The most dangerous area in a supermarket for shoppers has been revealed.

All of the big chains, including the likes of Asda, Aldi, Co-op, Iceland, Tesco, Lidl, Sainsbury's and Waitrose have have put several measures and guidelines in place to keep customers and staff safe during the coronavirus crisis.

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While the new rules were introduced and enforced across the country, a new BBC TV show, Keeping Britain Fed, hosted by Sara Cox and Ade Adepitan, took camera crews to several of Britain’s biggest supermarkets and their suppliers to see how their systems have stood up throughout the pandemic.

Sara observed what goes on in one supermarket over the course of 24 hours - from opening to closing and all through the night - to see how they're coping during the crisis and keeping the shelves stocked.

Elsewhere, Ade got to see how the nations’ farms, factories and depots have risen to the challenge of producing and supplying our supermarkets with food in these exceptional circumstances.

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Where is the most dangerous place in a supermarket?

Of the areas the programe explored, Professor Sally Bloomfield from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, revealed to viewers where the hazardous place in every supermarket is.

Professor Bloomfield said the most dangerous zone is at the checkout. Shoppers should avoid using cash and instead use the end of their car keys to use the chip and pin machine.

She added: "I think the danger is the people. You get it by breathing in or touching surfaces and then either touching your nose or your mouth.

"It's well known from experiments we can do that up to 23 times an hour.

"There is a possibility within 1ml of saliva you could have seven million virus particles and it only needs maybe 100 to 1,000 to infect us.

"One of the key things that we need to do in supermarkets is to respect that two metre rule."

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What about online deliveries - are they safe?

The professor added that when receiving an online delivery, items such as dried goods should be quarantined for a total of three days, whereas groceries should be washed to rub any organisms away.

She continued: "The thing to do is to not panic. The likelihood of you getting infected is very small.

"If we all adhere to these rules as much as we can it will stop us having to go back into lockdown in a couple of months when cases rise again."

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When was the one-off documentary filmed?

Sara Cox told the PA News agency that filming took place several weeks ago, when stores were in more of a routine and a far cry from the footage of people “carrying 18 packs of loo roll, inexplicably”.

Cox actually spoke to an analyst who pointed out it’s likely we all, however innocently, played a small part in worries about food shortages.

“I was quite smug going, ‘I’m not panic buying at all’, but if you bought two packs of spaghetti instead of one, you were part of the problem,” says Cox self-deprecatingly.

“It was hard not to,” she adds understandingly, “because we were a little bit frightened and we’ve not been in this position before.”

Things have considerably settled down since then, although being inside a supermarket still feels a little odd, Sara added.

“When you’ve been queuing for an hour to get your fish fingers, you want to just get your bits and bobs and get out of there,” notes Cox, and social distancing can be difficult, especially if you’re filming in-store like she was.

“I’m stood there getting under people’s feet,” she says, “and someone leans over for a packet of crumpets!”

“It was actually quite alarming being there in the shop when it was getting busier and busier,” she admits.

“But obviously the point is, the staff are in there working 8-10-hour shifts, and they’re around it all day.”

Keeping Britain Fed was broadcast on Wednesday, June 17 at 8pm on BBC Two, and is available to watch again on BBC iPlayer.