A little bit of salt makes the crisps go down
WE WANT to pose a question to Walkers, the firm that dominates those aisles of UK supermarkets that are piled high with giant packets of what the rest of the world knows as potato chips but the British call crisps. Itâs a simple question: what is the guideline daily amount (GDA) of salt for a child?
We ask because of a sterling piece of research carried out by Jethro Jessop in the course of his weekly shop. Jethro noticed that each packet of Walkers crisps displays a panel of nutritional information showing how much salt, fat, sugar and so on the crisps contain, and what proportion each is of a childâs GDA. He also noticed that this information appears bizarrely inconsistent.
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We decided to replicate Jethroâs research in our local supermarket and this is what we found. According to the nutritional information panel, a 12-pack of Walkers Wotsits contains 0.4 grams of salt per pack, which the panel says amounts to 9 per cent of a childâs GDA. This would mean that the GDA is 4.444 grams a day. A 12-pack of Walkers Quavers also contains 0.4 grams of salt per pack. This, however, is apparently 11 per cent of a childâs GDA, giving a GDA of 3.636 grams per day. So it is probably best to turn instead to a 12-pack of Walkers Squares. These also contain 0.4 grams of salt, but this time thatâs only 7 per cent of the GDA, making it 5.714 grams a day. So children can eat more Squares than Wotsits or Quavers and still keep within the safety guidelines.
Or can they? Does the amount of salt children can consume safely really vary according to the kind of crisps they eat? Which is the correct GDA of salt for children â 4.444 grams, 3.636 grams, 5.714 grams or none of these? We look forward to assistance from Walkers to help us understand whatâs going on here.
Senior citizens on trampolines
SURELY this isnât a good idea, thought Izzy Hanson as she came across a feature entitled âAlternative ways to treat every ailmentâ while leafing through a copy of the womenâs magazine My Weekly. This included a section on osteoporosis which recommended yoga (why not?), osteopathy (possibly), aromatherapy massage (well, perhaps) and trampolining.
What? Trampolining to treat osteoporosis? Yes, indeed, because âthe time youâre weightless between landings allows a gravitational pull to release all the nasty toxins in your systemâ.
Please. No. Izzy must be right. With or without releasing nasty toxins, we are frankly unconvinced that a split second of weightlessness might have this effect or do anything at all to alleviate osteoporosis.
Driving while engaged in telepathy
A SIGN on an overhead gantry on the M1 motorway near Leeds in the north of England reads âTHINK DONâT PHONEâ. Rowan Brown is willing to do his best to obey this exhortation to use telepathy, but he is concerned that the effort involved would be even more distracting to his driving than using his phone would. He wants to be sure that the transport authorities who erected the sign are sure that âdriving while engaged in telepathyâ is safe and not an offence.
SOMETIMES the titles of press releases about advances in technology can read entirely lucidly to people familiar with the field, but are decidedly obscure to everyone else. An example received by our colleague Jeff Hecht in Boston is âBunkspeed Releases Free Beta Plug-In for Rhinoâ.
On other occasions, titles of learned papers offer greater clarity, but at the cost of conjuring up mental pictures you could do without. Felix Naughton directed us to one such example in Life Sciences, vol 48, p 2129: âInhalational administration of cocaine in sheepâ.
CHECKING with the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) to see if his business listing needed to be renewed on its website, Miles Lefler got a shock. Its membership coordinator emailed him to say: âAs all 22,000 members expire tomorrow we are trying to get everyone renewed in the least amount of time.â
âYou have to wonder about the ISAâs moral character,â Miles observes. âThey knew that all of their members would be dead the next day, yet they were making haste to renew our memberships and so take our renewal fees, even though we would no longer be around to enjoy the privileges of membership.â
He is glad to report that despite the ISAâs gloomy prognosis he is still alive. He wonders how the other 21,999 members fared.
FINALLY, David Sandilands from Edinburgh in the UK reports on a pack of condoms bought at the supermarket Sainsburyâs which had a security label stating: âPlease remove prior to putting in the microwave.â David is worried that he might have dozed off and missed a crucial part of his sex education classes at school.
âThe entirely flat cotton bed sheet that Andy Coleman bought from the department store House of Fraser came with a label telling him to wash it inside outâ