Gourmet salts contain almost 100 per cent sodium chloride, just like average table salt, meaning that they are likely to have exactly the same effect on your blood pressure and health.

Claims that rock and sea salts are “natural” and “contain minerals” are misleading and should be ignored, according to the report, which has been published by scientists leading a campaign to reduce the amount of salt consumed in the UK, backed by Which?, the consumers’ association.

A survey of Which? members suggested that almost 50 per cent of consumers thought that it was worth paying more for gourmet salt. About 25 per cent thought gourmet salts were healthier, while 39 per cent believed they were more natural.

Sue Davies, chief policy adviser at Which?, said: “Many of us are trying to reduce the amount of salt in our diet but our research shows people are needlessly spending more money on ‘premium’ salt because they often believe it is healthier than traditional table salt.”

Gourmet salts contain almost 100 per cent sodium chloride, just like average table salt, meaning that they are likely to have exactly the same effect on your blood pressure and health. One leading campaigner said that the large crystals favoured by gourmet salt manufacturers were possibly more damaging because they took longer to dissolve, and taste less salty as a result.

“It is disgraceful that chefs still encourage people to use so much sea and rock salt,” said a spkesman at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine.  He added  that measures had been taken to warn of the dangers of salt and health, with consumption in Britain falling by 10 per cent from 2005 to 2008. There has also been an increase in demand for LoSalt, which has 66 per cent less sodium.

Nutritionalists and healthcare professionals are  angry at claims made on packaging to encourage consumers to pay high prices. “They should not be allowed to get away with it!”

Among the offenders identified by the report was the Cornish Sea Salt Co. It claims to retain “over 60 naturally occurring trace elements and minerals essential for wellbeing”. It typically costs 75p per 100g, compared with just 8p for Saxa table salt. The most expensive salt in the study was fine Himalayan Crystal Salt, with a 1kg bag costing £13.46, or £1.35 per 100g. It claims to be “a salt that’s good for you . . . that even your doctor will like”.

Your GP is much more likely to be happier if you were to invest the money saved by not buying gourmet salt on a good quality blood pressure monitor which you can use regularly at home to keep a record on your blood pressure – one of the leading causes of heart disease and stroke.

A nutritionist specialising in studying the effects of salt and health said: “Most of the salt we eat, about 75 per cent, is hidden in food we buy.”

Cornish Sea Salt Co declined to issue a statement but pointed to articles that highlighted the health benefits of unrefined sea salt over table salt.

They were the sheep that passed in the night. A 1,500-strong flock has been spirited away in the dark from fields in Lincolnshire in what is believed to be the biggest case of rustling in Britain in modern times.

The theft at Stenigot near Louth, which fleeced the farmer of an estimated £100,000, is the latest in a spate of crimes driven by the rising price of lamb.

The level of organisation needed to carry out last weekend’s operation has surprised insurers and police.

“It would have involved sheepdogs, up to five articulated lorries and three men with each truck,” said a spokesman for NFU Mutual, the insurance company. “There would have been a lot of whistling and calling to the dogs. It is a remarkable achievement.”

He added that even in broad daylight experienced shepherds would find it hard to move so many animals in less than three hours.

The company estimates the cost of sheep rustling has risen more than fivefold in the past year. It says thefts of 100 to 200 animals have now become common and has received 142 claims for rustling in the first six months of this year, compared with 156 for the whole of 2010.

There is money to be made from lamb. The cost of 1kg (2.2lb) of British chops has gone up almost 40% in three years, from an average of 1,039p in July 2008 to 1,424p in July this year.

The price rises date originally from the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001 when the number of sheep decreased sharply. More recently, falling farm profits and two harsh winters, leading to poor pastures, have reduced numbers further, while the weak pound has encouraged farmers to sell them abroad.

Recent thefts, reminiscent of those encountered by Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave, include 300 sheep taken from a farm near Hungerford, Berkshire, 200 from a flock on Dartmoor in Devon and a similar number from Cockburnspath, Berwickshire — as well as 271 at Ramsbottom, Lancashire.

Previously, the biggest livestock theft in recent years was in 2009 when 500 piglets were taken from a farm in Staffordshire. Ducks and bees have also been singled out.

Sheep rustling has attracted skilled criminals in the past. The 18th-century highwayman Dick Turpin began his career stealing them for his butcher’s shop in Essex.

Modern thieves, as well as being well organised with fleets of transporters and a network of helpers to process the animals, are adept at pulling the wool over the eyes of police and other investigators.

Farmers are required to tag and document each animal, suggesting thieves may be falsifying records or be in league with slaughterhouses willing to kill the animals illicitly. Some may also end up in the fields of dishonest farmers who “launder” their identities.

Organised rural crime is a growing menace, although it is more common with machinery than livestock. “We’ve just recovered a Land Rover that was stolen from a farmer in Warwickshire as he went to unlock a gate,” said Chris Ruff, a detective with the vehicle crime intelligence service of the Association of Chief Police Officers. “It ended up in South Africa.” The service also recovered nine tractors from Poland.

