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- Oh, my God, they are so cute. - Yeah, there's our little guys.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
Oh, my God!
Rah, rah, a chicken!
It is the most farmed land animal on the planet.
It's seen as lean, green, and healthy.
The industry's doing everything they can to make it irresistible.
Seventy-eight billion chickens are slaughtered annually.
The chicken industry is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars.
And it's driven by our love of cheap, delicious, fast food fried chicken.
London, make some fucking noise, man!
There's two things I can't live without.
Making people laugh, and chicken.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Let me tell about the chicken shop.
Do you wanna know a good chicken shop?
They got bulletproof glass.
You will die for the chicken. Let me tell you that for free.
Roasted, curried, jerked...
But my all-time favorite,
and here comes a Black stereotype in three, two...
Fried chicken.
Since my first bite 30 years ago,
fried chicken has skyrocketed.
We're in our chicken shop era, and people are obsessed.
Chicken is seen as the green, healthy option.
It's not.
Right now, we have 36% of primary school children
considered obese and overweight.
There are warnings of the huge environmental impact of poultry farming.
Shut up, man.
Look, I'm a stand-up comedian who's loved this dish since I was a kid,
and wants to know what is going on.
So, I'm gonna do an experiment,
and put my health on the line.
Twenty-eight days eating nothing but fast food fried chicken.
I'm going across the Atlantic, you know.
I'm going from South London to the Deep South of the USA.
Damn, man!
I wanna find out what this food is doing to our bodies and our minds.
Oh, man.
And if this bird really is leading us down a path of destruction.
Chicken for breakfast.
I think there's just things that people can't imagine,
because no one can get inside.
Oh, that stinks, man!
They don't want people asking questions.
We're all living a science experiment
and the industry's literally killing us.
Oh, man.
I'm eating this chicken and I'm going mad.
I don't think you realize,
I don't do stuff like this, you know.
Aight. Boom, first meal.
Boom, I'm gonna go in with a chicken sandwich.
- Chicken sandwich with cheese... - Thank you, my guy.
- ...side of gravy. - Appreciate it. Day one, meal one.
Eleven o'clock in the morning.
I feel a bit dirty.
The experiment is me eating fried chicken for a month.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Put a bit of the sauce in there.
And there's a part of me like, "That's great! Bring on the wings." Like...
Just dipping it in gravy.
Whoever discovered that you can eat the wing of this bird...
It's up there with the person that discovered milk,
'cause there's someone out there that went...
And went... "Hey, taste that."
Genius.
That was righteous.
Let me not mess around, I'm actually buzzing right now.
You see how I'm just smiling? That was really good.
Nice. First one in the can.
Boom. One down, 83 to go.
And for the next month, no gym, no home-cooked food,
and every one of my meals will be fast food fried chicken.
But lucky for me, there's a lot more choice now than ever before.
Ah, when I was a kid in the '90s,
Britain was a land of the fish and chip shop.
Then, along came fried chicken.
I only remember one chicken shop growing up.
Now, one road alone in South London has more than 20!
In the UK, there's over 6,000.
In central London, you've got your more gourmet ones.
You know, you'll have, like, an import. You know, something from the US.
Then the further you go out,
they don't got names anymore.
DFC...
MFC...
We know the FC is "fried chicken," but what is the M?
What is the M? What, what? See, PFC.
It must be "Perfect Fried Chicken" with... It's got doner kebabs.
There's probably another one round the corner.
KHF, what the fuck is that?
This bird is big business, boy.
In the UK, every day we spend over £12 million on fried chicken.
That's like a Premier League signing!
Now, this isn't just about me eating fried chicken. No, no, no.
I want to learn everything about it.
And it wouldn't be a Netflix documentary
without some experts in nicely lit rooms explaining things I don't know.
And... action.
We're in an era of the love affair with fried chicken.
It is the fastest-growing fast food meat product in the world.
Wingstop's come to the ends, you get me?
And definitely, it's being driven by social media.
- Lemon pepper. - Lemon pepper. Cheers.
Celebrities love it.
If I head onto TikTok,
I find people dancing in chicken shops or school kids congregating outside them.
These are the youth centers for today.
So we're coming to the back with the prep.
There's pulse, there's excitement.
Oh, my God! Eddie gave me a KFC jacket!
And that's the trickery here. It's cool and edgy, but affordable.
But actually, there's so much behind the scenes
that I just don't think brands want to be reminding,
or even educating, the consumer of.
Hmm. All right, Kate.
Anyway, lunch.
- Can I sit here? - Yeah, of course.
Thank you.
How often do you lot come to this chicken shop?
- She came yesterday. - Yeah.
So what if I told you that I have to eat this food
every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
You're gonna die.
- I'm gonna die? - Yeah.
- Just for eating chicken? - Yeah, but every day.
Come on, big ups, big ups, eating chicken every day.
Die? What in the six-seven is she talking about?
In the words of Craig David, re-e-wind.
Before I started this epic chicken marathon,
I went to see a top doctor.
- So, if you get on the scale... - Okay.
You stand up straight.
I am firmly team chicken.
I love me a bit of Nando's. You can almost taste...
I've even done content and voiceover work
for leading chains McDonald's and Nando's.
You can't test my loyalty, bruv.
There'll be some people watching this like,
"You're in the fried chicken matrix."
And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I am, bruv." It's delicious. Let's not fuck around.
There's no other food you can feel with a bucket. A bucket of burgers?
I'm not feeling that.
But a bucket of fried chicken?
Growing up, we would have that as a treat. And that felt like wealth.
I remember when my mum got a bucket of KFC
that used to come with a Viennetta.
We was like, "We have made it! Don't ever talk to us again."
It's gonna be a sharp prick now.
So currently, do you have any health issues?
- Not that I know of. No, no, no. - Great. Now, family history.
My mom has diabetes.
Type 2?
Yeah. My grandad had diabetes as well.
- Oh, okay, so it runs in her family. - Yeah.
Big breath in.
- I'm 37 now. - Good.
You start thinking about your loved ones, the people you have around you.
You think about your health.
And out! Push, push, push, push.
I'm intrigued to see what the effects are gonna be on my body, yeah.
Your liver is beautiful.
- It's really... - Really?
- Yeah, it's amazing. - Uh-uh!
And the diabetes test is entirely nonexistent for you,
- which is really great. - That's amazing.
- You are a fit, healthy man... - Oh, wow.
...and I wish you the absolute best.
So what do you think about me doing this experiment?
Well...
I think if I were you, I wouldn't do it.
Okay.
Motion detected at the front door.
My chicken's here.
Someone is at the front door.
- Thank you, boss. - Here you go.
Chicken for breakfast.
Fried chicken is popular because it is delicious.
There's no two ways about it.
And there is nothing wrong with having a fried chicken on occasion
if it is cooked at home.
However, we're talking about fast-food chains
that sell ultra-processed chicken.
Everything is being treated with chemicals,
and it is made to really taste good.
That burger felt so good.
I am not one of these,
"I'm a vegan. I'm gonna stand up for the rights of the chicken."
Two mini fillet chicken burgers.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Nah, bruv. Listen, there's enough of them for everyone, you know.
Thank God they can't fly.
Eating ultra-processed food for a whole month
might sound extreme.
However, it's been estimated
that more than 50% of people's diets in the UK
is made up of ultra-processed food.
Mmm.
That was delicious, man.
Mo doesn't have a clue, actually,
about what is going to happen to his body, his mind.
I didn't want to scare him before he starts the experiment.
In the UK, people have been eating this food
since KFC brought it over from America in the '60s,
beating McDonald's to the British fast-food market by almost ten years.
But now something new is coming to the high street.
We're seeing the big US invasion in the UK
of big American fried chicken brands.
Because we've got all of the opportunity here for the taking,
the US and their investors are seeing this as,
"Right, we're gonna clean up."
"We're gonna bring the brands here. We've got queues outside the door."
There's just growth, growth, growth."
