Latest news with #MonsterMunch
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
YouTuber celebrates his 30th with woman born on same day in same hospital as him
A YouTuber who was born at St Thomas' Hospital in London has had a successful ending to his quest to celebrate his 30th with someone who shares his exact birthday and birthplace. Max Fosh, who has more than four million followers on YouTube, turned 30 on April 3 and decided to pursue the 'tiny needle in a massive haystack' challenge to bring in the big day in style. Initially having a few teething problems because of being unable to access medical records thanks to general data protection regulation (GDPR) rules, his endeavour saw a breakthrough after he appeared on Capital and BBC Radio 1. He was contacted by a newspaper archivist called Andrew Frost who suggested the two look for birth announcements in newspapers. 'This guy called Andrew is amazing because his dad started collecting all of the national newspapers every day that go out nationally in the UK and he has this warehouse that has about a quarter of a million newspapers over the last 200 years,' Max told the PA news agency. 'He suggested this idea of looking for birth announcements in newspapers and so I went over to his warehouse and he pulled out newspapers from April 1995, around the time I was born. 'After a bit of digging we were able to find an individual called Lily Hunter, who in the newspaper it said was born in St Thomas' Hospital on April 3 1995, the same day I was, so for the first time in the search I had the name of somebody.' With a name, Max turned to various social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. After 'painstakingly' going through hundreds of names, he found a Lily Hunter on LinkedIn whose education dates lined up perfectly with his and who even attended schools in London. 'She had an email address for her work, so I sent her an email which then gave me an out of office response, but on the bottom of her out of office was a work number so I gave her a call when she returned back to work,' Max added. 'I asked her whether it was her and she said it was and she was incredibly confused, she thought it was a scam. 'I explained who I was and sent her newspaper articles on what I'd been doing and I managed to convince her I wasn't crazy and said: 'Hey, I've booked a room at St Thomas' on our birthday if you want to come along for 10 minutes, that would be amazing, so we could have a reunion'.' Ms Hunter accepted Max's offer and the two celebrated the end of their 20s by munching on British delicacies including Monster Munch and a Colin the Caterpillar cake while wearing party hats and speaking about their lives since their births at the hospital. He said having a successful end to his mission felt 'satisfying' and he was pleasantly surprised so many people were interested in what he was doing. He added: 'The gmail we set up for people to get in touch if they shared my birthday led to us getting a lot of spam. 'That was quite hard to cut through to work out which leads to follow but people were really quite interested in this idea and went nuts with it. 'I got signed up to a lot of things, my favourite one was when someone signed me up to a daily horse of the day fact, so I got a load of facts about horses, which was quite fun.' Max shared the good news with his YouTube followers on Sunday:
Irish Examiner
25-04-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Colm O'Regan: A shortcut to the past — a Facebook group of iconic covers from the Ladybird archive
Regular readers! You have my sympathies but also you may have spotted a pattern with this column. I write a lot about nice Facebook pages. These might be groups of niche interest such as The Wire, 2000AD, strange maps and runes or just the places where it's just all good news. The videos with the special offers from the Wrekenton Poundzone with its pallets of Diet Coke and exotic flavour Monster Munch. It changed hands in the last couple of years. Graham and Lewis sold up and Sanjiv took over but he's kept the spirit going. At the moment they're rushing out the flavoured Lost Marys before 'the ban in June.' I'm on a mission to soothe. If you are dopamine addicted and doom-scrolling, you really should get off social media. But if you can't, you need as many pleasing distractions as possible. Call it listening to the orchestra on the Titanic. So here's another one to add. After the Dull Mans Club and Old Aerial Photography Of Ireland, should you find yourself getting into an argument about Tucker Carlson in Crumlin, it's time to Fly Away Home. Fly Away Home is the online base of Helen Day, who collects, curates and minds hundreds of old Ladybird books. They might be fairy tales, Peter and Jane, history, wildlife, How