Life and style | theguardian.com

Obesity experts campaign to cut sugar in food by up to 30%

Sarah Boseley — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:02:00 GMT

Doctors say marketing ploys to cut calories are ineffective, now industry must slowly lower sugar content of processed foods

Obesity experts are launching a campaign to put pressure on the government and industry to cut the sugar content of food and drinks by up to 30%. The high-profile scientists and doctors behind Action on Sugar say that gradual cuts in the amount of sugar in ready meals, cereals, sweets and soft drinks will not be noticed by the public, but will result in a reduction in the calories we all consume.

A 20-30% reduction in sugar over time will cut our calorie intake by about 100kcal a day – and more for those who consume a lot of sugar.

That is enough to halt or even reverse the obesity epidemic and reduce the toll of diabetes and other disease, say the doctors, who include Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar, and Professors John Wass, academic vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians, Philip James of the International Association for the Study of Obesity and Sir Nicholas Wald of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine.

Action on Sugar aims to do what a similar campaign launched in the 1990s called Cash (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) successfully did for salt levels in our food. It is chaired by Professor Graham MacGregor, who also heads Cash.

"Provided the sugar reductions are done slowly, people won't notice," he said. "In most products in the supermarkets, the salt has come down by between 25% and 40%."

People had not noticed the difference. Kellogg's Cornflakes contain 60% less salt than they used to.

The government's strategy against obesity has been to agree voluntary curbs on marketing to children and calorie reduction through a public health "responsibility deal".

But MacGregor and others say it is not working and has had no effect on calorie intake. "We must start to slowly reduce the amount of calories people consume by slowly taking out added sugar from foods and soft drinks," he said.

The industry argues that sugars are forms of carbohydrate, which we need in our diet, and that we should cut calories by eating less, but there is no specific reason to target sugar.

"Sugars, or any other nutrient for that matter, consumed as part of a varied and balanced diet are not a cause of obesity, to which there is no simple or single solution," said the Food and Drink Federation. "That's why the food industry has been working on a range of initiatives with other players to tackle obesity and diet-related diseases."

The sugars in food and drinks are listed on the label, they said, so everybody can see what is in the products they buy. The industry has worked to reduce salt levels and saturated fats, but there is no evidence that sugars are particularly harmful, it said.

Aseem Malhotra, cardiologist and science director of the new group, disagrees, pointing to studies that suggest sugar increases the risk of diabetes, regardless of whether or not a person is overweight.

"Added sugar has no nutritional value and the body doesn't need any added sugar," he said. Claims by industry that sugar was needed for energy were untrue, he added.

The campaign is worried about hidden sugars in processed foods, such as the nine teaspoons in a standard 330ml can of Coke, the six teaspoons in a Muller Crunch Corner strawberry shortcake yoghurt, and the six in a 375g portion of Sharwood's sweet and sour chicken with rice. A serving of Kellogg's Frosties contains four teaspoons and Heinz classic tomato soup has four teaspoons in 300g.

Saturated fat contains more calories per gram than sugar, but Lustig, professor of paediatric endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, said that not all calories were the same.

"The science says that sugar is different – that sugar is dangerous exclusive of its calories, just like alcohol," he said. He called sugar "the alcohol of childhood", which was likely to put children at greater risk of fatty liver disease and diabetes.

Yoni Freedhoff, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, Canada, another adviser to the group, said: "Not only has added sugar found its way into virtually everything we eat, but worse still, the use of sugar as a means to pacify, entertain and reward children has become normalised to the point that questioning our current sugary status quo often inspires anger and outrage."

Simon Capewell, professor of clinical epidemiology at Liverpool University, called sugar the new tobacco. "Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting parents and children by a cynical industry focused on profit not health," he said.

The Department of Health said: "Helping people eat fewer calories, including sugar, is a key part of the responsibility deal and our efforts to reduce obesity. There are 38 businesses signed up to reduce calories, but we want to go further still, and are discussing this with the food industry.

"As part of the responsibility deal calorie reduction pledge, Coca Cola has reduced calories in some of its soft drinks brands by at least 30%. Mars has reduced its single chocolate portions to no more than 250 calories, and Tesco has reduced the number of calories sold in its own brand soft drinks by over one billion."

Sarah Boseley

Sudoku 2,703 hard

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:01:00 GMT

Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

For a helping hand call our solutions line on 09068 338 228. Calls cost 60p per minute at all times. Service supplied by ATS.

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IVF babies have greater risk of complications, study finds

Ian Sample — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 22:01:02 GMT

Single children born after IVF are found to be nearly twice as likely to be born early, stillborn or die within 28 days of birth

Children born after IVF treatment have a greater risk of complications ranging from preterm birth to neonatal death, according to a major study into the health of newborns.

Doctors found that single IVF babies were nearly twice as likely to be born early, to be stillborn, or to die within the first 28 days of delivery compared with those conceived naturally.

But the study, based on more than 300,000 births in South Australia between 1986 and 1992, did not look at whether IVF treatment was to blame, and leaves open the possibility that the IVF babies fared worse for other reasons, such as health problems, or older age, that caused couples to be infertile in the first place.

"There is in all likelihood a contribution from both the treatment and patient factors," said Michael Davies, who led the study at the University of Adelaide. "We have very unfriendly work practices that mean families defer child-bearing until women are relatively old, and that is tragic."

The age of the medical records, with the most recent being from 2002, means they provide an overview of newborn baby health that is more than a decade old, during which time IVF technology and clinical procedures have advanced.

"We need to add more data to see if the improvements in embryology and clinical treatment over the past five to 10 years have flowed through to improve these perinatal outcomes. That is quite plausible, but we do not know," Davies said.

The researchers found that preterm birth rates rose from 4.7% in naturally conceived babies to 8% in those born to couples who had IVF. Neonatal deaths rose from 0.3% in naturally conceived babies to 0.5% in IVF children.

