The food mountain

Not only do we buy crap, but then we don't get round to eating it - about a third of food in the UK gets chucked out each year, costing each adult £420. Whatever happened to making things from leftovers? (We just don't eat enough soup, obviously...)

Mind, it's all very well Lord Haskins complaining that we're obsessed with sell-by dates "so that we throw away perfectly good food which happens to be out of code". He should try being pregnant and being bombarded with information about what you should and shouldn't eat, and how not to go near anything that may have been out of the fridge longer than 10 minutes or something that's a second past its sell-by date. It's enough to drive you to distraction.

No more cookies...

Just as I'm getting larger and larger, it seems like the whole world is going on a diet - even the Cookie Monster is giving up cookies in favour of fruit and veg.

Feed me better (2)

Ok, an update on school dinners so far...

• Ruth Kelly (education secretary) announced an extra £280 million for school dinners, which comes to at least 50p in ingredients per day for primary school kids and 60p per day for secondary. Hey, now they're getting the same as the Army dogs!
• The BBC had a look at school dinners around the world - not surprisingly, French and Norwegian kids eat well, and the Americans are probably even worse off then we are.
• Now we can get really worried, and look at what children in nurseries are eating (and the prospect here is even scarier, as they're often getting breakfast, lunch and tea.

On a completely different tack, square tins. Yes, square tins. Very pretty. Call me old fashioned, but I rather liked the old ones.

And for the ultimate in Japanese food, take a look at these guys. Never knew that sumo wrestlers were such chefs.