Stuff Works (or at least How Stuff Used To Work). Each day Helen puts out at least one picture up from a book. Last week it was from Ladybird version of the Rapunzel fairy tale. The picture is of the woman with the pregnancy craving is looking out the window into the witch's garden at the witch's lettuces. Ladybird book: Mervyn Mouse. You know how it is when you're pregnant and you see lettuces growing next door. You just gotta have em. It was like a jolt of supercharged nostalgia injected right into the endocrine system. I smelled Junior Infants crayons in old glacé cherry pots, jigsaws stored in our teacher's husband's old tobacco packets. It was so vivid. If you don't remember the exact Ladybird book, the post may trigger you for other reasons. It could be an exquisite painting of sandals or a field being ploughed by a comparatively tiny tractor or a machine we don't use any more, like the conductor's ticket machine on the bus. You won't remember the writing. Or most of it, see below. It's the illustrations that have burrowed into us. They were painted by proper artists and at that stage when colour illustrations were rarer and we weren't the art gallery-ing types, they were probably the best paintings we'd ever seen. The names Charles Tunnicliffe or John Leigh Pemberton may mean nothing to you but if you're above a certain age, they probably painted the first bullfinch or kestrel or barley field you saw in a book. The ladybirds weren't just about ladies and birds. They ventured into history as well with tens of books on all aspects of history. I wouldn't say it's the best history. It is after all the source of the infamous quote about Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was also a good man. He was deeply religious, and neither greedy nor - except in Ireland- cruel. The phrase 'except in Ireland' doing a lot of heavy lifting. The writer had clearly never been to Drogheda or probably Ireland. There is a tinge of regret about Fly Away Home. I feel it myself and it's often expressed in the comments underneath the Facebook and Instagram posts. We HAD those books. And what did we do with them? Why did we get rid of them? How did we not see the value of them? This year I bought a shortcut to the past. 'Ladybird a cover story. 500 iconic covers from the Ladybird archive.' I binge on that and I'll have to imagine the rest. Read More Bernard O'Shea: Five things I learned from letting horoscopes guide my week
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The TikTok star turning Monster Munch, Frazzles and Scampi Fries into gourmet sandwiches
A TikToker has been wowing millions after unveiling her unique approach to sandwich making. Nell Carter, known on TikTok as @Nell'sKitchen, has revealed to viewers her distinctive sandwich recipes which incorporate some of the nation's favourite crisps. Taking the familiar favourites of flame-grilled McCoy's, pickled onion Monster Munch and Frazzles, Nell has revolutionised the idea of what a crisp sandwich can be. READ MORE: Solar eclipse 2025: Exact time to watch the Moon cover the Sun in rare event this week READ MORE: 'I'll never return to Krakow after what happened on my sister's hen do' To create her unique sandwiches Nell, from Yorkshire, shows viewers how she bakes crisps into her bread before adding even more as a filling. Her creations have now taken the video platform by storm with Nell's videos reaching up to 2.1M views. Nell's original creations have now sent TikTok users into a frenzy for crisp sandwiches, with one user writing on the platform: "Honestly that looks like my idea of heaven." Another TikTok user added: "This looks utterly insane." Through showcasing her recipes Nell hopes to champion the use of crisps in sandwiches more often, as she said that crisps are often viewed as an "afterthought". 'The hardest thing to achieve with a pre-made sandwich is the crunch,' Nell explained. 'Why not try and make the crisp the hero product?' So far, Nell has dabbled with Scampi Fries, Mini Cheddars, Discos, Frazzles and more. "I've always picked challenges that I think are going to be relatable to my audience, which is majority UK,' said Nell. "Crisps are something we all enjoy, something we're all a part of. 'I'm just showing people you can re-imagine something you have known for years in a new way to find a little bit of excitement out of something very commonplace.' The 28-year-old also said she used to view her passion for creating sandwiches as a "side hustle" after reviewing supermarket Christmas meal deals, while at university. 'It then turned into an annual feature and during lockdown, I started creating my own recipes and food blogs," she said. From showcasing her recipes on TikTok Nell has now pursued her own sandwich catering business based in London.