Mm-hmm. That's right, Kate.
Not to mention KFC and McDonald's alone
are splurging two and a half billion quid
in the UK over the next five years.
Whoo! That's a lot of billions, boy.
Now, I get it.
I get all the hype around the US fried chicken chains,
but I do wonder what our future will look like
if we keep going down the American path.
So, I'm going across the pond to see what could be heading our way.
But before I say goodbye,
it's time for one last meal with the boys at an old favorite in South London.
Don't hate me
Yeah, yeah.
Go to Katie
Give me four wings
- Give me four wings - And a strawberry Mirinda
Mo is one of my closest friends.
It is mad that we used to just sit in the chicken shop the two of us,
watching the world go by, and just talking about life.
So, this is the third time I've had fried chicken today.
Third time?
It's an experiment to see the effects of fried chicken,
predominantly fast-food fried chicken.
- What? - Every day?
Every day. By myself.
- What? - What? That's mad. That's mad.
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner. - That's mad.
Why?
'Cause I feel like we've all grown up on this food.
I would like to know a little bit what's in it.
What goes on behind the scenes.
Wow, know what... Wow.
Don't know what to say. Not gonna lie. I don't know what to say.
It's a lot, innit?
Like, I don't think you've clocked the health ramifications as well.
What are you most worried about?
I'm in a tough place of the stigma that's attached to...
- a Black man eating fried chicken. - Yeah.
Because every time I tell someone, people are like, "Oh, rah. Fried chicken?"
I can understand that,
but I can also understand there's a pure intention behind it.
This experiment, it's a childhood dream for him.
Love, love, love.
But for me, that sounds like a nightmare.
Take care of yourself out there.
Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah.
- It's gonna be intense for you there. - Yeah.
Like, you can call me, can FaceTime me, whatever.
Just know that I got your back regardless, yeah?
I got you, all right?
- Appreciate you, bruv. - Come on, my bro.
He thinks he's not gonna have any problems at all.
Gotta pack the socks.
You can never have enough socks, you know.
But I think he's wrong.
Sorry. Chicken's got me farting, bruv.
And I am worried.
Like I'm some trumpet.
I feel like he doesn't really know what he's gotten himself into.
Ooh! Is that my car?
Come on, let's get some fried chicken, man.
Yeah, this is cold, man.
The biggest fried chicken chains in the world are from the US.
I'm talking KFC, Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, and I'm gonna add McDonald's to this,
who are selling as much chicken as beef now.
Collectively, these four chains have over 2,500 stores in the UK,
but here it's over 22,000.
Ho!
I'm gonna travel across the States,
starting in Houston,
dubbed the modern fried chicken capital.
David just gave me a text.
"So here are some of my top food recommendations in H-Town."
H-Town, you know? Trying to be down with the kids.
Church's Chicken, since 1952.
Let's go with a three-piece.
Can I get some tenders as well?
You know what I like about this place? It's not glamorous.
When I parked up, people looking at me in the car.
"Man, who the fuck is that? The fuck is that?"
That is when you know the food is gonna be good.
When the food is dangerous, it's gonna be good.
- Thank you so much. - Have a nice day.
You too, thank you.
My mission today, eat as much chicken as possible.
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
We've got Frenchy's, classic Southern-fried chicken.
Apparently that's Beyoncé's favorite.
Question.
Bonchon.
- The flavors are flavoring. - Yes, sir.
Pok Pok Po?
- I'm in chicken heaven. - You're in chicken heaven.
That's got Indian spices.
It's like I'm going to, like, a UN chicken convention right now.
- You the man. - You're the man!
This is so much food, you know?
Let's try one more for the road.
I feel like the experiment, it didn't start back in the UK,
but I feel like it's starting.
I've had every type of chicken now. So now I'm like,
what's next?
Hang on, baby, we got a call from your Uncle Mo.
Yes, bruv, what's going on?
Hold on, go to Mummy.
Go to Mummy. All right.
What are you saying out there? What's going on?
I'm eating a lot of chicken. Last night...
- Yeah. - Brother...
Man had the shits, bruv!
The shits of Narnia, bruv. Oh, my God.
Where you have to take off your shoes and socks?
That was what I done, bruv. I bagged up all my clothes, man.
I said to myself, "What the fuck am I doing eating this fucking food, man?"
- 'Cause in the UK it was all right. - Yeah.
But, bruv, eating all this chicken, it caught up on me, boy.
Listen, I've never really thought about it before,
but after having a touch of the bubble guts,
it really made me wonder...
what is actually in this chicken?
New Orleans, man.
What a place.
I'm gonna look for the answer
in the frozen aisle in a supermarket in New Orleans.
How we doing, ladies? We okay?
Where can I find the frozen chicken breasts?
- Frozen chicken breasts... - Because just like back home,
the chicken in the shops is the same chicken the big fast food chains use.
Although in America, they add a little something extra.
Chicken broth, chicken flavoring, ice glaze.
- You look like you could use a trolley. - Pause the ting.
What in the linen shirt industry plant is this?
Yes, I could, man. Thank you so much. Have you seen what's in the chicken, bro?
- There's a lot, isn't there? - There's chicken broth inside the chicken.
You've been eating a lot of chicken,
but you haven't been tasting chicken.
You've been tasting what they're putting on, in chicken,
but you're not tasting chicken. Chicken doesn't have flavor anymore.
Oh, shit.
It all started with a competition called the Chicken of Tomorrow Contest.
Happened right after World War II.
They were looking for the chicks that grew the fastest,
they had the plumpest breast,
that converted feed into meat really efficiently.
But the one thing they didn't test for was flavor.
- How do you know this, though, man? - I write books about flavor.
- Ah, you're the real Flavor Flav. - That's right. I'm the real one.
Mark told me what came next.
The US chicken industry continued to selectively breed chickens
to be as big as possible and grow them as quickly as possible.
Countries all around the world, including the UK, followed suit.
In just 80 years, chickens have gone from this to this.
If babies grew at the same rate,
your two-month-old would be the same size as a fully-grown pig!
A chicken back then would take about 16 or 18 weeks to get plump.
- Today it takes six, six-and-a-half weeks. - Wow.
So chickens today are giant babies. It's like veal, but even blander.
So it's cheap, it's plentiful, but it doesn't taste like anything.
It's like potato chips. It's the seasoning. It's the flavoring.
So, what you're saying is,
what I've been consuming
is almost like a flavor that we have really added to the experience of chicken.
You haven't been tasting what nature created.
You've been tasting what people created.
Look at this piece. It's the size of my head.
I get it.
Now I get why fried chicken chains are everywhere.
These birds are grown fast, sold cheap, and because it's so bland,
you can make it taste like anything.
That's actually fucking good, you know.
Popeyes, founded in New Orleans,
and loved for their flavors,
are now taking over UK high streets.
In just one year,
Brits bought 8.7 million of their chicken sandwiches.
That's like one every three seconds.
In the US, when Popeyes launched the chicken sandwich,
it went viral, and people lost their minds.
People behaving very badly.
In LA, two people wrecked their cars trying to get to the sandwich
that is fueled by a social media craze.
In Maryland, a man was killed after cutting the line.
Americans started putting Popeyes on blast,
questioning exactly what was in that sandwich.
If you love that chicken from Popeyes
You're gonna need one of these.
This is the grand winner of them all,
with the most ingredients ever of all my reviews, with 142 ingredients.
How is this even legal?
Fried chicken, here we go.
These companies are doing everything they can to make it cheap,
to make it convenient,
and to make it taste irresistible so you can't say no.
People are freaking out because eating this meat
can have serious implications on your health.
You turn around the ingredient list,
and if you see 45 ingredients,
and they're chemicals you don't recognize, it's probably ultra-processed.
Dimethylpolysiloxane. That's an ingredient in Silly Putty.
...not to mention the plethora of seed oils, and natural and artificial flavors.
Natural and artificial flavors...
that's the question mark,
because it's a bunch of chemicals that they don't have to list.