The findings build on previous work that has found similar rates of birth problems in IVF babies. A survey of medical reviews published in 2004 found that IVF babies had around twice the risk of death shortly before or after birth, and a similarly increased risk of low birthweight and preterm birth.

"What's hard to tease out is how much is due to the treatment itself and how much is due to underlying infertility which the ART [assisted reproductive technology] is overcoming," said Dagan Wells at the Institute of Reproductive Sciences at Oxford University.

Writing in the journal, Plos One, the researchers claim that freezing embryos before thawing and implanting them – an increasingly common procedure – can overcome the risk of preterm birth after ICSI or Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection, where sperm are injected directly into eggs. Freezing may help because the embryos are implanted once the woman's hormones have settled down after treatment to produce more eggs.

The most striking finding, which needs confirmation, was of a group of women who were diagnosed as infertile but had babies after continuing to try naturally. Babies born to these women appeared to fare much worse than others, with average birthweights that were 250g lighter than others conceived naturally. The risk of these babies being stillborn was nearly seven times greater.

The cause of the problem is unclear and needs confirmation, but if real may be down to the parents' health or lifestyles. But Davies suspects that the women are receiving other treatment that is to blame. "We know this group of women tend to use a drug called clomiphene citrate for infertility. It's a very common, very cheap drug, but its adverse consequences have not been terribly well studied. We are now extremely keen to investigate this," he said.

Ian Sample

Dogs defecate in accordance with earth's magnetic field, research finds

Mona Chalabi — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 20:29:07 GMT

A scientific study has revealed that dogs adapt their excremental habits to be aligned with the earth’s axis

Mona Chalabi

Christopher Bailey pledges Burberry allegiance to art over commerce

Jess Cartner-Morley — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:54:02 GMT

Art and romanticism are keynote of soon-to-be CEO's first catwalk collection since appointment – not the bottom line

When, this spring, Christopher Bailey takes over as chief executive of Burberry as well as its designer, he will become the first fashion designer to gain business control of a label that does not bear his name. Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren oversee their boardrooms as well as their design studios, but Bailey is the first to have achieve this ultimately powerful role without having founded the company.

Burberry's menswear show, staged in a vast transparent marquee next to the Albert Memorial, was Bailey's first catwalk collection since the announcement, and therefore watched closely for clues as to how he intends to balance responsibility for the Burberry bottom line with maintaining a vibrant design studio.

Intriguing, then, for the designer to pledge his allegiance firmly to art over commerce. The collection, entitled A Painterly Journey, was inspired by Bailey's personal creative heroes: Lucian Freud, St Ives artist Ben Nicholson, the Bloomsbury group's Duncan Grant, and Christopher Wood, painter of coastal scenes in Cornwall and Brittany. It was a roll call of great bohemian artists of the British 20th century: men much admired for their vision and creativity but seldom held up as models of business acumen or financial responsibility. This was a romantic, artistic catwalk show, not a hard-headed one. "Design," said Bailey backstage afterwards, "is the expression of a point of view."

Fisherman's rib cardigans were worn over string vests, a combination Bailey borrowed from the outfit worn by a Cornish fisherman in one of Wood's paintings. A mix of earthy, autumnal countryside shades with clear, sharp brights seemed to echo the palette in a well known Duncan Grant self-portrait in which he wears a deep blue blazer with a mustard yellow waistcoat and a starched white shirt, accented with scarlet pocket square and necktie.

For the catwalk finale, all models were wrapped in plaid blankets in camel, grey, purple and red. On a Burberry catwalk, any check will always be read as a reference to the beige check that defined Burberry in its more downmarket days, but these chic squares were closer to the abstract paintings of Nicholson, whose softly colourful graphics were influenced by those of his friend Piet Mondrian.

Artist's impressions of London landmarks were another recurring motif of the show, suggesting Burberry intends to make last season's homecoming from Milan fashion week to London a permanent move. Intarsia renditions of St Paul's Cathedral and silk shirts printed with hand-drawn maps of London streets provided a commercial angle to this collection – in store, the landmarks will probably feature on sweatshirts, iPad covers, ties – and served as a counterweight to the whimsical furry coats and extravagantly hand-painted carpet bags, which provided a charming catwalk mise en scène but might prove a little unusual for mainstream fashion taste.

The London Eyes and Big Bens scattered through this collection serve to ground Burberry in its British heritage and to appeal to a global customer who wishes to buy a piece of that history. "I love the idea that there will be all these little pieces of London, all over the world," said Bailey after the show.

This careful balancing of the global with the intimate is central to the Burberry brand. The catwalk show was livestreamed all over the world– switch from a 4pm showtime to 2pm, chosen because it enables Burberry to reach a larger Chinese audience.

However, instead of tweeting his inspirations or posting his season's references on Facebook, Bailey still waits after the show and speaks directly to those editors and friends who push their way backstage. In this way, he keeps faith with the traditions of the fashion industry, and ensures that in the story told about Burberry the link between what happens in his head and what is available to buy is kept clear and strong in the public mind.

"I didn't want anything to feel uptight," he said. "I wanted softness and the idea of these artists going on their travels, having their adventures."

Jess Cartner-Morley

Does US Elle have a problem with Mindy Kaling?

Emine Saner — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:16:49 GMT

The magazine is under fire for four new covers, three depicting white American TV stars full length and in colour – and one of Kaling close-up and in black and white. What was it thinking?

You rarely have to look far to find something to criticise in the fashion industry, and the latest storm concerns four new covers of US Elle, each featuring an American TV star. But while Zooey Deschanel, Amy Poehler and Allison Williams are shot three-quarter length in full colour, Mindy Kaling's cover is cropped in close and printed in black and white. Guess which actor gets the odd-one-out treatment, asked the feminist site Jezebel: "If your answer was 'probably the woman who's on the record saying she's a size 8, not a size zero, and also happens to be the lone woman of colour,' then congratulations! You get a cookie … which is unfortunately flavoured with bitterness and institutionalised inequality."