The Independent
24-02-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Eating too many ultra-processed foods? This is how to cut back without cutting corners
It's hard to look at a packet of Monster Munch or a chocolate biscuit now without the words 'ultra-processed food' (UPF) flashing through your brain. It's almost enough to put you off, but then you get sucked in by the nostalgia factor of Frazzles or a desperate need to dunk a Hobnob in a cup of tea. Or maybe not. If you've read Ultra-Processed People by TV doctor Chris van Tulleken, you might already be religiously checking the labels on your favourite snacks, pasta sauces, cereals, yoghurt, sausages, vegan meat alternatives and – worst of all – bread. You might even be putting them back on the supermarket shelf when you realise half the ingredients are pure gobbledegook; a confusing blur of additives, emulsifiers, preservatives and flavour enhancers, none of which resemble any real ingredients you could buy individually. UPFs 'are industrially processed foods and contain ingredients that aren't typically used in home kitchens,' explains food writer and registered nutritionist Delicia Bale. 'They're also normally high in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and low in fibre and micronutrients. In research, they have been described as 'hyper palatable' – they're designed to be over-consumed.' That's why, once you pop you can't stop with crisps, why a packet of chocolate buttons is gone without you even realising, and why two slices of white bread doesn't seem to touch the sides. And the other problem is, some things you would never expect to be ultra-processed, are, like stock cubes, shop-bought pastry ('One of the harder ones to make from scratch,') and mayonnaise. 'It's going to go off quite quickly if you make it yourself. I swap it for Greek yogurt,' says Bale. 'If you find one that's not too sour tasting, it'll work quite well and it also increases the protein slightly and decreases the fat in recipes.' Even some tins of coconut milk have added emulsifiers. 'I don't really understand why, because coconut milk still separates, even with an emulsifier in it,' says Bale, bemused. Then there's bread, which she calls 'probably the most widely consumed ultra-processed food'. Homemade, it's just four ingredients: flour, salt, water and yeast. But check the back of your supermarket loaf and the ingredients list may shock you. Even when you are aware of UPFs and the many health dangers associated with eating them, including an increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, they are ubiquitous, so can feel borderline inescapable. Which is why Bale, 27, has written her debut cookbook, Unprocessed Made Easy. 'When reducing UPFs in people's diets, they don't really know where to start,' she says. 'So my book is focused on direct swaps for foods that typically are processed.' She provides homemade trades for everything from granola and pancakes, to noodles, soups, pizza and burgers, while keeping costs low and, crucially, meal prepping speedy. Because this is the major issue; besides UPFs being so darned delicious and available, it seems so much quicker and easier to just buy the tinned soup or the plastic-wrapped ready meal, than buy a set of ingredients, then go home and transform it into a meal. 'People have less time, so they rely on those foods,' says Bale, without judgement. But the fact is, 'a meta analysis on ultra-processed foods found that, looking at all the different studies so far, there's been no positive association seen with consuming UPFs.' Unless you count the taste. Bale's mother was a personal trainer, so she grew up eating 'pretty healthy' and has been interested in eating well since. While studying nutrition at the University of Surrey, she began writing recipes and fell in love with food photography. Now she has 116k followers on Instagram and one million likes on TikTok. She says her interest in tackling UPF consumption comes from the fact 'it's not about restricting one particular type of food. Obviously, restrictive diets aren't sustainable, I like this [area of nutrition] because I think [reducing UPFs] is something people can maintain long term.' Growing up in Canada has also had a major impact on her understanding of food. 'The way people eat here is quite different,' she says of Britain. '[In Canada] people's main meals would be more unhealthy, but here, people's meals are generally pretty healthy, but then they're eating a lot of the high fat, high sugar, high salt snack foods. People don't really eat crisps or chocolate every single day [in Canada], and then I moved here, and that's what people were eating in their packed lunch.' Compared to other countries, Britain is something of a UPF stronghold. 'When we're comparing ourselves to every European country, and especially Mediterranean countries, they're still consuming some UPFs, but it's only about 10 to 20 per cent [of their diet] whereas here, it's closer to 60 per cent,' says Bale. A study in 2019 found it was a whopping 57 per cent, and for teenagers, closer to 80 per cent. She's not asking you to go full on cold turkey though. 'I still do eat some UPFs,' she admits. 'It's quite difficult to avoid, especially in social situations. I don't think it's something that needs to be removed from people's diets entirely. I just think it needs to be reduced by quite a lot.' She recommends starting off by swapping one meal a day for something non ultra-processed and 'not feeling like they have to remove everything all at once, because that can be quite overwhelming, and also not thinking they need to completely cut it out and never eat it again. A restrictive mindset makes it so people, if they eat one UPF, they think, 'Oh no, I've broken my diet,' and then they give up trying.' Bale is adamant: 'It doesn't have to be difficult to make changes to your diet and eat healthier or eat less UPFs. It doesn't have to be super complicated.' You can do it. 'Unprocessed Made Easy' by Delicia Bale ANutr (Ebury Press, £20).
