Interesting Facts

Pretzels are thought to have been invented by Italian monks in the 5th century. (Seemingly, they were made to resemble folded arms and given to children to reward them for good deeds. What happened to, "a good deed is its own reward"?) 

Pizza is thought to have been created over 1,000 years ago in Italy. (Of course it's now a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, the pizza effect is a term used to describe how elements of a nation or people's culture can be transformed or at least more fully embraced elsewhere, then re-imported back to their culture of origin. Some aspects of the change are not really something to celebrate though. For example, in the UK Pizza Hut created the Cheeseburger crust pizza with a staggering 2,880 calories. Whilst in New York the 24k pizza has been created with gold leaf, caviar, stilton cheese and truffles, a bargain at £1,600.  ( It's gone up since its invention in 2012 .)) Some people will buy into anything.)

According to Public Health England, kids in the UK eat more than half of their recommended sugar intake - at breakfast! (The culprit?  All those sugary breakfast cereals with cartoon characters on the packaging.  (Are you listening Tony?)  What is even more worrying is that 80% of parents think sugary cereals are healthy.) 

Mathematicians from the  University of Limmerick  are working out a mathematical formula for the perfect cup of coffee. (They have found that size does matter, and flavour is linked to the coffee grain's surface are.  The method of extraction describes the movement of the coffee from its solid form as a bean into its liquid form when it dissolves into hot water, and they have found that small grains give a more bitter taste, whilst large grains result in a weak brew. Earlier in 2016 some chemists got together to create this video:- Reactions goes on a quest for better coffee through chemistry. )

Marmite is quintessentially British, but did you know it wasn't invented by a Brit? It was invented by a German. (Justus von Liebig was looking for an inexpensive nutrition source for the poor of Europe, and his discovery that yeast could be concentrated and eaten, led to the manufacture of Marmite. I'm not sure if that should be celebrated, or not.)

According to the Professor Nigel Hunt at the Royal College of Surgeons, “cake culture” in the UK workplace is fuelling the obesity epidemic and contributing to poor dental health. (As a healthy alternative they are suggesting that workers should bring fruit platters into the office instead of doughnuts, cookies and biscuits. He said, “Cake culture poses difficulties for those who are trying their hardest to lose weight or become healthier - how many of us have begun such diets only to cave in to the temptation of the doughnuts, cookies or the triple chocolate biscuits?” I agree in principal, but I wouldn't want to be the one to bring a box of apples to work on my birthday, I don't want to be known as Lynney no friends.)

Anyone who was attended the sessions on food waste in Kitely will not be surprised to learn that supermarket giant Tesco has revealed that it generated 59,400 tonnes of food waste in 2015. (To put this into perspective this is the equivalent of nearly 119 million meals. In their defense, they are the only supermarket to publish the figures, and they have pledged to redistribute all edible food waste from stores to charities by the end of 2017.)

According to wine expert Jancis Robinson, author of The 24 Hour Wine Expert, any open bottle of wine – even a red – should be kept in the fridge. (Seemingly the old adage of serving red wine at "room temperature" was coined before the advent of central heating. Nowadays room temperature tends to be too warm, and we are drinking tepid red wine. According to the experts, refrigerating lighter reds such as beaujolais and pinot noir brings out all their fresh fruit flavours, and full-bodied reds such as cabernet sauvignon, shiraz and malbec benefit from being served cooler (around 17 or 18°C). Of course, it's unlikely we have any left in the bottle to store, but I'm going to try out this advice this weekend. ) 

According to the British Coffee Association around 2,000,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every day. (According to market researchers, Mintel, in the UK we drink over 70 million cups a day, but 3/4 (74%) of all UK adults drink instant coffee, compared to around 1/2 (48%) who drink fresh coffee. I stopped drinking instant when I left England, and I've never wanted to go back to the brown sludge.)

Licorice Allsorts are a very popular sweet in the UK.  They are a colourful mixture of liquorice, sugar, coconut, aniseed jelly, fruit flavourings, and gelatine. ( They were first produced in Sheffield, England, by Geo. Bassett & Co Ltd, under the name Bassett's Allsorts, but the idea of mixing up several sweets came about by accident.  According to Basset's own marketing, in 1899 a sales representative for the company, Charlie Thompson, supposedly dropped a tray of samples he was showing a client in Leicester, mixing up the various sweets. After he scrambled to re-arrange them, the client was intrigued by the new creation. All I know is they are delicious, and thankfully there isn't one bit of salted liquorice in them.) 