Elle has responded to brewing Twitter complaints, saying: "Mindy looks sexy, beautiful and chic. We think it is a striking and sophisticated cover and are thrilled to celebrate her in our women in TV issue." Kaling has also declared she loves the cover, tweeting: "It made me feel glamourous & cool. And if anyone wants to see more of my body, go on 13 dates with me." Still, the fact that Kaling's image was presented differently stands out.

This is far from the first time a fashion magazine has been criticised for cropping a star who isn't supermodel size. When British Vogue shot the singer Adele for its cover in 2011, neck up only, fashion writer Melanie Rickey called it a "missed opportunity, when there are so many Vogue-reading women who would love to see how the magazine and its stylists would deal with beautiful Adele's voluptuous figure". When Gabby Sidibe appeared on US Elle's cover in 2010, she was the only one of four different actors to be close-cropped, and questions were raised about whether the magazine had lightened her skin - something Elle denied.

The fact that Kaling's cover image was printed in black and white is even more unusual. An unwritten rule of magazine journalism is that only colour images will be likely to sell. Though black and white cover images certainly exist, they tend to be reserved for specialist subscribers' covers rather for newsstands. So what's going on? One British women's magazine editor, who asked not to be named, speculates that Elle's publishers might have felt free to experiment with black and white because "with split covers [where there are several cover options], you're not relying on one cover to sell your whole magazine, so you can be more experimental and take a risk".

How likely is it that Kaling's race affected this decision, as so many have suggested? If we were talking about the UK, rather than US, market, she says "that question would be more pertinent", admitting that there is a shameful belief, in the UK, that putting a woman of colour on the front of a magazine means lower sales: "Though I don't think that's the case in the US."

As for the crop, she says: "Close-cropped covers do sell well, and if you're doing four covers, you don't want them all to look the same. You'll crop an image in and out and see which has the most power on the newsstand. I think it really is sometimes what happens to be the nicest image and what works the best with coverlines," adding: "Vogue had Victoria Beckham on the cover and they did a close crop – and you can't get thinner than her." Small comfort, perhaps.

Emine Saner

Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? | Emma G Keller

Emma G Keller — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:40:03 GMT

Lisa Adams is dying of breast cancer. She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her journey. Is this educational or too much?

Lisa Bonchek Adams is dying. She has Stage IV breast cancer and now it's metastasized to her bones, joints, hips, spine, liver and lungs. She's in terrible pain. She knows there is no cure, and she wants you to know all about what she is going through. Adams is dying out loud. On her blog and, especially, on Twitter.

She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her health. Lately, she tweets dozens of times an hour. Her Twitter followers are a mixed bag. Some are also battling cancer or work in the medical field, others seem to follow Adams' life story like a Reality TV show. Here's a taste of what it's like:

Pain today is worst in days. Cannot get on top of it. I have 1)constant drip plus ability to do 2)on-demand drip, 3)emergency. All in use.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

But it radiates out to side of back ("radicular pain") and has nerve component of pain. Mixes with the lung pain/same side
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

All morning docs and nurses go in and out so you may see answers to questions in spurts. I also sometimes nod off mid tweet...
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

She has been scrupulous about keeping track of her seven year decline. Her journey began with six month routine postpartum checkup after the birth of her third child. You can read all about the details of her disease and treatment on her blog right up until about this morning, which is when she posted her latest entry, only a few hours after the previous one.

She begins each day with the same tweet:

Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can't find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) December 27, 2013

Over the past few years she has tweeted more than 165,000 times (well over 200 tweets in the past 24 hours alone.) Her clear-eyed strategy of living with cancer for as long as she can has caught the attention of many women with breast cancer, several writers and thousands of fans from everyday lives all over the world. I heard about her in the process of organizing a Guardian US Living Hour chat on DNA and cancer tumors in early November. Before you knew it, she was in the chat having her tumor genome and her cancer trial discussed in detail. I never met her, but I swapped tweets and emails with her, and kept track of her health.

Which is why a few weeks ago I noticed she was tweeting a lot more and from a situation she described as agonizing. The clinical drug trial she was on wasn't working. Her disease seemed to be rampaging through her body. She could hardly breathe, her lungs were filled with copious amounts of fluid causing her to be bedridden over Christmas. As her condition declined, her tweets amped up both in frequency and intensity. I couldn't stop reading – I even set up a dedicated @adamslisa column in Tweetdeck – but I felt embarrassed at my voyeurism. Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?

Social media has definitely become a part of Adams' treatment (I wonder what her hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, thinks about that.) Tweeting makes her less lonely, it gives her a purpose, it distracts her from her pain, and the contact it brings clearly comforts her. Adams has managed to keep her dignity and her deft sense of humor intact as she has charted her decline.

As she tweeted a few hours ago:

"Why is she tweeting if it hurts so much?" I am sure people ask. It helps to distract me especially when I am alone (it's 6 AM here)
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

Adams is not alone in doing this. Journalist Xeni Jardin live tweeted her cancer diagnosis two years ago and the long treatment journey. Jardin told the Guardian last year that she wasn't sure if she would be quite as "sharey" if she could go back in time.

It's clear that tweeting as compulsively as Lisa Adams does is an attempt to exercise some kind of control over her experience. She doesn't deny that. She sees herself as an educator, giving voice to what so many people go through. And she is trying to create her own boundaries, flimsy as they might be. She'll tell you all about her pain, for example, but precious little about her children or husband and what they are going through. She describes a fantastic set up at Sloan-Kettering, where she can order what she wants to eat at any time of day or night and get as much pain medication as she needs from a dedicated and compassionate "team", but there is no mention of the cost. She was enraged a few days ago when a couple of people turned up to visit her unannounced. She's living out loud online, but she wants her privacy in real life.

