This is kind of like when the US Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes were not fruit.

The High Court in London decided that Pringles do not count as "crisps" (that's chips to us in the USA) for tax purposes. The VAT (value added tax) in England isn't applied to most foodstuffs, but potato crisps are subject to the tax. Lawyers for Prinlges, however, argued that since they are made from only 42% potato flour and their shape isn't based on anything natural, they are not really crisps and should therefore be exempt from the VAT.

According to Times Online, the High Court in London agreed, but don't count on that being the last word on the matter. England's Department of Revenue and Customs isn't happy about missing out on that tax money and is considering an appeal.

Launceton, Cornwall. From Flickr user biotron's Flickr.

I'm posting images of sausage counters the world over each weeknight (and occasionally weekend) witching hour until I run out. Please use the comments section to post links to your Flickr or personal site faves, and perhaps you'll see 'em posted here late some evening.

Previously-- Midnight Sausage: Lower East Side, Manhattan

It's an increasingly globalized world out there, with an increasingly global food market. That can lead to a certain amount of homogenization and difficulty for small producers of artisan foods. The idea behind the "Ten things to eat before they die" gala dinner in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, England this week is to bring attention to some of the worlds most endangered delicacies.

The spotlighted ingredients in the dinner aren't endangered by over consumption, but from under consumption. Items like the English asparagus that used to be a favorite of ocean liners but that's now grown in only four acres, and the Spanish capers that used to be famous but that now can't get sold outside of the local villages will be highlighted.

The event organizers wanted a thought provoking dinner. Part of the idea is to get some of these great foods known to foodies so that maybe high end retailers will pick them up, thus allowing the small producers to make a living selling their delicacies. I'd love to go, but as the dinner is in England and it costs about $160 (£85) it's a little out of the question. The goals of the planners are working, though: I am very intrigued by some of the items on the menu. Does anything on the menu strike your fancy? What would you try?

[Via Guardian Online]

Ok, imagine you saw an event on Facebook that was so cool you couldn't possibly pass it up. Well apparently that's what happened in East Sussex, England. There was to be a movie style pie fight, in which participants were encouraged to dress up and hit each other with whipped cream filled pie pans. The brains behind the operation were out to break the British record for pie fighting, which is currently at 70 people.

Unfortunately, it was so cool that too many people wanted in on the action. Over 1200 people indicated that they would be there for the pie fight. The local police were worried that they'd be unable to control the crowd if things went wrong, and they wouldn't be able to prevent non-participants from being hit.

The East Sussex police do have a sense of humor though. They told the original planners that a properly organized pie fight would be fine, so it's back to the drawing board for now. I know there's a record for everything, but pie fighting sounds like fun. I know I'd sign up if I saw it on Facebook. What would you do?

[Via Telegraph Online]

Believe it or not, 15-year old Faye Campbell of Great Britain has eaten nothing but french fries ("chips" to the Brits) for the past ten years.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Campbell suffers from a "bizarre physical condition which made her ill every time she tried anything other than chips."

This "bizarre" condition? Gastrooesophageal reflux...commonly known as heartburn.

For whatever reason, it took the girl's doctors way too long to realize the cause, and in the meantime, pardon me for being slightly insensitive, but she's been milking it for all it's worth.

I don't doubt that salty potatoes are easier to digest than, say, acidic fruits or juices. But how I'm impressed with how long this girl has convinced her parents to let her eat fries at every meal - every kid should be so lucky! And conveniently, french fries go down easier than say, Brussels sprouts or bananas...

The good news? To her parents' delight, Campbell has now moved onto foods other than french fries. Her diet now also consists of burgers, noodles, Chinese takeout, and waffles. (Don't you wish you had this girl's parents when you were 15?)

Earlier today, my mom called me to say she had sent me a link to an article she thought was interesting and might make a good Slashfood post (she's always looking out for me, that mother of mine). When I got home, I checked my email and found a link to this article, published on January 2nd, that discusses a study in which people in 13 countries were asked whether they agreed or not with the statement, "I like the taste of fast food too much to give it up."

Forty-five percent of Britons agreed with the statement, just barely ahead of the 44 percent of Americans who agreed. Canadians are in third place, with 37 percent of them unable to give up their junk food. Only 19 percent of people from France thought that junk food was too tasty to give up (and who can blame them, food in France is amazing).

They also asked questions about how people from the different countries thought it was best to lose weight, how often they weighed themselves and how often they went to the gym.

Britain's Prince Charles is passionate about food. He is especially interested in organic foods and in healthy eating, and he even has his own company, Duchy Originals, which specializes in organic and other sustainable products. Like others with similar viewpoints, Charles is not a fan of the fast food industry. Unlike others with similar viewpoints, however, Prince Charles seems to have a more radical view of what should be done. He recently suggested that McDonald's be banned.

A spokesman from McDonald's said that the company was "disappointed" by Charles' remarks, and noted that many members of the royal family, including the prince's sons, have eaten at the fast food chain.

Immediately, critics pointed out that many of the foods in the Duchy Originals line were, nutritionally, worse than Big Macs. The organic Duchy Originals Cornish pasty "contains 264 calories per 100g compared to the burger's 229 calories, and 5.5g of saturated fat as opposed to the Big Mac's 4.14g." Funnily, a spokesman for Duchy Originals said that no matter what the nutritional content of their products, good or bad, "It is up to consumers to decide whether to buy them."

Perhaps they think that customers in McDonalds restaurants are tied down and forced to eat french fries.

The traditional English breakfast includes most (or all) of the following foods: bacon, fried eggs, baked beans, sausages, tomatoes (often fried), mushrooms (also fried), toast, juice and tea or coffee. The breakfast is known as a "full" breakfast not only because it starts with a full plate, but because it leaves you with a full stomach. Despite its size, however, it is still only a meal and won't last forever no matter how you feel for the first hour or so after one.

For a never-ending breakfast, you'll have to consider what one man in Wales did. Dayne Gilbey, 19, volunteered to get a full English breakfast tattooed on the top of his head by tattoo artist Blane Dickinson. Dickinson put out a call for a volunteer because he wanted to do something different and because tattoos are often very personal, it can be hard to find interested parties for more unusual designs. Dickinson came up with the breakfast idea four years ago and has been waiting ever since. The tattoo took six hours to do and, if he had charged for it (which he didn't) would have cost £350 ($685).

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.

All sorts of safety issue plague parents and children these days. Playground equipment and activities are carefully monitored and toys are painstakingly screened, especially if, unlike video games, they involve movable parts that the kids might play with too vigorously, thus injuring themselves, or eat, injuring themselves further. When it comes to food, most safety issues have to do with concerns about food allergies, but perhaps in light of the burns allegedly caused by Starbucks hot chocolate in the hands of a very small child, some groups are looking to ban hot drinks altogether, rather than supervise their consumption.

The Pat-a-Cake Playgroup, which meets at a library in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire in England, has been "banned from serving tea and toast on health and safety grounds." The risk for burns is, apparently, far to high for the city council's liking, so the parents running the group have been told that they cannot boil water in the room where children are present, and that adults must drink their hot drinks in a separate area, far from the children, if not a separate room entirely.

As you can imagine, the parents are considering disbanding the group to escape from the oversight of the council before they demand that children be outfitted in protective gear at all times to avoid papercuts.

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