This isn't a vegetable you see every day, and, depending on how well it does in England, you may never get a chance to see it in person. Named the C-thru-cumber, it's a new variety of cucumber that has a very thin skin that doesn't need to be peeled before using it in a salad or sandwich. It's quite pricey compared to the regular cucumbers at grocery stores in the UK.

I am in no way, shape or form a fan of cucumbers, so the question of whether to peel or not to peel is a non-issue for me. I know that they peel the cucumbers for finger sandwiches where I work, but not for salads. Also, as I understand it the nutrients are mostly in the skin, so are these veggies less nutritious?

Judging from some of the comments in the Daily Mail Online article, the C-thru-cumber isn't going to go over well. What do you think?

A bakery in Haverfordwest has issued a recall on rolls and baguettes because of a production error.

Snowdrop Bakery says that some of the filled rolls and baguettes that they sell did not have a label on them warning customers that the product contains milk and soya (is that the same as soy?). They ask that customers not eat the rolls and return them to the store for a refund. The breads have a use by date on or before April 22, 2008.

They company is also calling stores that might have the food on their shelves, including stores in Pembrokeshire, Swansea, Carmarthenshire, and Ceredigion.

Despite urges from various British food organizations, the European Food Safety Authority decided against banning additives in food.

Their reasoning? A recent £750,000 study, which found a link between eating food loaded with additives and colorants and impulsive/hyperactive behavior in kids, was not a substantial enough reason to ban the additives entirely. In the study, eight and nine year olds who had ingested food with additives could not sit still long enough to complet simple tasks, like a 15-minute computer exercise. (Yeah, but neither could most of the eight year olds I know, with or without stimulants. Heck, most 25 year-olds I know don't have the patience to finish a 15-minute computer task).

But the study did prompt some retailers to change their ways: Marks and Spencer, a British department store that sells everything from shirts to iPods to gourmet foods, vowed to stop selling food and drink that contain additives by the end of the month.

The study results should not be ignored, but I don't blame the EU for not jumping to conclusions. Banning food with additives falls along the same lines as banning food with trans-fats, and I have the same opinion in each case: use your own good judgment and discretion. If packaged foods make your kid hyperactive, don't buy the foods, or at least limit their intake. Simple as that.

[via] Times Online

It seems to me that this is the ultimate invention for people who have very little time (or very little patience) yet still want a hot beverage in the morning. Tefal has designed a kettle that heats your water (approximately one cup) in just three seconds, as opposed to a standard kettle which takes just under three minutes.

Aside from just the speed and the obvious energy / water saving aspects, the Quick Cup has a few more things going for it too - you can adjust the amount of water you need by the touch of a button, plus the kettle uses a filter so your water will have fewer impurities. In addition, a separate button allows you to simply extract room-temperature filtered water for those times when you don't need it piping hot.

A little warning though - the water doesn't actually come to a complete boil, so you may not extract as much flavor from a tea bag and it won't be hot enough to sterilize anything. Otherwise though, it seems like a pretty efficient way to get some hot water fast. Currently the kettle is only available in the UK, but if it is a success I'm sure it'll make it's way over here soon.

Well this just gives new meaning to the idea of "dairy" in chocolate.

Britain's most popular lines of candy and chocolate have admitted that their choclate bars like Mars, Snickers, Maltesers, and Milky Way now contain whey that is derived from a cow's stomach. The enzyme rennet, which is extracted from the stomach-lining of slaughtered newborn calves and is used in traditional cheese production, is being used by the candy makers.

It now appears that vegetarians in the UK face the ethical dilemma of eating chocolate because it comes from animals.

Last year, the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) was involved with the promotion of several measures to restrict the content of food advertisements that were targeted at, or easily viewable by, children. Broadcasting regulator Ofcom instituted a ban on junk food ads that were targeted at 16-and-under TV viewers during non-primetime hours, which was a major victory for those supporting restrictions.

The FSA also supported a ban on online junk food advertising that was targeted at this demographic, a step which many believed was a step too far at the time. Clearly, times and opinions have changed, however, because further regulations have just been drawn up by the Department of Health's Committee on Advertising Practice that will ban "junk food companies" from advertising in magazines, on the internet, on billboards and at movie screenings that are targeted at under-16s.