In some ways she has invited us all in. She could argue that she is presenting a specific picture – the one she wants us to remember. "I do feel there will be lasting memories about me. That matters," she wrote to me in a direct message on Twitter.

The ethical questions abound. Make your own judgement.

Are those of us who've been drawn into her story going to remember a dying woman's courage, or are we hooked on a narrative where the stakes are the highest?

Will our memories be the ones she wants? What is the appeal of watching someone trying to stay alive? Is this the new way of death? You can put a "no visitors sign" on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch. Would we, the readers, be more dignified if we turned away? Or is this part of the human experience?

We've put together a condensed timeline of Lisa Adams' tweets. You can also read her entire feed.

Emma G Keller

UK sales of lingerie and sex toys hold up despite the downturn

Sarah Butler — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:39:00 GMT

Lovehoney's profits treble in the year to March 2013 while Agent Provocateur sees pre-tax profits more than double

There may be an economic downturn, but shoppers are still finding cash to spend on a quiet night in, with lingerie company Agent Provocateur and sex toy firm Lovehoney both seeing sales and profits boom last year.

Lovehoney profits trebled in the year to 31 March 2013, boosted by its exclusive licence to sell Fifty Shades of Grey merchandise.

The company recorded profits of £2.25m as turnover increased 51% to £23.6m over the year amid strong sales at its web stores in the UK and abroad and the introduction of its sex toys, including its retro-inspired Swoon range, to mainstream retailer Boots.

Lovehoney enjoyed a 45% surge in sales over Christmas, marking the busiest month in its 11-year history.

Co-founder Neal Slateford said: "As the switch from the high street to online gathers pace, we have been very effective in becoming the leading online destination for sexual happiness shoppers."

Meanwhile, lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur, which has boutiques from London to Hong Kong, Berlin and San Francisco, saw pre-tax profits more than double from £1.7m to £3.8m in the year to March 2013, according to accounts filed this week at Companies House. Sales rose 24.5% to £39m.

Sarah Butler

Is this white-van man the new Van Gogh?

Paula Cocozza — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:00:00 GMT

Rick Minns began drawing on the side of his florist's delivery vehicle to pass the time. Now growing numbers of people are following his art on his Facebook site

Rick Minns drives a white van, but he likes it best when it's muddy. In just 10 minutes, he can turn a filthy door panel into a work of art. See the complicated shading of this girl and boy, holding hands as they walk into the darkness of heavily caked mud, clutching balloons as fluffy as clouds? Her diffidence, his confidence, the curl of her hair, the tilt of his hat: such detail, and all created by a bloke doodling with his finger on the side of his van. Actually, this piece took more like 15 to 20 minutes, he says. He calls his style "graffilthy".

Minns, 39, works on deliveries for a florist wholesaler in Bowthorpe, Norwich. Over the past few days, it is fair to say that Flowervision – run by Minns' brother – has become better known for Minns' artworks than its floristry. "I started doing it two or three years ago," he says. The estate where Flowervision kept its vans had "a problem with people taking catalytic converters. We were keen to have someone around to put people off. Obviously there's not much to do – just standing about. I started doodling on the vans and they turned into pictures."

He finds images online, or takes photographs, and then copies them into the mud using his finger or a cottonbud. Beside the pictures, he scrawls: "If you see this and smile, please let me know – Facebook Ruddy Muddy." In growing numbers, people are doing just that.

One of the advantages of painting on a van instead of indoors on canvas is that the paintings become more intricate depending on the weather. One landscape recently benefited from a hailstorm: suddenly Minns' moody sky was spattered with white dots, each one where a stone had struck. The best pictures are built over a number of days. "You leave it and then go back and lift a bit more mud out of certain places, leave it a couple more days and then lift it again." Different gradations of white then appear. In terms of weather, Minns says that this is "the best winter since I've started. The conditions have just been perfect. Wind and sun – keeps the mud on."

Perhaps every artist has a nemesis though, and in Minns' case it is the pressure washer. Flowervision owns one, and once a fortnight Minns and his fellow drivers must clean their vans. The girl and boy with the balloons will be gone by the end of the week. "Initially, I felt sad about washing off the pictures," he says. "But now I see it as an opportunity to do something new."

Paula Cocozza

London's first pay-per-minute cafe: will the idea catch on?

Vicky Baker — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:39:00 GMT

Ziferblat is London's first pay-per-minute cafe, based on a Russian chain where 'everything is free, except the time you spend there'

Ever felt you've overstayed your welcome in a cafe, by reading, working or surfing the web while hugging the latte you bought two hours ago? Pay-per-minute cafes could be the answer. Ziferblat, the first UK branch of a Russian chain, has just opened in London (388 Old Street), where "everything is free inside except the time you spend there". The fee: 3p a minute.

Ziferblat means clock face in Russian and German (Zifferblatt). The idea is guests take an alarm clock from the cupboard on arrival and note the time, then keep it with them, before, quite literally, clocking out at the end. There's no minimum time. Guests can also get stuck into the complimentary snacks (biscuits, fruit, vegetables), or prepare their own food in the kitchen; they can help themselves to coffee from the professional machine, or have it made for them. There's even a piano – an idea that could seem brilliant or terrible, depending on who takes the seat.

Ziferblat has opened 10 branches in Russia in the past two years and now wants to take the idea worldwide. With hostels, hotels and cafes around the world often filled with people either working remotely or enjoying some downtime online, the market for expansion is certainly there. The "coffice", we're told, is the way of the future.