There were 507,906 crimes in the countryside between January and June, compared with 195,907 over the previous six months, according to research commissioned by NFU Mutual.

It believes the spike in rural crime is in part driven by rising prices for sheep meat and materials such as scrap metals and diesel fuel — and peaks each April.

Almost five million people have been affected as torrential rain submerged more than 20,000 villages.

One can hardly find a dry place in the flood-hit areas

President Asif Ali Zardari asked for the help of the UN and other international organisations over the weekend as further heavy rains were forecast for the coming days. Sindh was among the worst hit region in last year’s floods in Pakistan, which killed about 2,000 people and made 11 million homeless.

The UN, which has described the situation as critical, is carrying out an urgent assessment. Aid organisations warned in July that Pakistan was unprepared for a repeat of flooding with hundreds of thousands still in camps a year after the country’s worst-ever natural disaster.

Witnesses said that the situation appeared to be worse than last year. Amar Guriro, an environmentalist and journalist, said: “One can hardly find a dry place in the flood-hit areas. I found hundreds of the corpses of dead people, goats, buffaloes, cows, donkeys and other animals.”

More than 2,500 relief camps have already been established in the province giving shelter to more than 225,000 people, officials claim. They admit, however, that since all the main roads leading to the affected area are under water it is difficult for supplies to get through. Mr Guiriro said he saw no evidence that food, shelter and medical supplies were reaching those worst affected.

In a statement the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said: “The situation for those impacted by recent monsoons and subsequent floods is critical, with thousands of people in need of life-saving assistance due to the lack of food and safe drinking water and the loss of livelihoods and homes.”

The UN children’s agency said up to 2.5 million children in southern Pakistan had been affected by the monsoon floods

As with a traditional superhero, it helped that Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall had such a straightforward moral message; one that he kicked off six months ago in his first Fish Fight. “Things are not just bad, they’re mad,” he said with comic-book simplicity as he reminded us of practices such as “discards”, whereby fish caught that exceed quotas, are too young or too unpopular are simply chucked, dead, back in the sea. To the obscenely wasteful tune of more than a million tonnes per year.

It also helped enormously that, unlike a traditional superhero, Hugh created a gimmick-free zone, a dressed-down approach to revolutionary change with weapons no more controversial than an iPhone app, showing viewers how to cook gurnard instead of cod. Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall neither resorted to dressing up as a mackerel nor weeping salty tears as he pushed for progress (the brief presence of Jamie Oliver reminded us that, in other hands, both would have been viable campaigning methods).

Instead he had started a Mexican wave through the good, old-fashioned means of getting people to write to their MP; one that, backed with camera-power, had led to the funding of a government study and an emergency debate on discards. How gracefully, understatedly Hugh knew how to use the telly. The last large tuna supplier on his hit list converted to friendlier fishing methods not after any guerrilla action but after a one-line e-mail sent to the head honcho. Hugh’s simple PS: “I am being filmed sending this to you so an early reply would be good.”

Of course, the camera wasn’t exclusively a force for good. How daft did the MP Zac Goldsmith look — he who had catalysed the emergency debate — when he almost missed it. Instead of moving to the chamber he was still busy in the lobby, flirting with HF-W’s lens. And note Hugh’s careful phrasing as he took the fight to the EU: “Every MEP in Brussels wants to be seen to be supporting the Fish Fight”. “Seen to” indeed: a comedy rota of MEPs scrabbled to be in-shot with HF-W, some choreographing photo opportunities so explicitly that they even told the chef how to position his hands. As we left Hugh and his remarkable leaps forward, he noted that he would have to keep an eye on this seat of power, to make sure the EU reforms he had pushed for “actually happen”. Implicit in these parting words seemed to be: of all the species we had met on Fish Fight, the slipperiest perhaps is the politician.

New home building in Bovey Tracey at Monterey Park

On the site of the Cardew Pottery in Bovey Tracey, Taylor Wimpey have begun this development of new homes in Devon.

New homes are being built in Bovey Tracey at Monterey Park situated at the end of the Bovey Straights. There will be a range of 2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroom homes for sale.

These new homes will offer a convenient place to live in on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon – home owners will benefit from a level easy walk into Bovey Tracey where there are many facilities and amenities.

The Market Town of Newton Abbot is only four miles away and the A38 provides commuters with a quick, easy road access to Exeter and Plymouth.

First Time Buyer Mortgages

Hopefully there will be help for first-time buyers through a variety of mortgages for one of the selection of  apartments and 2,3,4 & 5 bedroom new houses being built in Bovey Tracey.




Following the 2011 budget statement to help first time buyers get a mortgage,  a £250 million scheme was launched to help first-time buyers who want to buy a new-build property but can’t afford the high deposits.

Under the First Buy Scheme, the government and the housebuilders will jointly provide a 20 per cent loan to top up first-time buyers’ own deposit of 5 per cent. This will allow people to take out a mortgage for 75 per cent of the property.