And those chemicals may not be regulated,
because there's a loophole in the federal regulations in the U.S.
That was good.
Even in Europe, when they go to regulate a chemical additive,
they ask the company to prove it's safe.
In the U.S., they don't.
The companies decide what chemicals are safe.
What exactly is our FDA doing to allow this?
These foods promote chronic disease.
This is the big concern for our health.
The science that goes behind food,
I didn't think it went to that extreme.
You know what, yeah? I'm gonna be so truthful.
It's fucked. But at the same time...
there's something about it that's fucking genius, bruv.
Like, I can't even sit and pretend to be like,
"No, man, it's just so wrong."
It's like, bruv, they twanged the system, man!
Okay. I've looked it up,
and here's how they make our favorite fast food snack, the nugget.
Chicken bits get mashed up in a factory
and blended into this fleshy paste.
Then it's mixed with chemical additives and seasonings
to make the bland meat taste like chicken again.
Gives a melt-in-your-mouth texture,
then lasts long enough to be shipped around the world.
Here's the crazy part.
Food scientists have engineered the perfect combination of salt and fat
to make it hyper-palatable,
meaning it's delicious,
and you can't stop eating it.
There's even a scale for how irresistible these foods are.
And check this out.
The meals I've been eating? Off the chart.
Our brains are not engineered to be able to handle
that kind of experience in our daily food consumption and not overeat it.
It's no coincidence that when ultra-processed foods dominate the market,
you start to see the rise of eating disorders in addition to obesity.
So there's no question
that they're designing the food to make you eat it,
and potentially overeat it.
Competition is so fierce
that top chains make sure you choose their chicken
by employing teams of sensory scientists,
and I've managed to persuade one of them to meet me
and reveal some of their secrets.
If you're doing this,
and it's fried chicken,
then I would assume you would be Black. Do you know what I mean?
Oh, rahtid!
See, she looked just how I thought.
- Yeah, what's up? How you doing? - Hi, Mo!
- What's up, man? - Good to see you.
You look just how I thought you would. Big up yourself, man.
All right.
- Okay. - Somewhere our magic will happen today.
I've been told that you are the chicken expert in the sense of taste.
You're your own expert. What you like, you're the expert on, right?
But I'm actually a sensory and consumer scientist.
- You got degrees and shit. - I do have degrees and shit.
- Come on! - Multiple degrees.
Let them know, bruv. It's not a TikTok.
It's not a TikTok. I'm actually a scientist and I'm a food chemist.
In my head, I'm just seeing a lab coat with someone like yourself,
and it's, "Voilà, we have it."
It is definitely the mad scientist in me in the lab,
working with the senses but also the emotional aspect of it.
So people will wanna order it and consume it again and again, right?
You just tapping into people's psyche, innit?
Sensory scientists around the world help perfect every element of fried chicken.
A barbecue one.
Silke's worked for one of America's top fast food fried chicken chains...
Here we go.
...which is making its way to the UK.
One of her specialties?
The crunch.
What we're looking for is some markers that will signal to us
that this is a craveable product.
And what happens when it's craveable? Consumers will come back.
Let's take a bite.
See what that sounds like, feels like, how it breaks apart.
- That is banging. Oh, my God. - Yeah.
To consumers, sound signals freshness and quality,
but it also works with our reward center, you know, in our brain.
I don't crave it,
but once I eat it...
Your reward center kicks in,
and it says, "Ooh, this is good."
My dopamine's hitting my whole face. Feels like it lights up.
It's like crack.
- I've never had it. - It's good when it is.
But, yeah. Have you had it?
No.
I like you, you know? Good vibes.
Yo.
Yes, brother. What's good, man?
I'm good, my G. Just making a quick munch. What you saying?
I've met a lot of experts the last couple of days.
Oh, for real?
Yeah, man.
You know one of the ingredients, yeah,
they also use in condoms for lubrication.
No! Come on, man.
Swear down, condoms?
Who knew that went into a burger, bruv?
Bruv... So, wait, hold on.
So many things go into it that is
artificially engineered to give you a better experience
and have you coming back for more.
Man's got all of this info.
How you feeling about munching all this chicken now, bruv?
I don't know, you know.
I think it's going all right.
I'm happy that he's having a good time, or seems to be.
But his default as a comedian is to play the happy guy all the time.
I'm just a little bit wary that there may be some underlying things.
I'm eating chicken strips Chicken in the dips
Chicken, I find it finger-lickin'
It's been a week and a half...
- Yeah, mate! Goddamn, man! - ...and I'm enjoying myself.
- But I'll be real with you. - Can't catch nothin' but a meal, partner.
I still can't shake this uncomfortable feeling
of being a Black man eating fried chicken on camera.
Like, where does that even come from?
I think I know who to ask.
Glory
I'm going to fried chicken's roots at a Southern church for Sunday dinner.
Here, the chicken is cooked fast, but full of soul.
Hallelujah
Can I get this big piece here, please?
Thank you very much.
Coming here, seeing everyone come together, and, like...
Yes, it's fried chicken, but it's more than that.
It's about eating with your family.
It's the love that goes into it.
It's interesting how something so simple has got, like,
glamorized by big corporations
and had grime music and celebrities behind it.
One of the things that makes me sad
is that now people are eating fried chicken,
and they're not recognizing the genius of these Black cooks who perfected it.
A trip to see one of the plantation homes
that were built before the Civil War.
Back in the day, female slaves would make fried chicken for plantation owners.
Fast-forward to the 1860s and the abolition of slavery,
African Americans continued to perfect and sell the dish.
But white Americans began mocking this in popular culture,
portraying Black people as chicken-thieving criminals.
Then in 1915 came Birth of a Nation,
the biggest film of its time,
which included crude depictions of Black Americans eating chicken.
This helped cement the stereotype,
with some businesses even using the racist trope as a marketing tool.
Enter Colonel Sanders.
There I was, just 40 years old
and I developed this special seasoning of 11 spices and herbs
and this special method of frying chicken.
And I had a product that was really out of this world.
KFC, growing up as a kid,
I did kind of think that the colonel was the man who invented fried chicken.
How does he insert himself into this?
He is a gas station operator who had a restaurant.
That's how he started.
If you just are an outstanding citizen,
you can become a Kentucky colonel.
This is Kentucky's equivalent of knighthood.
- Really? - Yeah. He gets that, and he plays on it.
So, the white suit was a man of leisure but a plantation owner.
Because the illusion is,
"Hey, I got Black people doing all this stuff for me."
He was good at marketing.
But he's tapping into these deep sentiments about the South, right?
And that was comforting to a lot of his customer base.
A lot of places still do that, right?
They tap into these deeply-rooted Southern nostalgia themes.
And Make America Great Again,
which was not great for our... my ancestors, right?
So, all of this stuff is at work.
So he plays on that and makes a ton of money.
And even after he sold the company for a nice sum of money,
the people that took it on played on that more and more,
- and just really blew it up. - Wow.
Now, KFC's the top fried chicken chain in the world,
with franchises in 149 countries.
Japanese people eat KFC for Christmas.
In Bloemfontein for the Kentucky Town, baby.
Let's do this!
Globally, they make over £27 billion in sales every year.
That is a lot of wings!
KFC have been the UK's number one for such a long time.
They dominate the high street.
They dominate the roads, actually, and the service stations.
And they're gonna spend 1.5 billion over the next few years
just really engineering that strength of position.
And that's really what we call kind of a land grab.
They're gonna make sure that they still stay number one.
I'm nearly halfway through the experiment,
and it's just not quite a vibe anymore.
Fried chicken and a coffee.
I've been eating this food for, like, ten days now, innit?
The food is actually really nice.
But I can see the weight change in my body,
which is not nice to look in the mirror and you just look at...
You see yourself and you're like, oh rah.
I'm definitely not my normal self, though.
I am quite sluggish.
It is a lot harder than I thought it would be,
is the truth of it.
After a while, he will be bloated.
Tired.