Owner Ivan Mitin says during the first month of the UK opening, they have already drawn in some regulars. "Londoners are more prepared for such a concept; they understand the idea instantly. It's funny to see people queueing here to wash their dishes. It's not obligatory, but it's appreciated. They even wash each other's dishes. It's very social. We think of our guests as micro tenants, all sharing the same space."

Eight days into 2014, Time Out has already declared Ziferblat "a contender for best opening of the year". But what do you think? Does the idea appeal? Does £1.80 an hour sound like good value? Would you feel more relaxed, or more under pressure with a clock by your side? Let us know in the comments below.

Vicky Baker

Why you shouldn't force a child to kiss a grandparent | Annalisa Barbieri

Annalisa Barbieri — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:11:45 GMT

Learning about consent is a vital part of sex education, and forcing a child into affection with a family member only confuses

This is what this article is NOT about: it's not about forbidding a willing child to sit on Granny's knee, or giving Grandpa a kiss, or cuddling Auntie Kate. It's not about being overly politically correct or trying to stop normal family life.

What it is about is this: children have powerful instincts, and sometimes adults override those instincts for social niceties that suit the adult, not the child. Sometimes children don't want to kiss a relative or family friend, for all sorts of reasons, and yet adults want them to because otherwise it doesn't look nice, or seem polite. In being coerced to kiss or cuddle someone they don't want to, that child is being told that how they feel, what they want to do with their own bodies, doesn't really matter. That an adult's wishes and sensibilities matter more.

And it's a more pernicious action than you might think. If a child gets used to being told their bodies aren't their own, or have no right of refusal, even in something as innocent as kissing grandma, when or if there is malintent from another adult they may not feel strong enough to say no. How are children magically supposed to learn that lesson? You cannot expect a child to acquiesce when you want them to, and then magically grow up to "know their own mind". Knowing their own mind starts with allowing them to speak it.

Lucy Emmerson, co-ordinator of the Sex Education Forum, recently echoed this, to much criticism. In the January of The Sex Education Supplement: the Consent Issue, Emmerson said that she was disappointed to learn that three out of 10 young people did not learn about consent at school; not about the age of consent being 16 – most knew that – but "about real-life situations and what you would do if 'something happens'".

Emmerson believes that learning about consent starts from age zero. "Much is learned by young children from everyday experiences about whether or not their opinion is valued, and if they have any control over physical contact with others."

Further along in the online magazine, which is aimed at teachers and professionals, there are lesson ideas. In those for key stage 1, ideas are given to prompt thoughts in children "about consent and physical touch … for example whether or not we want to kiss a friend or relative or hug someone". And it gives tips on how to answer questions such as "when is it OK to let someone touch me?" and "how can I say no if I don't want someone to touch me?" For those interested, it recommends a book called A Kiss Like This by Laurence and Catherine Anholt.

How anyone can disagree with this puzzles me. The criticism levied at Emmerson is that it's "political correctness gone mad". How? How is teaching a child that they have control over their bodies and who they have close physical contact with, a bad thing? Another criticism is that it erodes family life. Isn't a child a member of that family? Its most vulnerable member? No one is stopping a child jumping on anyone's knee and giving them a kiss if they want to. But if they don't? Isn't that OK too?

"Children," says Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, "should never be forced to do anything which makes them uncomfortable around these issues. Children are instinctive and intuitive around people they are not comfortable with. And we need to respect that."

"There are certain things we make children do which is quite different," says Saunders. "We make them brush their teeth, for example. That is quite different to forcing them to kiss an uncle they don't want to. It's about boundaries. And this blurring of boundaries [by forcing them to kiss someone they don't want to] can indeed blur their understanding of what is right and wrong, about their body belonging to them."

Your child may not want to kiss Grandma/pa for no other reason than they don't feel like it that day. But one day, they may have a very real instinct about someone. You can't have it both ways. If an adult gets offended because a child doesn't kiss them or want to be near them, then really it's up to the adult to address these feelings of abandonment, not the child to make it better.

Annalisa Barbieri

London Collections: Men

Rosie Swash, Imogen Fox, Jess Cartner-Morley, Helen Seamons, Lauren Cochrane — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:08:03 GMT

All the front-row action and backstage gossip from the menswear shows in London

Backstage at Sibling - in pictures

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:15:10 GMT

Backstage at Sibling during the Autumn/Winter 2014 London Collections: Mens fashion event in London

The changing taste of food and drink traditions

Julian Baggini — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:01:02 GMT

Just because a dish is traditional doesn't mean that it can't change. In an extract from his new book The Virtues of the Table, Julian Baggini writes that traditions are safest in the hands of producers who are prepared to adapt

Behind almost every tradition is a myth, and behind all traditions is the biggest myth of them all: that this is what our people have always done. But, of course, cuisines are always evolving and with food, "forever" simply means "as long as we can remember". The quickest and easiest way to destroy this illusion is simply to run through a list of "traditional ingredients" and see just how many are relative latecomers to a national cuisine. Tomatoes are a central ingredient of what we now think of as la cucina Italiana, but they didn't arrive in Italy until after the discovery of the new world in 1492, and only became common in the mid-19th century. Pasta only became a national staple after the second world war. What is true of ingredients is also true of dishes. "When people say, 'That's not traditional,' that's really disputable almost all the time," the Italian chef, Giorgio Locatelli, told me. "With Italy ... by the time they codified the recipes, most of them were already spread all over Italy, so each one had its own interpretation."