Fortunately for the companies in question and the media outlets that rely on their advertising dollars, there is no official oversight of all these forms of advertising, which means that following the regulations is voluntary - for the moment, anyway.

Dieting may be worse for your waistline than you think, especially for women. A new study has shown that there is a greater association between guilt and chocolate in women who are dieting or have dieted in the past. This connection increases the likelihood of developing chocolate cravings, since negative emotions and comfort eating also have a strong connection in these women. The stronger the craving, the more likely the dieters were to give in to it.

The study was conducted at a university in England, where researchers showed women pictures of chocolate or nonfood items and asked them to report on the feelings that these images triggered. Their conclusion was that dieting "appears to have the opposite [of its intended] effect in that it can increase the desire for the actual foods [dieters] are trying to avoid." Hopefully, the next step in the study will look at how diets affect men's cravings, as well.

Having a positive body image and making healthy dining choices when possible, rather than opting for fad diets where long-term maintenance is unreasonable, is the best way to keep weight, cravings and guilt under control.

Since excluding imported organic products from using the word "organic" is probably not something that is going to happen in the UK any time soon, farmers are still looking for ways to strengthen their appeal with consumers and the position of their products on supermarket shelves. They are now proposing that the country of origin be clearly labeled on all products. Currently, all foods processed in the UK can claim to be "made in the UK," but this labeling scheme would have the country that the ingredients were sourced from identified.

The real motivation behind it is that foods sourced from elsewhere have less traceability than UK-based products, as manufacturing and processing standards may be lower elsewhere. A move like this would potentially increase the trust that consumers have in UK-made products, where the processing standards are known, and as a result, support UK-based farmers.

The UK's Soil Association has just put forward a proposal to exclude any foods imported by air from using the "organic" label on their products. In theory, the proposal is based around the "food miles" theory, which states that the nearer to the point of sale that food is grown, the better for the environment it is. The theory assumes that emissions from airplanes and long-haul trucks will be greater than any of the pollutants that result from shorter journeys. There are many situations in which the theory does hold up, but by and large, it has been debunked, so even though it is given as the primary reason for this suggested policy change, the real motivation is simply money.

The demand for organics is very high. Stores can charge more for organics, as can growers. By effectively prohibiting imports in a country where the farmland is so limited (compared to some other countries, such as New Zealand, Chile and the US), the Soil Association is simply driving high prices even higher. Such a move may support local farms, but unless their production is able to match demand, consumers are really going to feel the effects of a change like this one.

School administrators want to show their students that he line between right and wrong is hard and fast. They want to make sure that the students know where the boundaries lie and that they will face the consequences for crossing them. Different administrators do this with varying degrees of success and it is the ones who are firm but fair that end up with fewest disciplinary problems and the most respect from their students. The emphasis here should be on the "fair" part of the equation because it is easy to take this too far. A few months ago, we heard about a student who was punished because his father packed too much "junk food" in his lunch. This week, a student was given detention at the Wessex Community School in Cheddar, Somerset, England for "eating [an] apple outside a designated area, which [the headmaster] said was a breach of health and safety regulations." After refusing to attend after school detention on the grounds that the punishment did not fit the crime, the student was threatened with expulsion. All for eating an apple.

The school stands by the headmaster's zero-tolerance approach to rule breaking and has punished students for "not bringing a muffin to a cookery class" and sucking a mint (like an Altoid) while on the playground.

Pressing on with their intentions to improve the company's image, McDonald's has started to serve 100% Rainforest Alliance certified coffee beans. Rainforest Alliance is a New York-based nonprofit that certifies coffee production farms and facilities to a set of standards that mandate specific environmental protection policies, workers' rights and community involvement and the group says that McDonald's intends to expand the use of their certified coffee from the UK to the rest of their European outlets over the course of the year. For now, the coffee will be available in all 1,200 outlets of McDonald's UK, making the company the first major retailer in the country to use such a certification.