His digestive system is going to suffer.
The good bacteria that live inside there, which are called the microbiomes,
will go into imbalance.
I would expect him to start experience tummy ache,
perhaps changes in his bowel habits,
fluid retention, wanting to sleep a lot or having disturbed sleep.
Those microbiomes produce the well-being hormones like serotonin.
So then emotionally, he would be affected.
I'm 42 meals in,
and I have to admit, the doctor is spot on.
Um, it's 1:00 a.m.
I've eaten really late.
This is probably, like, one of the first nights that I really can't... sleep.
I'm just up. I'm just wired.
It really fucks with your head, man.
One minute you think, "Wow, I'm having the best food ever,"
but then there's other times where, like,
I'm craving for some fruit, you know?
There are some times I wanna give up.
There are times that I say to myself,
I don't think I'm gonna eat fried chicken after this.
You know.
It's 1:00 a.m.,
and I can't sleep because of fried fucking chicken.
New day today.
Breakfast, chicken tenders.
They've portrayed chicken as safer or better for you than red meat,
and that's called healthwashing.
But the idea that a chicken nugget
is safer somehow than a Big Mac,
that's tricky.
It just continues, making you eat it and eat it and eat it and eat it.
A food like fast food fried chicken,
you know, how bad could it be?
But right now, we see in America alone
that one person is dying every four minutes
due to diseases related to ultra-processed food.
And it's not just happening in the western countries.
We really are in a global health crisis.
This year was the turning point
where we have more children who are obese than children who are hungry...
in the world.
I'm in Chicago, home to McDonald's HQ,
the pioneers of fast food.
I don't think I can really finish this.
I'm here to meet a local Chi-Town resident
who's gonna show me the impact that fast food chains
have had on her community.
- Hey, Mo! - You all right?
- Yes, I'm good. - Nice to meet you. Thanks for meeting me.
Is your nickname Mo as well?
- Yeah, I'm also Mo. - One Mo to another.
This is Oak Park neighborhood, so this is known as one of the nice areas of Chicago.
- A very beautiful area. - Yeah.
We passed by a whole bunch of shops, but it's cute bakeries,
it's ethnic food places, like the taco place over there.
Everything is more "bougie" out here and so things are, like, more expensive.
But we're on our way to West Garfield Park,
which is where I grew up.
You'll definitely be able to see the change.
I call it, like, a food desert.
So, it's fast food everywhere.
I know one neighborhood, there's a McDonald's, there's a Taco Bell,
there's a Wendy's, there's a Popeyes, there's Domino's, there's Subway.
It's like, okay, now where's the grocery store?
You'll see, this is one of the grocery stores back there.
And, like, they have pictures of groceries on there,
but when you actually walk in, you just got chips and juice, things like that.
- There's no carrots there? - No carrots.
Mushrooms? Tomatoes in there?
No. Maybe eggs, if you go to, like, a good one.
That's mad because even in ours, there's eggs in... Eggs are a minimum.
The way things are, you have to take what's in front of you.
The concept of food desert comes from the UK.
Actually from Scotland.
It is used to characterize areas where there's only unhealthy food.
And fast food companies definitely target lower-income communities.
This is part of their bread and butter.
And it is estimated that in 2025, approximately 19 million people,
or 6% of the U.S. population, live in a food desert.
And indeed it is somewhat predatory,
because these are consumers who may not have other options.
- We're here. Do you wanna try Sharks? - Let's try Sharks.
For your safety, this parking lot is being recorded.
You can get 20 wings plus fries for $15.
That's a lot of chicken for very, very cheap.
Also, I've noticed there's no tables and chairs.
No, this is not the type of place where you sit down and eat.
- Fair enough. - It's fast food. Get it to go.
- Here you go, sir. - Thank you , my brother.
Appreciate you, man.
Food deserts aren't just an American problem.
Back home in the UK,
the poorest neighborhoods have five times more fast food spots
than the wealthier ones,
and there's over 1.2 million people living in food deserts across the UK.
- Is this Mum? - Hey! What's going on, you guys?
- How you doing? You okay? - I'm well.
- Let me take my shoes off. - You don't have to.
I have to, Mum. I'm in your house.
- Chicken! - Yes. So here you go.
Thank you.
Quintonele, Mini Mo's mum,
works in healthcare and knows all about the effects of food deserts.
- It's very disheartening. - Mmm.
The liquor stores, and the fast food places,
and the abandoned buildings,
and, um, just everything that goes with that.
- Like, you can look out that window... - Yeah.
...and you see those buildings.
Someone living down there, their access to care,
their access to food, their access to all of those things.
Their life expectancy is almost 16 years more than mine,
me living here.
Oh, my God!
- That's something called the death gap. - Yeah.
We know that those chicken places and the fast food places are not the best,
but it's cheap.
I can feed my kids and I would know that they would be full.
Do you ever feel like with some of these food deserts,
that they're designed to keep people eating bad food?
I mean, yeah, I do. I do.
And it's very manipulative. It's very misleading. Um...
- And even more, the consequences are dire. - Yeah.
We're dying. And do you think that food doesn't play a part in that?
It does play a part, because that's high blood pressure,
that's high cholesterol, that's blood sugar, diabetes.
All of these things, it's being forced into the community
because you are what you eat.
- Yeah. - And so it's, like, doesn't...
It just...
It's frustrating and it doesn't make sense.
Do you find it...
- Do you find it hard? - Yeah. It's hard. It's hard.
And it shouldn't be that hard,
especially for something as simple as food.
Thank you.
- Yay! You're welcome. - I appreciate your time.
Thanks for having me, Mum. Really appreciate that.
I never knew what a food desert was when I started this journey.
But when you drive into that neighborhood,
it's real, man.
And I don't come from a privileged background,
know what I mean?
Like, I grew up in a poor environment, but,
just knowing that the simple things that we would take for granted,
people don't even have access to...
in America.
Man!
We have our problems in the UK too, you know.
People are going to food banks. There's a cost of living crisis.
But this isn't just,
"Oops, we didn't put any vegetables on the corner."
It is by design.
And it's there to keep the people unhealthy.
Oh, man. This is heavy, man.
Oh, man.
Everywhere you go, you're surrounded by
these, what they would call, distribution outlets.
And the idea is to just surround people with your product
and marketing for your product,
and they compete with one another to own the food environment.
There is a term in marketing called CLV.
"Customer Lifetime Value."
And if I can start and groom a customer from a kid,
oh, they're gonna be with me for years.
And when brands are able to connect with people,
they increase their chances of getting people to buy,
to eat, to consume.
Can I please get a Big--
What I need from you is A Chicken Big Mac
Someone stole your Hottie Sauce!
Black culture, Black people tend to be
the tip of the spear of all things that tend to be cool,
whether it's the music, the dance, the vernacular...
I'm absolutely craving some nugs right now.
...which is why you see brands partnering with these cultural creators
in hope that people go, "That's cool. I wanna be a part of that."
It's only been two-and-a-half weeks,
but I'm now realizing that I've had a lifetime
of being groomed by fried chicken.
Yes, I have been to Nando's before.
Not only that, but reflecting back on the voiceover work I did for Nando's...
Listen, I feel uneasy admitting this, but...
I'm part of the problem.
I've eaten almost 50 meals now,
and I have to be honest, I think I've bitten off more than I can chew.
I've definitely put some weight on.
When we was in Chicago, I had to buy bigger t-shirts.
It's very rare that men say, "Oh man, I just don't feel good in myself."
I was quite naive in thinking,
well, I'm healthy, how much weight can it really be?
You know, how unhealthy can it really be?
How much is it gonna mess up my mood that much?
I need help.
And apparently in Michigan University, there's a whole department
that analyzes how fast food like fried chicken
is messing with people's minds.
Come on in!
- Hello! - Hi, Mo!
- Lovely to meet you. - Welcome to my lab.
Wow!
Exactly, and you're gonna actually taste some of our wares today.
This is so weird.