More interesting, however, is finding out how traditions have been constructed. Take any distillery tour in Scotland and you'll be told how 70 to 80% of the flavour of whisky is determined by the used oak barrel it matures in, which these days is almost always a bourbon cask imported from America. Those aged in Spanish sherry barrels are sweeter and heavier. You would have thought that the choice of barrel reflected centuries of accumulated wisdom. The truth is far more mundane. Scotch whisky used to be matured almost exclusively in barrels made from European oak, the cask of choice for sherry, port and Madeira makers after Napoleon increased oak cultivation to help build his warships. The fortified wines that filled the oak casks were popular in Britain, where distillers wanted to make use of the empty barrels. In America, meanwhile, machine-made native-oak barrels were becoming cheaper to produce, and bourbon distillers favoured the flavour given by heavily charred new casks. Then in 1935, protectionist federal law made the use of new barrels compulsory. Suddenly there was a glut of used bourbon casks undercutting old sherry barrels. Scottish distillers took advantage, radically changing the flavour of their drinks - an opportunistic response to changed market conditions, precipitated by a law passed by a foreign nation.

It also needs to be remembered that traditional is not always good. Grocer and broadcaster Charlie Hicks cites Joy Larkham, who has done a great deal to revive lost "heritage" varieties of fruit and vegetables, but who once pointed out that there's often a very good reason they stopped growing them in the first place: many aren't that nice.

But surely there is some sense and value in tradition?

One key is to understand a tradition as something that is essentially alive and dynamic. As soon as anything stops living and becomes fixed as a kind of cultural museum piece, it ceases to be a tradition and instead becomes part of an historical heritage. While soda bread is still a traditional Irish loaf, a trencher – a piece of stale bread used as a kind of edible plate in the middle ages – is part of our culinary history. If revived, it would be a heritage foodstuff, no longer tied to the past by continuous custom, but a self-conscious resurrection of a dead practice.

Tradition and heritage both have their value, but although they overlap, they are not the same thing. Tradition mirrors an aspect of language identified by Jacques Derrida – rather than attributing a single meaning or "essence" of a word, his claim was that the iterative nature of language means that each time a word is used its meaning can change very slightly. Each iteration is sufficiently alike that comprehension is unproblematic, but also sufficiently unique that the meaning of a word cannot be fixed. That's why it was possible for "dinner" in English to alter its meaning seamlessly over the centuries so that what once named a late-morning meal now commonly refers to one taken in the evening.

Traditions are the same. Sometimes in recipes, as with words, a significant change is introduced and the community adopts or rejects it. More often, changes occur organically. As butter gained a bad reputation for causing heart disease, many northern Italians gradually substituted olive oil. "There is always a kind of movement in the cooking," says Locatelli, "so tradition moves with society." Because of this, there is no contradiction at all in a dish's being traditional and yet differing significantly from its historical predecessors. It is not straightforwardly the case that the older the version, the more traditional it is. How long the practice has been maintained matters more than how long ago it started.

Overzealous attempts to preserve traditions can just as effectively kill them. Once the preservationists get their hands on a dish or product, one formulation becomes the uniform orthodoxy. This is one of the downsides of the European PDO and PGI (protected designation of origin and protected geographic indication) schemes, designed to protect the special, distinctive status of regional foodstuffs. When it is formally specified exactly what it means for a cheese to be mozzarella di bufala campana, innovation is stopped. When you deny something the possibility of growth, you do not keep it alive; you kill and pickle it.

Arguably the torch of tradition is now glowing most brightly in the hands of people creating new products in traditional ways. Take, for example, the producers of Stichelton, an unpasteurised blue cow's-milk cheese in the old style of Stilton. The latter is now being produced according to strict PDO rules that require the milk to be pasteurised, which means Stilton has become "a protection of an existing form of manufacture that in actual fact bears no relation to what the traditional Stilton is all about", according to Dominic Coyte of Neal's Yard Dairy. I would argue that the new Stichelton is the more properly traditional cheese.

That is not to say there is no value in what I contrast as heritage.

Gastrodiversity is also served simply by keeping alive or bringing back lost or threatened foods. Apart from its cultural and culinary value, in a world in which there is a tendency for agriculture to put all its eggs into one basket, small-scale production of alternatives maintains biodiversity.

Tradition at its best is therefore not about looking backwards, but about looking both ways, taking the good that has come from the past into the future, while not being afraid to see it continue to change and grow.

Julian Baggini

Women's denim: seven different looks – in pictures

Helen Seamons — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:00:00 GMT

No effort should be made in January. None. Pull on blue jeans, snuggly cashmere, slouchy tops and sweatshirts, then add heels to taste

Helen Seamons

The world's worst wax museum - in pictures

Sarah Gilbert — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:08:19 GMT

The models in Louis Tussauds House of Wax – none of whom look like the people they are supposed to represent – have been bought by a foreign investor. We bid farewell to a national treasure

Sarah Gilbert

Can traffic lights be against you?

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:01:01 GMT

Readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

People often say that on a car journey the "lights were all against us". Can this actually be the case? If you are stopped at one set of traffic lights, are you statistically more likely to be stopped at the next set?

Rory Hegarty

• Post your answers – and new questions – below or email them to nq@theguardian.com. Please include name, address and phone number

Which is the best book on the causes of the first world war?

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:01:00 GMT

Readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

Following Michael Gove's political sniping, I'd like to know how accurate those "Blackadder myths" are. Which is the best book to read on the origins of the first world war?

Nick Hunter, Sheffield

• Post your answers – and new questions – below or email them to nq@theguardian.com. Please include name, address and phone number

Patchwork jeans, suede shoes and 'matchy-matchy' – all big in 2014

Invisible Woman — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:00:00 GMT

These are a few style-wise things I'm thinking about, plus mimimalism will also make way for maximalism (but not for me)

Here we are then – 2014 at last. Christmas has been survived/enjoyed (delete according to experience) and we're into January where nothing much happens except Bills – which, you will observe announce themselves with a capital B. Are we downhearted? Well, yes, just a little, because January is an absolute swine to get through, although as I get older the arrival of the first snowdrops achieves greater significance, marking as it does, the survival and passing of another winter.

