Food-related conundrums!

Theresa May made brownies for BBC Radio's Test match Special and claims this as proof that she can multi-task; ie run the country and bake at the same time! I'm betting she has someone to clean number 10 for her and that she doesn't do all her own food shopping, meal planning and preparation. Not quite the same as a working mum!

And when did we start cooking brownies? When I was a child, brownies were 7- to 11-year-old girls in brown and yellow uniforms, doing activities with Brown Owl and Tawny Owl, earning badges for being able to clean shoes, make cups of tea, do rudimentary first aid and so on before "flying up" to become Girl Guides. They were divided into little teams of up to six members, called imaginatively "sixes", led by a "sixer" and all named after magical, mythical creatures such as gnomes and elves. I was a "Pixie" and eventually got to be a sixer. We were certainly not chocolate cakes!

Coconut water is the thing to drink. More and more people are drinking it, including famous folk like Madonna and Rihanna. The UK is the third biggest market for it, after the US and Brazil. I have never drunk it. Am I in a minority? I am used to that. Ten years or so ago I took a bunch of students to Paris to a conference on Europe. One of the sessions was run by one of the founders of the Innocent Drinks company, talking about how they had built up the their company. They began by asking if anyone had never had an Innocent smoothie. There was me and possibly one other person. My students were highly amused.

This was before all the health pundits started saying that smoothies were not necessarily the best way to get your "five a day". That has not stopped people drinking smoothies and buying them ready made. The Innocent Drinks company is now run by Cocacola. The founders sold a 10-20% stake kn the company to Cocacola in 2009, retaining operational control, becoming richer by £30 million pounds and almost instantly losing their ethical rating from Ethical Consumer magazine. Such is the price of success.

Since then Cocacola has gradually bought more and more of the company. The three founders have lost control of their creation but they have made a lot of money!

Here's some more food related stuff: beware of salt! Sea salt is becoming contaminated by plastic pollution. Statistics reveal that people who consume 2.3g of salt a day ingest 660 particles of plastic every year. British adults on average eat 8.1g of salt per day. I am fairly sure I eat less and I barely use it in cooking. I have no idea how harmful 660 particles of plastic are - the scientist don't seem to know either - but I am pretty sure we are not meant to consume it.

Be careful what you put in your mouth!