Fairy tales
It seems that these cash strapped times have gone unnoticed by one of the UK’s allegedly hardest working individuals; the tooth fairy. An estimated 15m milk teeth fall out each year, making an average of 42,000 ‘money drops’ as they clock on for their night time shift.
A recent study in the UK found that 70 per cent of parents pay at least £1 per tooth, up from an average of 15p in the 1960s to £1.50 today. Apparently parents in Yorkshire are the biggest tooth fairy advocates, with over 76 per cent paying at least £1 per tooth, in comparison with parents in the West Midlands where six per cent refuse to pay anything.
However, in an out-of-court settlement at the end of last year a five-year-old boy received a massive £9,000 in compensation after having to have 13 teeth extracted. The parents sued as they claimed the dentist failed to spot the caries. I wonder how much they left him under the pillow?
New Year food fads
Predictable as ever, the New Year has brought with it a host of items on food, diets and weight-loss after the Christmas excesses. It seems though that we are not paying as much attention to the ingredients of the foods we eat as we should.
A survey commissioned by the Department of Health’s ‘Change for Life’ campaign of 2,000 UK residents regarding the fat, salt and sugar content of their foods found that 77 per cent failed to get more than half the questions right. More than half (58 per cent) didn’t know a fat-free strawberry yoghurt contained more sugar than a bowl of cornflakes or a black coffee with two sugars.
In other shock news, cereals in the UK have up to 30 per cent more sugar than their equivalent versions in the USA. Seemingly Kellogg’s Special K has 17g of sugar per 100g in the UK compared with 13g in the USA. A spokesman said that recipes varied from country to country to cater for different palates adding ‘When you look at the amounts you are talking about it’s still low when you consider what people eat across the day’. And you have to admit he does have a point.
I Dentures please
We all get frustrated from time to time these days with identity checks - be they passwords, login names, PIN numbers or documents such as passports, driving licences and a host of other screening methods.
A post office assistant recently had an unexpected surprise when she asked an elderly lady for some ID when requesting to draw some money. Protesting that she had been a customer at the branch for years, and had never previously been asked so didn’t bother bringing any with her. She was about to walk away empty handed when she suddenly turned back to the counter took out her upper denture and pushed it across towards the startled clerk. ‘There’ she said, pointing at her name and NHS number incorporated in the acrylic, ‘satisfied’. She got the cash!