While I await the reappearance of life I filter things – I read, plan, assess, make notes and discard – and after seeing a fabric conditioner ad where a woman snuggles into her knitwear and murmurs "My jumper … my haven" I'm doing it with renewed fervour. It dawned on me (after I'd snorted "FFS get a grip" at the screen) that that woman could very easily be me, or me from January through to the end of March. If anyone needs to "get a grip" then I do, so here are a few style-wise things I'm thinking about for now, while I hibernate, and ultimately for spring and summer when I emerge from my knitwear.

Patchwork jeans. Yes, I know! Ignore the fact that you remember something similar from your youth (ignore: "if you wore it first time round you can't wear it again", which is mostly rubbish) this is a practical and easily adaptable style and how often does that happen? Take my favourite pair of comfy jeans. Lately I've begun to notice a certain chilly frisson about my nether regions but, wait … no longer! I can patch them with interesting fabrics in the style of Junya Watanabe and prolong their life for another season. I am fully aware of my own hypocrisy - "My jeans … my haven"? - but I don't care. I will look perfectly splendid in my favourite jeans patched with brocade and stripes and teamed with a nicely tailored jacket and a woolly jumper and best of all it puts off the awful inevitability of tracking down the next favourite pair to wear until they fall to pieces.

While I was rummaging for inspiration under the bed I turned up my old suede jacket from the late 80s. Suede is having a moment too but not, I fear, of the tan fringed variety with big shoulders. For now the jacket must remain in its box. I used to have a cream suede miniskirt with a lace-up front, but I remember how it used to crease like the devil and pick up marks and grime like a magnet. Yes, suede can be a bit troublesome unless properly looked after but it's also much better behaved than it used to be. I do love how luscious jewel bright suede can give such bottomless depth of colour. A mad shoe, like this one from Charlotte Olympia does so much to lift whatever look you're creating for yourself.

I once had a rush of blood to the head and bought a pair of red suede Prada shoes. In time the shoes and I settled down to a very amiable relationship, once I got over the Guilt – like Bills, Guilt comes with a capital letter. It would be mad given the investment, not to properly look after them and they repay my care by being not in the least bit grand. Sometimes I wear them for writing, or washing up, just for the pleasure of it and I'm positively delirious when I can wear them with a red tartan dress and a pair of thick winter tights.

"Matchy-matchy" is a thing I quite like, although for my age group I'd recommend approaching it with care - something I conspicuously failed to do with the 15-year-old single malt on New Year's Eve. "Matchy-matchy" for 2014 must be edgy and can be easily achieved with by matching a bag and shoes, or matching lippy and nails. Sounds simple? Yes, but we're not talking matching sensible navy shoes and bag because that would be waaay too pedestrian. No, this is matching print in shoes, bag AND clothes which was around the collections in 2013 but didn't really get going – this year I'm sure it will. This will, I think, be part of an explosion of floral prints and embroideries. The best of these, in my view, are showcased in Christopher Kane's ravishing collection and Erdem's more restrained but beautifully detailed designs.

Minimalism will, we are told, make way for maximalism. Not for me, it won't. I'm too small to get myself up like a Fisher Price toy but I will add some maxi touches to my mini self, probably by resurrecting some of my more outré pieces of costume jewellery but with restraint.

I've left out the most interesting trend – sheer. Counter-intuitively for both my age and the time of year, I find this most appealing of all, but you'll have to wait until next week to find out why. Happy New Year!

Follow The Invisible Woman on Twitter @TheVintageYear

Invisible Woman

London Collections: Men – street style on day two

Russ McClintock — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:57:31 GMT

Russ McClintock shoots street style on day two of the London Collections: Men AW14 shows

There's nothing like a bit of rain and wind to test a man's commitment to his wardrobe. Who doesn't love early January?

Russ McClintock

How I swam the length of Britain – video

Ekaterina Ochagavia, Ian Anderson, Michael Tait — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:26:00 GMT

Sean Conway explains how he braved jellyfish, 3am starts and freezing temperatures – and gives his tips on how to endurance-swim safely and effectively

Ekaterina Ochagavia

Ian Anderson

Michael Tait

Icelandic 'whale beer' condemned by conservationists

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:17:55 GMT

Brewery defends use of dead whale in beer that anti-whalers call 'immoral and outrageous'

How to cook the perfect tattie scones

Felicity Cloake — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:58:00 GMT

How do you make tattie scones, what do you serve them with – and is the full Scottish the best breakfast in Britain?

There are lots of things I like about waking up in Scotland. The inevitable half-empty whisky glass by the bed is one. The probability that a good part of my family will already be squabbling downstairs is always a cheering prospect too. But, perhaps best of all, there's the Scottish breakfast in all its superiority – the upstanding porridge of unimpeachable rectitude, the oat-studded black pudding, and, best of all, the hot, buttery tattie scones, which render the English fried slice as dull and workaday as toast. (Perhaps fortunately for both my waistline and my liver, I don't visit as often as I'd like.)

For those south of the border unfamiliar with this delicacy, known as fadge or farls in Ireland, it is more like a flat bread than a fluffy teatime scone, traditionally made with leftover potatoes ("usually just after the midday meal, when [they're] still warm", according to F Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen) and cooked fast on a hot griddle.

As well as being a peerless accompaniment to a fry-up, they are delicious hot with melted butter, or cold and blini-style with smoked fish and cream cheese. Proper Scots even like them scone-style with jam and a cup of strong tea. They're readily available in their homeland, but I've found them sadly difficult to source elsewhere – happily, they're pretty easy to make at home, even with a hangover.

The potatoes

No argument about the variety: "as mealy as possible", as painter Victor MacClure writes in his memoir Good Appetite My Companion, quoted by Elizabeth David in her English Bread and Yeast Cookery, a book with a wider scope than its name suggests.

