Well, here we are with the last Newsround of the year! Keen-eyed readers will note that there is one more Friday left of the year, but I won’t be able to string a sentence together on the 27th as I continue on my quest to be more Quality Street than human. And, y’know, Baileys.
From everyone here at MAN v FAT, I’d like to thank you for your support this year – it means a lot. Have a good Christmas, eat that mince pie if you want to, and we’ll see you in January to continue to chip away at our goals.
FROM THE MAN V FAT FOOTBALL LEAGUES
This time of year is tough for so many, with the stress and expectations of Christmas heaped on top of the usual stuff. The guys from the Stoke MAN v FAT Football league have done us proud by donating food to their local food bank all throughout December (with another week’s worth yet to come) – well done to all involved, your actions will undoubtedly be appreciated.
Speaking of food banks, we’re running a competition up until Christmas Eve in which one person will win a £50 voucher for a supermarket of their choice, plus a £50 donation to their local food bank. You can enter here if you’d like to be in with a chance.
IN OTHER NEWS
You should probably be concerned about Santa’s health, as bed maker Time4Sleep has calculated that he consumes 664 billion calories in mince pies and sherry during his trip around the world on Christmas Eve, and he also drinks 181 million times the NHS weekly recommended alcohol units. That’s 136 thousand tons of mince pies and over 138 million litres of sherry. He also works for 24 hours straight and is probably really sleep-deprived, meaning his reaction times would be reduced by 15.4%. At least he only does it once a year though eh.
A new survey has revealed what cleaning gadgets people have bought their loved ones for Christmas – including electronic cleaning brushes, robot vacuums, window vacs and steam cleaners. The survey was conducted by End of Tenancy Cleaning London, and respondents were anonymous, probably through shame, because (and I cannot stress this enough) – do not buy your loved ones CLEANING PRODUCTS for Christmas, christ.
WHAT WE’RE READING
If you want to keep your brain working over Christmas, or just want to drive yourself crazy, why not give this Christmas puzzle a go? Your task: to find five of the above nuts in this splendid Christmas scene. It takes the average person 3 minutes and 18 seconds to find all five, which is apparently the same amount of time needed to eat a mince pie (what are these people doing with their mince pies for it to take over three minutes?!). The puzzle comes from MTA Learning, which states that puzzle-solving, communication and planning are all qualities that are much needed for Christmas but also at work, so keep your brain sharp. Oh, and if you can’t find the 5 nuts, see the solution here.
Why your phone’s ‘night mode’ may be keeping you awake on The Guardian. And to think I always feel so good about myself when I scroll through Facebook before bed with my phone’s weird night filter on. All those distorted colours were for nothing!
WHAT WE’RE EATING
Um, apart from eating ALL the Christmas things (festive Bakewells are exceedingly good, thanks Mr Kipling), here’s what’s caught our eye this week.
If one of your goals for 2020 is to reduce the amount of meat you eat, you’ll be pleased to know that there are more meat-free options than ever before on supermarket shelves, with loads of new veggie and vegan-friendly products launching in January to take advantage of next year’s Veganuary cohort.
Deliciously Ella, who has previously dabbled in healthier snacks and has a few cookbooks that are worth a look at if you’re into the wholefood, plant-based way of eating, has launched a range of frozen ready meals which would be an ideal meat-free standby to have in the freezer.
They’ve got cauliflower and lentil dahl (429 calories), sweet potato and black bean shepherd’s pie (275 calories), yellow Thai curry (327 calories) and five bean chilli (363 calories).
In this week’s ‘erm, thanks but no thanks’ news – Pepsi is launching cola with coffee in the US in 2020. I am a die-hard Pepsi fan but this…just no. And if it couldn’t get worse, they’re also launching a vanilla version.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
“Our greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another” – from this great piece on Medium, Stop Spending So Much Time In Your Head. I am guilty of being ‘in my head’ too often, and all it does is lead to anxiety and stress. This article explores why you have to get out of your head, and it’s very interesting.
