The fruit of the bramble is a delicious, guilt-free and ephemeral pleasure.

Not that one. The handheld gizmo with all the addictiveness, and few of the upsides, of a class A substance has just ruined your holiday. You're now going to have to reconnect with nature in between long hours at a desk. But how better to do so than with Rubus fruticosus – the real blackberry, which is now in season, and a fitting flavour of the month. The blackberry proves to children that snacks need not come pre-packed and rammed with additives. Even better – it's guilt-free. Food miles: zero. Carbon footprint? We think not. To pick blackberries is to participate in an ancient tradition: the fruit even gets a mention in Shakespeare. And the bramble quite literally offers a free lunch, or at least a free dessert, which is not to be sniffed at in the austerity age. So enjoy, but hurry. The date will soon be upon us when, according to legend, the devil was…

"Did you know that most of the water you're drinking every day may actually be damaging your health?"

This is the bold claim made by Nevada-based Affinity Lifestyles. Fortunately, they have the solution: Real WaterTM with E2 technology.

The Real Water website describes how the water we drink – from the water I have in my glass right now, to the water you made your cup of tea with this morning – has been "damaged".

In an attempt to blind the reader with science, there are reams of misplaced claims and pseudo-facts. Take the claim that "many food and beverages ... are devoid of electrons" – which would make them an entirely new state of matter.

Real Water doesn't appear to be a hoax or the work of Chris Morris and co. I've had confirmation from a US store that they stock the product and I have got as close to buying a 24-pack of Real Water ($36 + p&p) as…

The Hairy Bikers' chummy patter might divide opinion but it's unarguably successful. So which other TV chefs might benefit from being part of a double act?

The Hairy Bikers continue their campaign of never being off my telly, ever. Following on from The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook, The Hairy Bakers, The Hairy Bikers' Twelve Days of Christmas, The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain and The Hairy Bikers' Cook Off, this show ostensibly sees them scouring the country for odd little dishes kept alive by families through the generations.

In reality, though, it's just another excuse for the Hairy Bikers to trundle around on their motorbikes being all charming and enthusiastic and unthreatening – just like they are in every other Hairy Bikers series. Not everyone is convinced – some find their endless chummy patter grating, others have grown tired of their ubiquity, particularly when it manifests itself in patronising…

Men risking their lives by regularly tucking into salty pies, mash and gravy, warns health watchdog

A pie with your pint can contain as much salt as 15 packets of crisps, according to research which says men are risking their lives by regularly tucking into the popular dish. Pubs are the worst offenders for the high salt content of their meals which can cause high blood pressure, strokes and heart disease but supermarkets are also highlighted for their salt-laden pies.

The survey by Cash (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) for Salt Awareness Week looked at 526 pie, mash and gravy products from supermarkets, large chain pubs, cafes and takeaways, after identifying traditional English meat dishes as one of men's favourite foods.

In the UK, over twice as many men as women die prematurely of heart problems and strokes.

The worst supermarket offender was a Waitrose steak, mushroom and red wine pie containing…

For most people anchovies are a love or hate ingredient. Where do you stand?

There is, as WoM readers well know, much to decry in today's food landscape, with its malevolent additives, atmosphere-destroying cattle farts, food miles and Pret's all day breakfast sandwich. But one of the saddest things is what's happened to anchovies. Though few things better a good anchovy, few industrial foodstuffs are as revolting as a cheap tinned specimen.

Gauging global anchovy stocks is difficult. Some say there is cause for optimism, others are more cautious. Though Peru's fishery experienced a collapse in the 1970s today their anchovies account for 10% of all the fish landed in the world. No one can be sure whether the current catch size is sustainable: last year's catch was reportedly 40% smaller than expected, bolstering fears that such highs can't last. But the country is at least making an effort to manage stocks responsibly and…

Sales of marmalade are reported to be falling. Let's hope it's because we're all making our own

The bitter news of declining marmalade sales is enough to put any right-thinking Brit right off their breakfast. For centuries our national taste for this pithy spread has set us apart as a people – not for us the sweet charms of fruity French conserves, or fatty American peanut butter. Instead, we graduate proudly from Marmite to marmalade – anything else, with the possible exception of the vicar's wife's strawberry jam on high days and holidays, would be positively unpatriotic. After all, breakfast is as much a test of character as it is a meal – and Britain's growing taste for sugary chocolate spread, as reported by the Grocer magazine, is nothing if not a damning indictment of our declining moral fibre.

Chocolate is just so … obvious. It takes time to develop a taste for marmalade – that wonderfully…

The world was blessed with yet another food photography app last week, underscoring (or fuelling?) the growing obsession with visually recording everything we eat. From slices of toast to smears of jus, countless millions of us now feel so compelled to snap our dinner it seems that our ability to sit down and just enjoy a meal is in danger of being lost.

Platter, a new app that tags and shares food images, joins a host of social media that allow us to enthral the world with photos of what we eat. Leader of the pack, Foodspotting, has had more than 1m food images uploaded to its site in the past two years and others like Foursquare, fidd.me, SnapDish and Instagram are driving the trend. Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are also awash with plates of food; one of the most prolific Flickr groups is I Ate This, where more than 25,000 members have uploaded 470,000 images ranging from plain old Marmite on toast though to various expressions of molecular gastronomy.

…

Unless you're the kind of wine drinker who has their favourites and sticks to them year in, year out, the end of March marks the beginning of a shift to lighter, fresher flavours. Sod's law it will probably be snowing when you read this, but the clocks have gone forward, home-grown asparagus is in the shops and the supermarkets are stuffed with Easter offers – yes, it's time to snap up a few spring bargains.

The two areas to look for are own-label and big brand offers. Tesco, for example, has deals on most of its Finest range from Monday, which brings the crisp, dry, seafood-friendly Picpoul de Pinet 2011 (12.5% abv), which is down to £5.79 – or roughly the price it ought to be in the first place. The zesty Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2011 (13% abv), normally £9.79, is reduced to £6, which must be as cheap as it was when I first drank it in the early 1990s – with a hint of passionfruit offsetting its trademark,…

I know it's unfashionable to stick up for school meals but as a British Asian growing up in a household where kebabs and curry were the norm and shepherd's pie and rice pudding were alien entities, I have very fond memories of my school dinners.

Everything we ate at home was jazzed up Pakistani-style - even omelettes had dried chilli, coriander seeds and turmeric in them. It was eating at school that taught us about traditional English food; the good and the bad. It was exciting to have buttery mash and a pie for lunch instead of a fiery dopiaza, and fun to eat jelly and ice cream for dessert instead of sipping milky cardamom-infused tea. School meals were the definition of exotic. I didn't want a chapati and lentils; I wanted lancashire hotpot. It may not have been sensitively prepared by artisan chefs, but it had gravy in it.

I come from a Muslim family so we don't eat pork but there were many accidental spam fritters and pork pies…

Be they spoons, spatulas or spurtles there are some items in every kitchen with which the cook has a special connection. What are yours?

The relationships we have with our kitchen tools is an intimate one. Whether whisking an emulsion, filleting a fish or ladling a sauce, confidence in the kitchen often stems from the grip around a familiar handle.

Knives are arguably the most personal of kitchen tools. In the opinionated pages of Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain explains just how reserved chefs can be about their blades with the line, "Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife." The thing is, over time, we develop an understanding with our tools with which we share those culinary victories and bloody defeats.

As cooks, we hang on to some implements for vast periods of time. Mat Follas has grown quite attached to a rubber spatula. "My nan gave it to me when I was just an apprentice, about 28 years ago.…