Interesting Facts

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.)

Bees contribute more to the British economy than the Royal family. (According to research carried out at the University of Reading, the overall value of the contribution of our busy bees is £651 million a year, which is £150 million more than the Royal Family brings in through tourism. In fact 85 per cent of the UK’s apple crop and 45 per cent of our strawberry crop relies on bees to grow. These two crops alone brought in £200 million to Britain in 2012. Unfortunately honeybee colonies have slumped in the UK from 250,000 in the 1950s to fewer than 100,000 today. In Germany everyone seems to have their own beehive.)

According to a study by BUPA, 80% of Brits believe families today are missing out on creating happy memories by not eating meals together. (The top foods that invoked childhood memories were:- Ice cream Roast dinner Fish and chips Apple crumble Bangers and mash Shepherd’s pie Spaghetti Bolognese Strawberries and cream Fruit salad Bakewell tart For me it's sherry trifle.)

According to a survey carried out by the sustainable food and farming organisation Leaf (Linking Environment and Farming), more than one in three British children have never heard the classic farmyard sounds in real life. (Increasingly, youngsters are only hearing the sound of nature through their computer or TV screen, which means they have never heard a real cow go “moo”, a sheep go “baa”, or a pig go "oink". This means many kids are oblivious to where the food they eat comes from.  25% didn't know the names for baby cows, sheep, pigs or chickens, and more worryingly one in five had no idea bacon comes from pigs, while one in 20 thought we get cheese from them. Pig cheese? Eew! My favourite was that 5% percent of the children surveyed believed strawberries grow inside the fridge.  Which has a certain logic to it.  At least they had thought about it a bit.) 

According to a study by Bupa, ice cream is Britain's happiest food. (76% of Brits said food could boost their mood. The foods that make us feel happiest are:- Ice cream Roast dinner Fish and chips Strawberries and cream BBQ Apple crumble Pizza  Steak and chips Curry  Spaghetti Bolognese  I'm surprised no one mentioned chocolate (It is a food, isn't it?), or steak and kidney pie.)

Sorry to start wittering on about Christmas before Halloween is even over, but according to Sainsbury’s, British strawberries will be on supermarket shelves in December. (Thanks to  researchers who have been able to grow strawberries in mid-winter using a combination of blue and red LED lighting, we will be able to have strawberries with our Christmas puds. I'll bet they're not as tasty as sun-ripened ones. I'll wait until Wimbledon thanks.)

20th May is Pick Your Own Strawberries Day. We often call this kind of activity PYO.

2,000 commuters in London have been treated to the world's largest Eton Mess. (Weighing in at 167kg (368lbs), they used 50kg of fresh British strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, plus a generous serving of double British cream. It was created as part of Tesco’s Love Every Mouthful campaign. Traditional Eton mess is a mix of cream, meringue, and fresh berries - usually raspberries and / or strawberries. If you haven't tried it, you should, it's delicious. But it is not healthy, in spite of all that fruit.)

UK supermarket giant ASDA is going back to pounds and ounces on fruit and veg for the first time in 16 years. (Customers asked for the return of imperial measures, as seven in ten shoppers said they still get confused by metric weights. Now they will be able to buy a 1lb punnet of strawberries, which under EU laws would weigh 453.39 grams.)

I enjoy going to unusual museums. this could be next on my list!  A strawberry museum in Namur Belgium. Strawberry Museum (I wonder if they give free samples?  Fresh ones of course.)