- I'm going to go for a drumstick. - Yes.
I would love to ask you about the past few weeks
and what your journey's been like.
When I'm eating this food,
it feels like you're having a great time,
until the food is finished and you're by yourself and you realize...
It happened yesterday and you're like, "I'm so lonely. It feels so lonely here."
Yeah. You feel your mood sink.
Yeah. And then with the job that I'm in, doing comedy,
I often find myself looking for the fun in life, or the funny.
Yeah.
But even in the short space of time, it's just like,
I can't be bothered to do that.
- And then, if I'm a little bit moody... - Mmm.
...then I really wanna treat myself now to a better experience with food.
So, I will make sure that if I have some wings,
- I might get a chicken sandwich as well. - Yeah.
- Do you ever feel kind of sluggish? - Oh, yeah.
Just like you're slowed down a little bit?
Then the naps as well. And it's not like a power nap, because I feel--
- Almost like you're drugged. - Oh my...
I feel like that's how I... Where you just...
Not like, "I need sleep and I wake up restored."
You're like, "I gotta sleep this off."
Oh, my God. It's like you tracked me somehow,
because that, word for word, is exactly what happens.
Mmm-hmm.
All right, here's another question for you.
Is there anything where you kind of wanted to stop
but you felt compelled to kind of keep going?
Yeah. There's a lot of times where I've been eating food, and...
- I just have to finish it. - Mmm-hmm.
Do you ever find yourself looking to cope or deal with being down and off
by eating more of this sort of food?
Yeah.
These sorts of foods, and this is mostly what people are eating...
It does make you moodier.
One of the biggest links is actually depression and anxiety.
- Does that resonate at all? - Massively.
But all of a sudden, if you take it away, you're gonna start craving it again.
What you're describing sounds like drugs. It's an addiction.
Yeah.
Even the anxiousness... and...
Brain fog is something that I don't often get,
but I'm finding myself forget words.
What's really striking is the questions
I was walking through with you
are the diagnostic criteria
for how we understand whether someone's starting to show an addiction...
- Oh, wow. - ...from tobacco, to alcohol, to cocaine.
When you know it's making you feel bad,
and yet there's this part of you that's still chasing that fix.
The way that these foods are created to just mainline,
you know, high hits of reward rapidly into your body
but then crash pretty quickly,
it's how we create every addictive substance under the sun.
And so it sounds like you are starting to feel that addictive pull.
Yeah. It's...
I didn't think I would be...
heavily influenced by fried chicken.
Yeah.
It's so shocking
that this food is doing that.
Human brain is very complex.
Part of the brain is called the hypothalamus.
It tells us eat, stop eating, you're hungry, you're not hungry.
We lose that as a direct effect of those foods
because that pathway have become imbalanced,
and then food addiction starts,
and it can ruin physical and mental health in the long run.
One of the most shocking things we've found
is that 12% of children
would meet the criteria for an addiction with ultra-processed foods.
And as a mother, that really scares me for the future for our children.
I'm eating this food and I just, like, don't feel like myself.
Look in the mirror, and I don't look like myself.
I feel low, man.
I feel so low. I feel so by myself.
So much to take in, man. It's so hard.
Fucking hell.
Ah, let me log this off, man. Fucking hell.
I'm not feeling this today.
Truth be told, I was definitely naive when I started this journey,
but the more I head down this rabbit hole,
the more I'm questioning my lifelong love of this food.
Fried chicken is everywhere,
and the animals, they have to come from somewhere.
Oh, that's nasty, man.
But what's going on behind the closed doors
is something which the industry itself likes to keep away from the public eye.
I've looked it up,
and in America, almost all of their chicken comes from factory farms.
And we're catching up.
In the UK, we're at 95%.
Factory farming, the mega farming of animals,
started in the US, but it's very much now deeply ingrained in the UK.
There are now more than a thousand of them,
hidden away, but nevertheless on the rise.
Check this,
there's just a handful of companies that supply the majority of chickens
to supermarkets and fast food chains in America.
People call them Big Chicken,
and one of the Big Chicken states is Arkansas.
That's my next stop.
Specifically, a town called Springdale,
home of the biggest American chicken producers, Tyson Foods.
At Tyson Foods,
we serve with safety, accountability, and delight.
Wow. Seeing Tyson's promo video,
for a capitalist corporate giant, they seem really nice.
Our leadership shines through our billion-dollar brands.
We feed the world like family.
One thing that is true is that it's a billion-dollar brand.
What Tyson has done is really set the standard
for the meat-packing industry.
And if you wanna win the Big Chicken game,
all you need to do is play it like Tyson. Come on. Step right up, Alice.
So, Tyson are one of the pioneers of the vertically-integrated model,
which means that it owns every single part of the supply chain.
From the hatchery, to the chickens,
to the slaughter, to production,
like chicken nuggets, and even into trucking.
So I think of it as like a black hole, like, bringing in every single thing,
the entire universe.
It's a way to control financially every aspect.
Thanks, Alice.
Tyson makes so much money
that almost every Big Chicken company in the world has replicated their model.
In the UK, our biggest players are Moy Park,
Hook 2 Sisters and Avara Foods.
They control around 70% of our chicken market,
processing around 800 million chickens a year.
And by process, I mean kill.
I wanted to meet with Tyson,
but when I told them more about the film, they went quiet.
So instead, I found a local activist,
who fights for the rights of poultry workers.
She's gonna tell me what's really going on.
- How are you? Welcome to Arkansas. - I'm good.
I'm gonna give you a tour,
for you to understand a little bit of the power
of Tyson in this particular town.
- Yeah. - And they build roads,
and they give money to churches, to charities.
Ah, I see this. Tyson sports complex.
- They're kind of buying their way here. - Exactly. Exactly.
Oh, look, there's a poultry...
Yes. But we cannot enter, of course, 'cause it's private.
I spent the last five years writing about Tyson Foods,
and I've never been inside a plant,
and that is because states like Arkansas have ag-gag laws.
It means that you cannot set foot on the property of Tyson
with the purpose of documenting anything related to the facility,
and the fine in Arkansas is up to $5,000 per day.
- Oh, wow, it's so big! - Yes.
- These are the chickens. - Yes.
Oh, man.
Whoo! They smell!
Here come the trucks.
And they're squashed, man.
Every day, all day long, they are killing the birds.
But then they will be in church...
Oh, my God. There's even feathers.
- Yeah. - There's feathers everywhere.
Yeah.
So that is spun my head.
I feel scared for us a little bit, 'cause this is a big corporation.
- Yeah. - And I know in America, money talks.
There is the police now.
There's a little police presence.
In order for these corporations to get along,
there has to be a cozy relationship, right...
- Yeah. - ...with the politicians
and police enforcement and everything.
It feels quite scary.
I know they're watching us. I know they are.
- Yeah, it feels... - They are observing us.
I know the police have stopped a bit further up. I don't know if that's for us.
Shall we cross? Yeah, let's cross.
We don't wanna aggravate the police.
I'm Black, you're Hispanic. We have not got a chance.
When I began doing this work, and I will ask the workers, like,
"What do you want?"
The workers will say,
"We just wanna feel
that we are treated better than the chicken that we kill."
- You know? - Oh, man.
I think there's things people can't imagine
because the people who do work in these processing plants
legally can't say very much.
Is this something that's just happening here in Arkansas,
or is this happening all around America?
Everywhere in America.
You know, it's the problem with the whole meat industry.
Workers showed me videos from inside facilities.
There's workers that have to kill the chickens that aren't actually dead,
but the birds are coming down the line 175 birds a minute.
People are working elbow to elbow, with very sharp knives,
with metal mesh gloves,
and you're deboning the chicken
in three to five seconds,
for eight to ten hours at a time.
And workers told me that
"There is no rest because they're trying to turn me into a machine."
One of the biggest issues workers in poultry plants face
is being denied bathroom breaks.