Loans will be free of charge for the first five years and repaid when the property is resold. The funds will then be recycled to fund more homes for the scheme.

The First Buy Scheme should help 10,000 families to get onto the housing ladder, with the first homes expected to be available from September 2011,  in time to help those looking to buy a new house on the Monterey Park development in Bovey Tracey.

To fnd out more about help for first time buyers visit http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/Budget/Budget2011/DG_WP195617

Margaret wrote:

Well this has certainly made interesting reading. I have laughed so much at some of the stories but think it may be nervous laughter as I have two buckets of the stuff sitting in my garage! I have never attempted to make my own wine, beer or indeed anything like this before so don’t quite know what to expect. I will be bottling it tomorrow into plastic screw top bottles which previously had fizzy water in them, compliments of Tesco. I am wondering what to expect from the bottles having read some of the hilarious comments on here. Should I prepare for the worst? dress in combat gear, goggles, hard hat and wear asbestos gloves? Perhaps I could hire a suit of armour from somewhere, better to be safe than sorry! I will keep it in the garage I think, safely covered in a duvet and a tarpaulin. Only hope I like the stuff after all of this!

Hedgerows are festooned with elderflower in full bloom right now so once again I urge you to go pick a few heads (ideally on a warm still sunny day) and make your own delightful drinks – just remember to leave some flowers to mature into elderberries for the wine makers and of course our feathered friends.

Cheers

Royal Wedding Video

The couple get knitted

Royal Wedding Pizza

Royal Wedding Jelly Bean

Royal Wedding Masks – click to enlarge missus

Click for a full face

By scratching the card viewers are able to experience life like aromas from London sewers, a New York tannery and “muddy” Paris – three cities featured in the series on BBC 2

For those who weren’t able to pick up a copy the cards are availble from public libraries while stocks last – find your nearest library here

Filthy London

Beginning this new three-part series on the histories of three of the world’s leading modern cities, Dan Snow looked at the squalor of medieval London.

The stench and filth in the streets was unimaginable, consisting of a ripe cocktail of mud, dung, urine and excrement. Added to this repulsive waste were the foul chemicals from leather- tanning factories and the putrid run-off from brewers, butchers and fishmongers. The only way to get through these open sewers was to walk on raised wooden overshoes, like miniature stilts.

Dan Snow has always been an hands-on historian, but there are plenty of occasions in this vivid programme when he must have wished that he had stayed in the library. He slaughters a pig, rakes muck and retches at the sight of raw sewage.

Heres a clip:

Future episodes of Filthy cities will feature Niffy New York and Pongy Paris.

Twitter this #dontbenastyhaveapasty

The cornish pasty has been awarded protected food status by the good thinking people of the European Union.

From mid-March only pasties actually made in Cornwall can be called Cornish

The Cornish pasty, once the daily fare of tin miners, is going back to its origins thanks to this  protected food status granted by the European Commission.

From March 2011 only savoury pasties actually made in Cornwall can be called Cornish. The Protected Geographical Indication status also lays down the recipe and exact appearance of an official Cornish pasty.

The cornish pasty  joins over forty other British food products, including whitstable oysters, Dorest Blue cheese and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese (what a mouthful), whose origins are protected by law.

The decision follows almost a decade of campaigning by cornish pasty producers who have been increasingly concerned about competitors from outside the region being able to legally pass off their products as Cornish when they aren’t “proper jobs”

The essential ingredients of a Cornish pasty are:

• “chunky filling” of uncooked beef (skirt preferably)
• swede NOT carrot
• potato
• onion
• light seasoning
• no additives or preservatives

The ingredients are cooked together in a classic D shaped pastry case  glazed with milk or egg to ensure it is golden brown in colour, with a crimped crust running along one side.

Alan Adler, chairman of the Cornish Pasty Association, which represents about 40 makers and first applied for protected status in 2002, said that authentic Cornish pasties could still be baked elsewhere in Britain but need to be prepared in Cornwall. He said: “By guaranteeing the quality of the Cornish pasty, we are helping to protect our British food legacy.

“We lag far behind other European countries like France and Italy that have hundreds of food products protected, and it’s important that we value our foods just as much.”

David Rodda of the Cornwall Development Company, and spokesman for the association, said that the new status would protect Cornwall’s economy.

The association’s members produce 87 million pasties a year, worth a total of £60 million.

“Receiving protected status for the Cornish pasty is good news for consumers but also for the rural economy. By protecting our regional food heritage, we are protecting local jobs,” he said.

“Thousands of people in Cornwall are involved in the pasty industry and it’s important that the product’s quality is protected for future generations.”

The earliest known recipe for a Cornish pasty is dated 1746 and is held by the Cornwall Record Office in Truro. Legend has it that the pasty started life as lunch for miners who carried it by the crimped “handle”.

A spokesperson from Nosh Blog Amateur Gastronomy remarked “I thought that Devonshire pasties were the original pasty of the land….am I mistaken?”