who saw the programme would surely never eat again – are made with mechanically recovered meat (MRM). 

The industry is so proud of the MRM process that the programme maker wasn’t even allowed to film the machinery involved and viewers were left to savour YouTube clips. Suffice to say, MRM is the bits left on the carcass after it has been butchered. 

As one expert said: “Most people have little idea what MRM actually is and would have some concern if they did.” This was the show’s low point – revolting and shocking but, as is the case with such things, hugely compelling. 

As the motivation behind this type of product is cost-cutting, the show proved if nothing else that, with food, you really do get what you pay for.