The lines cannot stop,
so when workers want to go to the bathroom,
and nobody gives them the break,
workers urinate on the line,
- peeing on themselves. - Fucking hell...
We have heard a lot of cases of workers being forced to wear diapers,
and that is just a humiliation.
- You know? - Oh, man.
No workers should be exposed to such exploitations
for us to have a chicken sandwich.
She's a courageous woman, really trying to make a difference,
but no one has listened to her.
Fast food ain't coming here to see how this all works, and...
I was like, "Oh, my God, this is crazy
that our chicken is being produced like this."
They're like, "We didn't see it, so it doesn't matter."
"Let's get some more of them drumsticks."
In the industry, these workers,
who are doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States,
are risking their lives for, you know, what is slightly above minimum wage,
in conditions in which they could suffer from amputation or hospitalization,
'cause this is very large machinery,
and someone has to get inside and clean this machinery.
A worker at a Tyson plant in Alabama was decapitated.
Tyson said, you know, "We had nothing to do with that because
that labor was provided by a third-party provider."
That's how they distance themselves from illegal labor practices.
Concerns about labor practices go beyond the processing plant.
Questions have been raised
about conditions across the Big Chicken industry,
including on farms.
In the chicken industry, you're seeing undocumented workers,
you're seeing refugees,
and they're very unlikely to complain about anything.
To understand the working environment,
I've managed to make contact with an undocumented worker.
Thank you for meeting me.
He's a chicken catcher,
and has worked for farms contracted to a number of Arkansas chicken companies.
We are a group of six people who catch chickens.
In one day we lift 40,000 chickens.
We are catching two chickens in each hand.
My fingers are not in good shape anymore.
I cannot close them anymore.
Sometimes also when we sleep,
our hands twitch like we are still catching chickens.
These environments are full of chemicals,
and these workers often have no protective gear,
and chickens are vicious, so it's a really hard job.
I've been told that some of the people catching chickens are also children.
Yes. Many kids. 15, 16, 17.
The child that is working in my group,
he had a fever, cough,
red swollen eyes because of the chemicals.
He cried and he nearly passed out.
After meeting Carlos,
I learned that in 2023, the US Department of Labor
discovered over 100 children employed by a contractor
working illegally inside nine major meat packing plants,
including George's and Tyson Foods.
That was someone the same age as me,
and I could see the physical toll it had taken on his body.
It is... It's modern-day slavery.
It's the only way you can put it.
The industry has managed to put a veil over chicken,
to turn it into this... what sounds like a fantastic commodity.
Almost too good to be true.
And that's because it is!
I knew a lot went into this business,
but when you actually meet people that are behind the scenes...
It really does change your outlook
on the food that... you...
love.
This is big, man.
And I understand,
as much as I get to go down this rabbit hole,
there is a part of me that feels like,
"Am I gonna get men in black suits that are gonna be, like,
outside of my house now?"
I can't believe how shady parts of the Big Chicken industry are.
I've been told to go to Delaware, where people are fighting back.
"Welcome to Delaware. Endless discoveries."
It's like they built that sign knowing I was coming, boy,
'cause that's what I'm doing, man. I'm discovering, man.
Oh, man. I'm going mad, guys, I'm going mad.
I'm eating this chicken and I'm going mad.
The chicken industry is big business in Delaware,
and its effects are even being reported on the radio.
...state's chicken industry produces literally tons of chicken waste.
People who live near those chicken farms
are worried about how all those chickens are affecting their health.
Here's what I learned from the air waves.
Delaware has a ton of chickens,
and they produce a shitload of shit.
Sorry, Mum.
Now imagine all the chickens in America.
A year's worth of their chicken poop could cover the whole of London.
And Edinburgh. That's a lot of poo.
- Yes, bro. - Mo, how are ya?
- I'm good. How are you, man? - Nice to meet ya.
Whoo!
I brought the rain with me.
- Michael. - You all right?
Michael lives here, and he's fighting back.
I've asked him to show me the issue.
When you see some of these poultry barns out there...
- Okay. - ...you see the fans on the very ends.
Yeah, yeah.
Those fans aren't there to keep them cool.
They're there because these birds, they're getting raised on a pile of waste.
- Yeah. - In one of those barns, the newer ones,
you have 50,000 birds in a barn.
There's 50,000 birds' worth of waste,
and that doesn't get cleaned out every flock, so they're on waste,
but there's ammonia in there.
- Oh, shit. Yeah. - So that ammonia,
right, like, the chickens, some of them go blind.
So they need to blow that air out
because if they don't, it'll kill the chickens.
Mm. Okay.
If you're getting that air out into the community,
what do you think's happening to the community?
You're looking at a toxic stew of gases
that people are breathing in. That's impactful to their health.
You see this? You see where these neighbors live?
Fucking hell! That is so close!
These are veterans. There's a veteran that lives here.
When he was fighting in Iraq, what did they do?
Put up a bunch of chicken barns across from his house blowing nasty air on him.
Oh, that stinks, man!
- That's what you would smell every day? - Every day.
- You can smell it in the car! - It gets stuck on your clothes!
That's wrong, 'cause these are beautiful communities built on agriculture.
That's not to say that agriculture is bad, it's not.
But there's a way to farm that doesn't destroy the community,
destroy your neighbors' quality of life.
I didn't think it would get to a point where
there are people that are massively affected
due to the quality of their air and the water that they drink.
Now, this isn't just about the smell.
That huge plant right there
is one of the biggest chicken waste facilities in Delaware.
These guys are cutting up millions of birds here.
When you cut 'em up, you gotta wash 'em off.
You got all the guts and all that nasty stuff.
I'm probably doing it a little less scientific than it really is,
but essentially, they're taking that waste water
and spraying it on these fields.
But remember that everybody's on well water, man.
Are you serious? Hey, that's fucked, man!
People can't breathe their air, can't go drink their water, can't go outside.
Kids are getting sick, getting asthma,
so they could sell cheap chicken in the store
for 99 cents a pound or $1.99 a pound.
Are you kidding me?
There's big problems, in an industry that's way too powerful for its own good.
Mountaire, the company accused of polluting the air and water here,
settled a class action lawsuit for $205 million,
but denied all liability.
I've been questioning everything. I'm washing,
brushing my teeth after what I've heard with water.
That's how paranoid I am.
When I started this, I didn't know Big Chicken was a thing.
I didn't know.
I didn't know this was a thing, you know.
And I feel disappointed in myself that I didn't know about it.
Then you get there. You're looking at this plant right next to someone's house.
Really, really sad, man.
I just wanna stop eating it now.
I really do. I wanna just stop eating it. I don't wanna do this no more.
Yeah.
There is something quite nice
in having your family around and having the bargain bucket.
But at, like, what cost?
You start to look at the balance.
I didn't ever think of that before I'd done this.
I was like, "It's agriculture. We all gotta survive."
But do we need to survive at that extent?
I would have been guilty of saying, "It's just chicken though, man."
"Everyone chill out."
But it's until you hear the stories of the people that are really affected,
it's until you eat the food and someone tells you you've got
an addiction to chicken which is similar to cocaine.
And you're like, "What?"
And I think sometimes, if there's that much money to be made,
then there's also a lot of secrets to be hidden at the same time.
And I'm seeing that here, in America,
but back home...
How deep does it really go?
The mega farming of animals is environmentally hugely damaging.
The chickens are raised on grain, including soya,
that comes from rainforest areas, causing deforestation.
And in the UK, artificial fertilizers, pesticides,
is causing widespread decline in our soil.
Our soil is literally disappearing.
Scientists tell us we have just decades left before our soil is gone.
No soil, no food.
Game over.
Ready to go.
Let's get the hell out of here, man.
Got the KFC drive thru, you know.
They do this smart thing now, you order and it goes, "Anything else?"
- Hello. - Hi, sir.
Can I get a Mini Variety Meal?
Anything else, sir?
Can I also get a portion of wings?
Anything else?
- Thank you. See you. - Take care. See you later, yeah?
You see? That "Anything else? Anything else?"
