BBC - Science & Nature (2024)

It's the nation's favourite dinner. But have you ever wondered what lurks inside the great British sausage?

Why can you buy some bangers for less than the price of dog food? Is the humble sausage a heart surgeon's nightmare?

Richard Hammond meets and talks to butchers andnutritionist and discovers the following:

• Generally pork sausage must contain a minimum of 42percent meat, but the minimum is 32 percent meat, if the package is labelled asgeneric sausage.
• Ear, snout and cheek are allowed in sausages, but will be labelledas 'head meat'.
• Each year, 100,000 tonnes of sausages are eaten incafes and cafeterias - places where you can't read the label.

Our research shows that the average sausage served inschools and hospitals is 25 percent fat and contains a gram of salt - that'smore fat than a doughnut and more salt than a glass of seawater.

Health issues

Saturated fat comes from animal products - particularlyred meat. Medical research has shown that saturated fat lines your arteries witha kind of plaque that builds up over time and can cause a blockage. This canlead to a heart attack or congestive heart failure.

Salt can raise the blood pressure. High blood pressurecan affect the function of the heart.

We swapped the diets of a healthy and unhealthy eater forone month. It only took ten days of a poor diet for our normally healthy eater to experience a significant rise in bloodcholesterol level.

Clearly, a few sausages are not going to do you very much harm. But as we showed in the programme, a diet that ishigh in processed meats and saturated fats can cause rapid changes in health.

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