The UK is about to introduce a sugar tax on soft drinks, which will add at least 18p a liter to sweet fizzy drinks. (The tax will be levied according to how much sugar is added to a drink. According to the BBC, there will be two bands - one for total sugar content above 5g per 100 millilitres and a second, higher band for the most sugary drinks with more than 8g per 100 millilitres. Analysis by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggests they will be levied at 18p and 24p per litre. It is estimated that it will raise around £520m a year, which the government has pledged will be spent on increasing the funding for sport in primary schools. So, does this mean people will drink less sugary pop? Probably not, they'll just have less money to spend on fruit.) The sugar tax has an interesting history:- First they said they wouldn't, then they said they might, now they have: Talk about flip flopping:- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-rules-out-s...

Tesco supermarkets have decided to only sell straight croissants. (Why? Well because UK customers have complained they cannot spread jam properly on a traditionally curved croissant. Now you probably know that the croissant is a French pastry, but what you might not know is that the word is French for crescent, and if you look crescent up in the dictionary you will see that it describes the curved sickle shape of the waxing or waning moon.  Oh dear, this is becoming an interesting word post. Anyway, although I am suspicious of their reasons (it's far more likely that it's simply cheaper to produce straight pastries), Tescos should be able to sell their boringly straight pastries, but they shouldn't call them croissants, they should call them tout droit instead.) PS - I am aware that no self-respecting French person would put jam on their croissant.

According to "The Grocer", Brits are shunning sliced white bread in favour of freshly baked loaves and healthier wholegrain alternatives. (In 2015 Britain's biggest bakers, Warburtons, Hovis and Kingsmill, lost £121 million in revenue, and a large 750g or 800g loaf costs 13.3per cent less than it did a year ago. There's a saying in English, "The best thing since sliced bread", this may be irrelevant now.)

It looks as if black tea is no longer our cup of tea in the UK.  According to consumer analysts Mintel, retail sales of all brands of tea have sunk from 97 million kilos in 2010 to an estimated 76 million this year. (Sales of ordinary tea bags feel 13%, whilst sales of green tea were up 50%. Seemingly people are moving towards healthier alternatives such as fruit and herbal teas.  They estimate that sales will fall to 69 million kilos by 2020. I drink herbal tea, and green tea, but I still need my mug of good old Tetley to kickstart the day.) Source: Mintel

Seemingly the smell of garlic on a man is irresistible to women. Not garlic breath though, it's the smell that comes from a man's armpits after chewing raw garlic. Eew! (Scientists believe that the sweat of men who had eaten a bulb of garlic was more attractive to women because it suggested the man is healthy. Garlic is a bit of a superfood, it has antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal properties. So, throw away the Lynx on Friday night, and get chomping.)

The Irish brewers of Guinness are going to stop using fish bladders as part of the filtration process for the first time in their 256-year history.  (Vegans have been campaigning for this ammendment to the traditional brewing process for years.  I can only hope it doesn't change the taste (which was never fishy).)

Farmers are warning that there will be a shortage of pumpkins in the run up to Halloween. (Following the ideal growing conditions in August and September, the heavy rain of October has put a damper on everything by making the pumpkin skins soft, which means they get soggy and collapse before they can be harvested. In Germany there are lots of pumpkins, but they are smaller than usual, due to a shortage of rain.  Who'd want to be a farmer?)

We have already mentioned that not all nuts are created equal.  Some so called nuts are actually in disguise. So, today, in celebration of National Nut Day, instead of us telling you everything let's see if you can guess the names in this picture.  Which are real nuts, and which ones are imposters?

Ac cording to a survey commissioned by Love Food / Hate Waste, nearly 1 in 5 UK households admits to binning an entire loaf of bread before even opening or slicing it. (Emma Marsh, head of the Love Food / Hate Waste campaign, run by the government’s waste advisory body Wrap, said: “...sometimes if we don’t finish a loaf, it goes stale and ends up in the bin. There are simple things we can do to use it up or store it differently, to reduce food waste and save money.” I often throw away parts of a loaf, but rarely the whole thing.  I usually make breadcrumbs from stale bread.)

Surprise, surprise, fruit is good for you (I can hear my mother now - I told you so.) According to researchers at Harvard if you want to lose weight, you should stop eating peas, potatoes and sweetcorn, and start eating cauliflower, prunes and blueberries. (Surprisingly fruit was twice as good as veg, with every extra portion a day leading to around half a pound of flab being shed over four years. Prunes, apples, pears, strawberries, raisins and grapes, also scored high on the weight loss scale. Blueberries were actually the number 1 fat burner.  I can't stand them, but I need to shed some weight, so maybe I'll just have to take my medicine.)