Traditionally these floury potatoes would have been leftovers, as McNeill suggests, but assuming we're making these from scratch, I'd suggest cooking them in their skins, as Darina Allen does in her Ballymaloe Cookery Course; even once peeled, they retain an intense potato flavour that stands out in the crowd. Jamie Oliver, who first encountered the "beautiful" tattie scone in Glasgow, doesn't bother peeling them at all, which works for his thicker cakes, but proves too chewy in a thinner scone. The skins are very easy to remove once cooked anyway, so you're at least saving yourself a few minutes with the peeler.

As per McNeill's description, Allen, Annie Grierson (a Dumfries cook whose recipe is included in Mark Hix's British Regional Food), Lawrence Keogh, head chef at the Wolsey, and Sue Lawrence (author of Scots Cooking) all specify that they should be hot. Oliver leaves them to cool, while MacClure demands "cold boiled potatoes". I find the cold versions difficult to work, and, in Oliver's case, impractical, as it's quite hard to mix butter into cool mash. Warm it is, but preferably as dry as possible: it's a good idea to return them to the pan to steam a little before mashing, as Lawrence suggests.

Flour and raising agents

Flour is used to turn the mash into a dough. Allen uses a scant two tablespoons to 900g spuds, and her scones are the most potatoey of the lot – more like a cross between a baked potato and a croquette than a pancake. That said, hers are an unusual shape (of which more later), and it would be hard to roll such a fragile dough much thinner.

The problem I come up against is getting the ratio of flour to potato right: too little and they fall apart; too much and the scones taste raw and gummy. A ratio of five parts raw potato to one part flour seems the most common, but I think that, like Keogh, we can get away with less: four to one allows the potato flavour to come through, but is still rollable with care.

Lawrence and Oliver put baking powder in their scones, but I'm not sure what this adds – certainly they don't seem lighter or fluffier than the others, and I'm doubtful if it could get to work during such a brief cooking time, especially in such a heavy dough.

The fat

Butter and milk are the most common fats used to bind the potatoes and flour together, though Allen adds beaten egg as well, which makes it a bit wet for shaping. MacClure and Grierson both use only milk, which I suspect is the more traditional addition, milk being cheaper than butter, but butter, for the decadent, gives an undeniably richer flavour. If you're just looking for something to eat with your fry-up, then milk will do nicely, but if you'd like a scone that stands on its own, you need butter, and in some quantity too. Keogh uses one part butter to six parts potato, which is a little excessive: Lawrence's 1:10 seems more reasonable if we're going to spread it with butter later. Which, of course, we are.

Extras

Generous seasoning is vital with such a simple dish, though, as I find Lawrence's half a teaspoon slightly overpowering, I'm going to recommend that you do so to taste. Keogh adds ground mace for a peppery flavour, while Oliver goes for snipped chives. Both are great ideas if you're serving them with scrambled eggs or smoked salmon, but for a more all-purpose scone, I'm leaving them out.

Shaping and cooking

The most difficult part of this recipe proves to be shaping the scone into anything that would pass muster with a discerning Edinburgh cook. Allen gets round this by leaving the scone a good inch thick, which means it just requires a little tidying up around the edges, but this makes it into more of a potato cake than the scones I'm used to – definitely not something you could spread with jam, should the occasion demand. Oliver leaves his 2cm thick, and Keogh only 5mm thinner, which presents a similar problem – it is impossible to cook them right through in a hot pan, and I can taste raw flour in the finished scones.

It is more usual, in my experience, to roll the dough somewhat thinner: Lawrence goes for 5mm and MacClure "very thinly, less than an eighth of an inch", or 3mm, like Grierson. I like Lawrence's best: thin enough to cook through (and, more importantly, spread with butter, roll up and eat), but thick enough to allow a contrast between the crust and the fluffy interior. McNeill instructs us to "cut into bannocks (using a meat plate) and then into farls"; in other words, into a round, and then into triangles. Pricking the dough all over with a fork will also help it cook through.

Allen bakes her farls in an 180C oven for 15-20 minutes, which works because of the thickness of her recipe, but would turn a thinner scone into a crispbread. Much, much better to fry them in a griddle or a heavy-based frying pan, greased with butter or bacon fat – although if you're going to make a lot, vegetable oil might be a better choice, as butter heated in a pan for too long will, of course, burn. (Oliver's olive oil, however, is just plain wrong.) Allen and Keogh both dust their dough with flour before cooking, which gives them a lovely crisp crust, but be careful not to overdo it. Save that for the scones themselves.

The perfect tattie scones

(Makes 24 triangles)
500g floury potatoes, unpeeled
50g butter
125g plain flour, plus extra to dust

Put the potatoes in a pan, cover with water, salt generously and bring to the boil. Simmer until cooked through, then drain well and return to the hot pan for a minute to dry off. Peel off the skins as soon as you can handle them.

Add 40g butter and mash, then stir in the flour and season to taste. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to about 5mm thick, then cut around a side plate to shape. Dust lightly with flour and prick all over with a fork.

Heat the remaining butter in a griddle or large heavy based frying pan over a medium-high heat and then fry until golden on both sides (about 3-5 minutes). Cut into triangles and serve immediately, or cool in a tea towel for later.

Tattie scones, totties, farls or fadges: whatever you call them, how do you like them? And, at the risk of starting a ruck, is the full Scottish the best breakfast in Britain?

Felicity Cloake

Men's shoes: 10 of the best – in pictures

Sara Ilyas — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:05:50 GMT

Shark soles or slip-ons? Men's shoes keep getting better and better, whether you're a trainers to work kind of guy or want to break in a pair of chelsea boots for 2014

Sara Ilyas

CES reveals the near future's most incredible toys

Samuel Gibbs — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:03:35 GMT

From mini flying drones to jumping cars with electric skateboards in between, a new generation of toys will be on the wish lists next Christmas. By Samuel Gibbs in Las Vegas

Samuel Gibbs