Many McDonald's outlets in the US offer fair-trade certified coffee from Green Mountain Coffee, but there is no nationwide policy mandating the use of one specifically certified coffee.

In an experiment filed for BBC2, nine volunteers were moved in a tented enclosure at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England to live on an ape-like, hunter-gatherer type of diet for two weeks to see what effect a mostly raw, low saturated fat, plant-based diet would have on their blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

The volunteers ranged in ages from 36-48 and they are up to 5kg of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and honey a day. Typical foods included: Broccoli, carrots, radishes,cabbage, tomatoes, watercress, strawberries, apricots, bananas, mangoes, melons, figs, plums and hazelnuts. Clearly the food was from all over the world and not just one region, but the meal plan did meet the daily nutritional and calorie requirements recommended for adults. Volunteers also drank water and, in the second week, were given "standard portions of cooked oily fish... a nod to a more hunter-gatherer lifestyle" of humans.

Volunteers did not report any loss of energy overall as a result of the diet, although there were "moments unhappiness and grumpiness" due to the living situation and there was a noticeable gas (farting) problem. Aside from that, the participants were in good spirits for most of the experiment and, to top it off, they experienced a number of health benefits. They lost an average of nearly 10 lbs, improved both their blood pressure from an average of 140/83 to 122/76 and decreased their cholesterol levels by 23%.

Jam and honey are the new orange - orange marmalade, that is. The slightly sweet preserve is rapidly falling out of fashion in England. It first gained popularity in England in the 17th century, when citrus fruits became common and the preservation technique used for cooking quinces was applied to them. Since that time the spread has only grown in popularity and, for at least the past several decades, could be considered to be a breakfast staple in many homes. In the last year, however, 440,000 households in Britain stopped buying marmalade. Statistics indicate that the reason for the decline may be younger consumers, as most in the under 45 age group consider it to not be sweet enough. 81% of marmalade is eaten by those over 45.

With the decline of marmalade comes the rise of jam and honey, which grow more popular every year, despite reports last year that indicated that jam, too, was falling from favor. Honey is up almost 5%, while jam is up 1.5%.

Retailers and manufacturers alike are now trying to find ways to draw more children to marmalade

One might expect price or taste to be the primary considerations when purchasing any food items, including beer and wine, but consumer research in the UK has shown that neither characteristic is more important to shoppers than brand is. 62% of men rate the brand of their beer as the most important consideration when purchasing it. Only 20% of men feel that price is the most important factor (30% of women rate price as a primary concern). It seems that label recognition is just as important when it comes to beer as when it comes to buying designer clothes.

To counteract this, more stores and bottle shops have been using special pricing to try to get consumers to buy certain brands. 33% of shoppers say that "they would be encouraged to go for a good 'offer' on a brand of beer that was not their first choice," almost double the percentage from last year. As a result, beer is sold in increasingly larger packaging, and although the bottles are smaller, to give the impression of value. The same applies to wine, where consumers look for promotions and money-off deals when making their purchases.

There is a problem with using a strategy known as "nutrient profiling," a strategy designed to help regulatory agencies determine what is - and what is not - junk food quickly and easily. It works by setting limits on the number of calories and the amount of fat, salt, sugar, etc. that any food product can have. Everything is held to the same standard based on a predetermined portion size. Advertisers, schools and government agencies using this see the food world in black and white and it makes it very easy to sort out the goof from the bad.

In theory, that is.

The problem is that it doesn't take into account what the food actually is. Last year in the US, Illinois introduced similar standards that left whole milk classified as "junk food." Now, in the UK, Ofcom's guidelines for food advertising classify cheese as junk food, as well as several other foods that wouldn't necessarily be perceived as junk food by the average consumer, because it is "high in fat, salt and[/or] sugar ." This means that cheese cannot be advertised on TV programs made for children or where a high proportion of the viewers are under 16.

The nutrient profiling system has led to complaints from food organizations, including the British Cheese Board, and calls for a change in structure. The BCB says that the portion size of cheese used was much too large and other groups say that it is unfair that natural, balanced foods are restricted while diet sodas and other low-cal processed foods are permitted.