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No birthday is complete without a tasty piece of cake.

But did you know that the serenade of out of tune happy birthdays you get each year can actually make that jam sponge taste even better!

A study from Minnesota University revealed rituals such as saying grace, making a birthday wish when 

blowing out your candles or even just cutting cake can improve the flavour of the food.

The study known as the Psychological Science journal  included a test where participants were given a piece of chocolate and told to break it in half without unwrapping it first, and then eat one half before unwrapping the other and eating it too.

The results showed that those who performed the ritual rated the chocolate more highly than those who ate it normally.

We talked back in our blog on May 10 about the impact taste and smell can have on the food we eat.

But could rituals surrounding food have more of an impact on how much we enjoy things.

Do you agree with the results of the study? What do you do to enjoy food the most?

Let us know your thoughts.

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“I wouldn’t say that processed food, ready meals and even takeaways aren’t relevant to modern life, it’s just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly.” –  Jamie Oliver

The days of the infamous Turkey Twizzler are a thing of the past thanks to Jamie Oliver’s campaign on school dinners back in 2005.

But how much has changed in the past eight years?

Well just last week plans were put forward to ban packed lunches and pupils barred from leaving school during breaks to buy junk food under a government plan to increase the take-up of school meals.

The proposal drawn up by John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby, the founders of food company Leon, aims to tackle the poor public image of school meals.

It’s estimated that parents spend almost £1bn on packed lunches but only 1% of them meet nutritional standards.

Plans put in place would also see cooking become part of the curriculum until children are 14 and schools could also offer lessons to parents and their children after school.

So how many children eat school meals at the moment? Well 57% take a packed lunch or buy food outside school.

And almost a fifth of UK children are obese by the time they leave primary school.

Yes the new plans may take the pressure off concerned parents at home who want their children to eat healthily but are also on a tight budget.

But should we deny children the chance to be an individual and get involved in making their own packed lunch? 

That surely is another way of encouraging them to learn about food and its nutritional value.

Did you prefer school dinners or a packed lunch at school? Do you the new plans would help to improve children’s health at school?

‘The best thing since sliced bread’ is a phrase that many will be familiar with.

But where does it actually come from?

Well this week marks the 85^th anniversary since the invention by Otto Frederick Rohwedder which put an end to shoddily hacked up pieces of bread and hours of sweat and tears.

However the route to the revolutionary invention was far from straightforward.

Rohwedder was a jeweler by profession and was so sure that sliced bread would be a sensation that he sold his three jewelry stores and invested all his money into the new venture.

The first prototype held the slices together using metal hat pins but due to them continuously falling out this was an unpopular method for bakeries.

In 1917 disaster struck when a fire destroyed the factory containing both the blueprints and original prototype of the slicer.

This didn’t deter Rohwedder who spent the next couple of years rebuilding his funds and finding investors and working as an investment and security agent in order to support his family.

In 1927, he designed a further bread-slicing machine, this time it wrapped the the loaves in paper to keep the bread fresh.

By 1933 80 per cent of the bread being produced in America’s bakeries were using Rohwedder’s slicing machine.

But the iconic phrase actually originates from the marketing of America’s Wonder Bread, one of the first major brands to mass-market pre-sliced bread in the 1930s.

This very day we consume the equivalent of 220 million slices of bread, enough to cover the Wembley pitch 51 times over.

Could you live without sliced bread? They certainly go perfectly with a few slices of Speyside Specialities black pudding jammed in between them!

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For many of us out there nice food is a guilty pleasure and for others it’s spending our hard earned cash on the latest designer gear.

We take a look at five of the top wackiest clothes items crafted entirely from food.

In at No.5 it’s the spaghetti dress with meatball necklace. This was part of American fashion designer Jeremy Scott’s 2006 collection ‘Food Fight.’

No.4 sees the fusion between every girls’ dream and something their husbands would chew on with a beer in front of the T.V…the beef jerky Chanel handbag.

Designed by Nancy Wu and made from 100% beef jerky this bag was crafted by hand-sewing sheets of the air-dried meat. No need to slip a snack in your handbag from later.

In at No.3, perhaps the best solution for brides on a budget, the cupcake gown. 
Not only will it having your guests talking about it for weeks afterwards but you can also tick your wedding favours off the list.

 

No.2 is something you could pictures seeing in Charlie and the Cholocate Factory. German bakers Lambertz crafted an edible bubble dress made out of 100% solid chocolate, worn by German model Alena Gerber at an annual show in Munich in January 2010.

And at No.1, what better way to wake up in the morning than to slip on a pair of your comfiest slippers. Even better if you can stick them in the toaster, fry and egg and they set you up for your day. European designers R& E Praspaliauskas crafted these crusty delights which can be yours for just €22.

What’s the strangest food clothing item you’ve come across? Do you agree with our list?

We spoke recently about the impact the coldest spring for 50 years has had on our supply chain.

The met office revealed the average temperature from March to May was just 43F.

We had to re-evaluate the price we charged for our products due to our oatmeal prices rising 50%, our beef dripping by 75% an muntok white pepper, which soared by an incredible 350%.

Further news arose this week of the effects it’s having on food production as a whole.

Britain is expected to import nearly 2.5 million tonnes of wheat this year to cover the shortfall.

But it’s not just wheat that has suffered. Oilseed rape and oats have suffered along with sugar beet that has been hit by a mystery condition that has stopped seeds germinating and has reduced production by 50% in some areas.

The British Agriculture Bureau earlier this year revealed flooding had caused £1.3bn of damage in 2012.

Thankfully it’s not doom and gloom for everyone. Britain biggest strawberry grower Harry Hall predicts the long winter will make for a succulent soft fruit crop.

At the moment food prices don’t look likely to be affected too much. But Weetabix did have to stop production of some of its breakfast cereals as a result of the disastrous wheat harvest in April. 

If the extreme weather caused a surge in prices, what would be the first food you would cross off your weekly shopping list? Have you noticed a lack of any products in your supermarkets from this time last year?

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