The numbers do not look good for the £1.6 billion cereal market.  According to Mintel, the market research firm, Britain is eating 50,000 metric tons less cereal than we were back in 2009.  That is a huge shift in how we start the day.  Turrell says: "We are seeing changing consumer habits. People are experimenting, trying different things" -- metropolitan types scattering blueberries onto their porridge and swirling chia seeds through their yoghurts, he means.  And then there are the millions adopting “on the go” breakfast habits, drinking calorie-laden coffees and eating muffins from Starbucks and croissants from Pret, which last week were blamed for a middle class obesity crisis by Prof Tom Sanders, head of diabetes and nutritional sciences at King’s College London.  The real struggle Weetabix, Kellogg’s and Nestle all face is one for the minds and stomachs of British consumers, who have started to doubt the maxim “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.  Many people do not realise that the instruction was first published in a 1917 issue of Good Health, a magazine edited by Dr John Harvey Kellogg, who also had a product to sell.  An increasing number of doctors think breakfast may not be that crucial to our health. Only last year, the University of Bath found that when a group of adults skipped breakfast their metabolism was no better than a group who ate breakfast.  Turrell says: "I disagree. I think there is clear medical evidence that says starting the day with breakfast will lead to better behaviour throughout the day.”  He would say that, of course.  In the meantime, Weetabix, which has been 60 per cent owned by a Chinese company since 2011, is having to adapt. In the last two years it has launched Weetabix breakfast biscuits -- like the dry, bully biscuits that used to be given to soldiers on exercises. This year there have been Weetabix On the Go, a “breakfast drink”, sold in the chiller cabinets. It is a sweet, milkshake-style concoction aimed at the young men who skip their morning bowl of cereal.  To me, it is a pretty horrid drink and a poor substitute for a proper bowl of cereal. But, I suppose I am not the target market.  And, as Turrell points out, as Weetabix’s biggest product by a country mile is still the traditional cereal, pretty much unchanged since it was first produced on the same site in 1936. Though Kellogg's is a bigger company, none of the American company's brands can match Weetabix, Britain's best selling cereal, ahead of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut. In third place is Special K.  The current Weetabix factory looks like an airport baggage handling area. Miles of conveyor belts snake around the hall; packages fall down chutes. The final stage of the journey is even a trip through an airport-style X-ray machine, which checks for no rogue bits of plastic, explosives or gas canisters. The machine flashes up, every couple of seconds, a black-and-white scan of something very distinctive: not a suitcase, but Weetabix.  This one building produces 240,000 Weetabix every hour - mesmerically and methodically. In all, the company churns out 3.6 billion individual Weetabix every year.  This is an unfathomably huge number, though this does include the own-branded weetabix that it also makes for supermarkets. It is hugely satisfying to watch the process. It starts with the grains of wheat being cooked in a pressure cooker, then crunched in a mill and -- in a moist flakey state -- squashed into their lozenge-shaped moulds and cooked in a 50-yard-long oven.  I am shown around the factory by Gordon Riddoch, who has worked here for 35 years. Even his eldest child works here. He allows me to snatch a Weetbix from the production line before it is fully dried out and finished off in an industrial microwave. At this stage it is warm and crunchy on the outside, but chewy and moist in the middle. A taste sensation.  Riddoch, a burly man with a big laugh, sees my look of pleasure as I bite in. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Amazing!”  What does he have for breakfast? “Four Weetabix, every day.”  I ask if he is paid to say that.  “No!,” he laughs. “But it is my annual appraisal next week.”  I dread to think what his fate would be if he admitted to a bowl of yoghurt with goji berries.  Harry Wallop has also found out how Jaffa Cakes are made.  He also recently taste-tested the £600 box of chocolates versus Cadbury's Milk Tray.
In recent years, with croissants and muffins replacing traditional cereal   breakfasts, Harry Wallop rediscovers the joy of a warm Weetabix, fresh off   the factory conveyor belt.