I didn't want all that stuff.
This food is so problematic.
The journey that I went on opened my eyes up to a lot.
People, I can't ignore what I've learnt on this trip.
Since I've been back, I've been busy researching.
It looks like KFC are on a rampage.
KFC has announced plans to open 500 new restaurants
in the UK and Ireland within the next decade.
Mo said that he doesn't wanna be an investigative journalist,
which I understand, but I think at some point,
if he wants to really delve deeper into this industry,
he's gonna have to go and put his journalist hat on and...
dig a little deeper.
Hello, and welcome to KFC Head Office.
If you have a customer-care related query, please press one.
All customer-care queries must be submitted in writing using the web form...
It's not just about how this experiment has affected me,
but, as market leaders, I just wanna have a conversation about how their food
has impacted our health and the environment.
This is my email from KFC.
"Thank you very much for reaching out and sharing more about your documentary."
"It sounds like a really interesting project."
"While we won't be able to contribute directly, we wish you every success
as you bring this story to life."
"Thank you again for getting in touch and best of luck with the film."
They've basically just treated me like a dickhead.com.
I did get one breakthrough, though.
The big bossman CEO from the British Poultry Council is willing to speak to me.
We asked to meet him at one of the factory farms they represent,
but he said, "Access will be difficult."
Hmm, interesting.
So we settled for this cute little city farm instead.
- What's up, Rich? How you doing, man? - Yeah, good, thanks. You?
Got you out here in the middle of Hackney, bruv. You okay?
Yeah, very well.
Looking like an undercover cop right now, man.
We, as the UK, we slaughter around 20 million birds a week.
- A week? - A week.
But think about it in terms of numbers of people.
65 million people. Not everybody eats meat.
- Say 60 million people eat chicken. - Yeah.
Half a chicken per person per week.
That's not a lot.
And there's hunger in this country.
Fundamentally, until we get everybody fed,
nothing else really matters.
And yes, we have to be very cognizant of
how we treat people, the environment, the birds,
but we can manage that, and if we do it right,
we've got a food source for the world, not just the UK.
Very politician-y, Rich, man. You might start kissing some babies, bruv.
Yeah, but that's...
When I went on this journey,
I got to see every aspect of the chicken industry.
What I wasn't prepared for was the waste.
What are we doing here when it comes to waste?
There are accusations and criticisms about our industry,
and what we do with the waste,
but I can say for sure that all of the waste,
and we're talking about farms here, rather than processing plants,
is very much controlled.
And what about the waste from the processing plant?
That, similarly, is very much controlled
so that it's not a risk, and not harmful.
So there's no corners cut in the UK?
There's not. There's no benefit.
But you got your PR lady here, man.
She's gonna jump in any minute, man. "Hey, can we just stop that?"
- We try and be good neighbors... - Yeah.
...and not impact on the people.
After our chat, it came out in the news
that chicken producers Avara Foods,
who Richard represents,
is currently facing the largest ever
environmental legal claim in British history
for allegedly polluting three of our rivers.
There's over 20 million chickens
in the River Wye catchment area,
and they create more manure than the land can absorb.
The industrial chicken farmers you buy your supplies from for your restaurants
has literally polluted the River Wye to death.
- What's going on, bruv? - What you telling me, bruv?
Cluck cluck, rude boy!
- Come in, bruv. - Wagwan?
- Yeah, G. All blessed. - Come in.
You went and saw that Richard brother, yeah? How was that?
I respect that he came and had a conversation with me,
but at the same time, feel like I was just talking to an AI.
So I'm asking him questions and it's like, "Well, you know,
there's a lot of people to feed."
"Could we do more? Possibly."
So where does that leave you now? Like, what's next?
It's a tricky one, because nobody wants to talk to me, innit?
I got an email back from KFC.
KFC Global.
- Okay, big time. - Yeah.
- I know, right? - Let me see that.
There's a number here, you know. You should try calling them.
- Let's call them. - Yeah?
Hello?
It's me, Mo Gilligan.
Uh, I sent you an email
about a documentary about fried chicken.
Hello?
They put me on mute.
- 'Cause they picked up. - Is it?
Hello?
I am recording the call to potentially use in a documentary. Is it okay to continue?
Okay.
Rah.
- She hung up. - Yeah.
Oh, my days. Do you know what?
Do you know what she done? She answered the phone and put it on mute.
- Yeah, and was listening. - Just listening.
That's wild, you know.
That's the closest I've got from anyone from KFC.
- Yeah. - Like, the closest.
You left your number there.
Why'd you leave your number and not pick up? What's the point?
I guess it's not even a big surprise to learn that,
like many leading fast food brands,
KFC works with online influencers with millions of followers
to promote its products and brand to younger audiences.
Hello, my friends. I'm Niko, and I'm on a farm.
Ah, Niko. I like Niko, man. He's good peoples, man.
Let's go behind the bucket.
Oh my God.
Look at all those chickens! There's no cages here.
I thought there was, like, 4,000 chickens in one small cage.
No, no. There is no cages.
We're very proud of our animal welfare here,
So you're showing the healthy side
by using someone who's got a really big platform,
but you're controlling what they're seeing behind the curtain.
KFC chose to bring Niko down here when the birds were really small and cute.
They were maybe 15 to 20 days old. We've come back when they're 33 days old.
- You really do care about these chickens? - Yeah, we do.
What about these chickens?
Do you care about birds like these three here
who have got to the point where they can't stand up anymore?
They just can't handle the weight.
I feel like it's very sinister,
'cause it's like a new digital age of how you can manipulate the market.
...the birds plenty of room to roam...
It's almost like greenwashing.
I can probably find out more information about your secret recipe
than I can about where you get your chickens from and how they are treated.
Thanks for having me. I'm loving the farm, it looks incredible.
The question is, what are you hiding?
I found the man whose footage told a very different story to KFC's own video.
He sent me some coordinates,
'cause him and his team are going back in tonight.
I didn't think chicken would have me in Lincolnshire at nighttime
following coordinates.
Feels very... It feels a bit mad, I'm not gonna lie to you people.
I feel like a real journalist right now.
I feel like Martin Kemp.
That's his name, innit? Martin Kemp.
Oh, no, that's the fucking guy from Spandau Ballet. Ross Kemp.
Here in Lincolnshire, they slaughter the most chickens in the UK.
Like everything, if you follow the money, you'll find the truth.
And get this, the second-largest chicken producers in the UK, Moy Park,
supply 25% of the chicken we eat,
including what ends up in some of KFC's buckets.
But wait for it...
This UK company
is actually owned by the second-biggest American chicken producers after Tyson,
Pilgrim's,
and they are owned by the kings of chicken, JBS,
who produce up to 5 billion chickens a year globally.
I think that's him there, you know.
- Matthew! - Hiya.
- What's up, my guy? You okay? - Hey, Mo, nice to meet you.
What's good, man? Come on, hop in, man.
The KFC farm's just on the left over here,
and we're gonna go back in tonight.
You know, we filmed it three years ago,
and the video got 12 million views or something like that.
So it'd be really interesting to see, has anything changed?
Um, I'm gonna meet my two colleagues.
One's a professional investigator, highly experienced.
I think we can film them from behind.
Hey, what's up, guys?
Hey. Hiya.
- Wow, this is real stuff, boy. - Yeah.
This is like Call of Duty. I'm a bit scared, man. This is real.
- What you scared of? - I don't know, I've never seen...
- You're scared of us? - Because yous wearing balaclavas, man.
So it is Moy Park farm.
We'll be coming in from the north.
There's two houses. There's people living there.
What risk does that kind of pose?
The biggest risk would be a farmer or a worker
deciding to take things into their own hands if they found you.
I know some of these farmers have got shotguns.
I've had a drone shot at before, so, you know, it happens.
- Really? - Yeah.
Oh, man.
Me personally, I don't give a shit anymore.
I just feel like we need to... Like, somebody's gotta do it,
and so, therefore, we've just gotta go and do it.
