"british" news and stories

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.

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Rachael Ray got be one of the most trusted celebrities, essentially, because she is nice. It probably doesn't hurt that she is also cute and friendly, but if she wasn't as nice as she is, she wouldn't be as popular. In fact, people really like their celebrities to seem nice and friendly, with only a few exceptions. The number one exception, the scariest celebrity on TV, happens to be a chef as well: Gordon Ramsay. Ramsay is known for yelling, screaming and occasionally reducing people to tears on his TV shows Gordon's Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen and the F Word. He not only has a bad-boy attitude on TV, but he defends the fact that it - treating other people as though they are completely incompetent idiots - is his true character and not just an act.

If you're curious as to which other celebs made the British list, they included Anne Robinson (#2, from The Weakest Link), Fanny Cradock (#5, one of the first celebrity chefs), and Simon Cowell (#10, from American Idol).

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Lyle's Golden Syrup, manufactured by the British sugar company Tate & Lyle, has just been honored by the Guinness Book of World Records with the title of world's oldest brand. The sweet syrup is a byproduct of sugar refining and was first put into the distinctive green and gold tin in 1885. The packaging and the syrup have remained almost completely unchanged since that time. The product is found in more than 85% of British households and is popular in countries all over the world.

In the US, the syrup is found at some specialty stores, but is not terribly easy to come by. It has the consistency of corn syrup, but a much more unique flavor that carries over into whatever it is used to sweeten. There are any number of recipes that the syrup can be used in, but treacle tart and ANZAC biscuits are two that are well loved world wide.

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The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is mounting a campaign to educate Britons about "hidden salt, fat and sugar in common foods" to give people some perspective on the foods that they are putting into their bodies and to try to encourage healthy eating habits. Their focus, for the moment, is on crisps. A survey done by the BHF revealed that 49% of children from 8-15 ate at least one package of chips (crisps) each day, and 20% ate two or more. They are consuming roughly 5-liters of cooking oil every year at that rate, or about 1 1/3 gallons.

Crisp-addiction isn't limited to kids, though. As a whole, the nation consumes "a tonne of crisps every three minutes, enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool every 14 hours." Using the number provided by the BHF, which says that the average 1.2-oz packet of chips has 2.5-tsp of oil, there are about 950-gallons of cooking oil consumed for every tonne (2,204 lbs) of crisps, a massive amount over any length of time.

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MasterChef Goes Large is coming to BBC America this fall, giving food-loving US viewers a chance to check out a great British reality show. The show is a remake of an older, more subdued British show, simply called MasterChef, and is a culinary competition that challenges amateur cooks to face off against each other to see who is the Master Chef - sort of like Top Chef, only with a seemingly greater emphasis on sheer culinary skill, passion and talent and less on interpersonal conflicts. At least, as much as can be hoped for in any sort of reality show.

The number of contestant s narrows as the season goes on and the chefs face multiple types of cooking challenges. In the Invention test, each chef has less than one hour and a set of ingredients that must be used within the time gram to create a dish. The Pressure test puts the amateurs into real kitchens to see how they fare, as well as giving viewers an inside look at some great restaurants. And for the Final test, chefs are expected to put out their best 2 course meal for a review by the judges.

The show premiers on BBC America on October 2, but if you want to get in the mood to watch, blogger Maki of i was just really very hungry played along with the invention challenges when they aired in Europe earlier this year and tried to make 40-minute meals using the same ingredients that the MasterChef contestants were given to work with.