I'm gonna follow you. I'm gonna observe. I'm not gonna go across.
Can we talk you into coming in?
- I wish... I would love to... - No?
- ...but my girlfriend said no. - Okay.
It's early hours, and the team are heading into one of Moy Park's farms.
I'm genuinely worried for them.
Maybe they might have different measures if they have intruders here.
Know what I mean?
Yeah, man. They need to be careful, man.
I do feel a bit on edge, though.
I just feel like someone might turn up.
I don't think you realize, I don't do stuff like this, you know?
I'm just messaging just to say we're here now,
so I'll just show you what I can see.
We haven't managed to get access as yet.
There's basically three separate locks,
and then they've put this tamper tag on here.
This is a lot more security than when we came three years ago.
I'm sorry I'm speaking quietly. We just don't wanna alert anybody.
We have found a wheelie bin,
but I just wanna show you what's inside.
Probably about two weeks old are the birds there.
The smell, Mo, is just disgusting. I'm having to hold my breath.
We've found quite a lot of the wheelie bins here,
but interestingly, they've locked these as well.
They don't want people filming the birds inside,
but all of these ones here are full and locked.
So... we'll head back.
See you soon.
I guess that the work that Matthew and his team done before...
definitely ruffled some feathers.
How you feeling, man?
You know, it does feel to me like, rather than, like, fix the problem
of these Frankenchickens who can't stand up,
their bodies can't take it...
Rather than fix that problem, they're just adding loads of security.
It's a picture that's happening across the whole of the UK.
Mmm.
So it's not just this farm.
There's many farms.
So it's just hidden from view, and that's...
To me, I feel that's very wrong.
It's the same patterns, man.
It's not a coincidence we just went there and there's just a few more locks, like...
Um, it's not a coincidence that no one will get back to me.
It's just how powerful this thing is.
Not long after we met,
the investigators sent me footage of an Avara farm they did manage to get into.
That's the same company accused of polluting our rivers with chicken waste.
It looks horrible, man.
There's a human part of you that says,
no animal should ever have to live and suffer like that.
That's the chicken that I've probably eaten,
and you're probably eating too.
That is the stark reality,
that throughout this whole experiment, this industry's been so secretive
and so silent,
but when you see what's behind closed doors,
I understand why it's so silent now.
Cheap chicken is far from cheap.
Globally, nearly three-quarters of the world's antibiotics
are fed to farmed animals,
essentially to ward off the diseases inherent in factory farms.
If we carry on as we are doing,
then the World Health Organization warns
that because of the rise in antibiotic resistance,
then we could be facing a post-antibiotic era,
where currently treatable diseases could once again kill.
Twenty-four hours and the experiment will be done.
But having it for breakfast, with a do-rag on,
I feel like the most Blackest man ever, bruv. Know what I mean?
Eating this food now,
I'll be real with you, I'm just bored of it, man.
I say that as I take another bite, though.
It's only right I spend my last meal with the boys back in South London.
What's going on? Rah, boy!
I can't lie, I thought it'd be like, "Surprise! It's the last drumstick!"
Wow. Yeah.
OG wings, and this is the new barbie fry.
You don't want none of that, right?
Imagine the last piece.
- Congratulations, bro. Last meal. - Nah, man. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, man.
Where is your mind at, like, right now?
Yeah, I definitely feel like I need to get back to myself,
and I was really, really shocked about some of the stuff.
You can't unsee it.
And I didn't think the journey would get that hard, and it did.
It was hard. To listen to the stories...
Yeah, it was just hard. You wanna stay and you wanna fight the fight as well,
but it does give you a real understanding of
the corners that are cut to make X amount of money,
and it doesn't matter who's in their way.
And then it starts to make you think of, like,
if this is happening now,
what's that going to look like in five, 10, 15 years' time?
You definitely went down real dark paths,
and, like, I'm also just proud that you took this journey.
- Thank you, man. - So, yeah, man.
People, I done it.
After an unbroken streak of 84 fried chicken meals,
it's finally time to call it a day.
First meal that is not fried chicken.
I got my coffee, I got my oat bar, and I got my banana. Finally.
Finally!
I'm going back to visit Dr. Abood
to see what a month of eating fried chicken has done to me.
- All right, here we go. - Let's get you up.
You have gained three kilograms,
- which is half a stone. - Rahtid!
You've gained an inch and a half.
An inch!
- And a half! Oh, my God. - And a half.
I can feel you've actually gained...
- I can feel it too. - ...fat in there.
- Yeah. - Big breath in, and out!
Push, push, push, push, push, push.
Right, Mo. So, you're not as cheerful as you were before?
- Uh-- - You're not upbeat.
Yeah. It's definitely affected my mood.
- I would just cry, you know, break down. - I'm sorry to hear that.
Yeah.
I think that's an eye-opener,
as what can happen to human beings,
to all of us, particularly for young people.
Yeah, I think what's worrying is
- I only ate this food for 28 days... - Yes.
...knowing had I done this experiment for another month... Even how I felt.
- Exactly. Teenagers, imagine. - Yes, yeah.
Imagine, where they cannot really understand it,
or reason it, or think correctly about it.
They... And if this is how they eat normally,
then that feeling is the norm for them,
because they haven't really experienced anything different.
Mmm.
Do you remember when we talked last time about genetic predisposition?
Because there is a family history of type 2 diabetes with your mum.
Mmm.
Um, you've increased the diabetes test.
Then it was 30. It's gone up to 32.
An increase of two is not a simple thing.
This is absolutely caused by the food you were having.
If you continue, you will then be heading towards that.
And diabetes, we call it the silent assassin.
It can make people blind.
- It can make people lose limbs. - Okay.
It can affect the heart, the brain. Affects everything, really.
- Oh, really? - So it's not an easy, simple disease.
- But don't be anxious. - Mm-hmm.
Everything we talked about is reversible.
Oh, really?
- You need to really eat the right thing. - Mm-hmm.
- And exercise. - Yeah.
I just wanna get back to my old body, but my old self as well.
Exactly. You see, if I may suggest something to you,
eat as much as you can of the green vegetables,
maybe a nice glass of carrot juice or...
It's lovely, seriously.
Oh, come on, Doctor. Who wants to go to bed and have a mug of carrot juice?
No, I don't think I can chill out.
I feel like this is a food that I really love,
and had I never gone on this journey,
I would never have seen the other side of it.
And so many people profit off it in so many ways,
and they're not...
Yeah, they're not held to account.
And that made me, like, angry. That made me vexed.
Old school words, innit? That made me... No, it did. It pissed me off, man.
I'd be lying if I said I'd never eat this food again.
Ooh, "Welcome to Wing Fest."
Wing Fest.
But definitely, I'm gonna look a little bit differently.
What kinda wings you trying to get today?
All of them, mate.
Yeah, 'cause I wanna get to the jerk joint, innit?
Simplest thing you can do is to eat less meat.
Literally all of us, every single one of us,
should be eating less meat, and that is not up for debate.
This is how I shop.
If I turn the package around and I don't recognize what's in it, I don't eat it.
I don't buy it, I don't eat it.
We are what we eat, and a large percentage of diseases
can be prevented if human beings eat the right thing.
So education is key.
We need these brands, governments, to stand up and be better
when it comes for us as consumers getting the right information
so we truly understand what we're putting in our bodies.
Decent, humanely reared,
sustainable, healthy food should be a basic human right.
I don't know how this will impact you.
It might make you think differently about what you eat.
But even just starting the conversation,
that's what's really powerful.
What's up? My name is Mo Gilligan.
I'm with the real Bite Back crew right now, outside Parliament.
We're campaigning for a fairer and healthier food system.
Please commit to improving your environmental policies
and protect Britain's rivers.
These chickens, they're a true pasture-raised bird.
He was about half this size when he got here.
Oh, my God. Wow.
Ah, man!
Wow. I never held a chicken, you know?
It's actually really beautiful seeing this.