Greggs joins trend for healthy eating with sourdough pasties

It is the UK’s largest bakery chain, renowned for its sausage rolls and steak bakes and its north-east England roots as well as for famously putting the boot into George Osborne’s ill-fated pasty tax. But the lovers of puff pastry among the six million customers who flock to its 1,700 UK outlets are in for a shock this week.

Greggs is introducing “healthy” pasties, which come in at under 300 calories and contain up to a third less fat and saturated fat (9g rather than 25g). The two new products, with chicken katsu or Bombay potato fillings, use a crunchier sourdough-based shortcrust pastry (with a crumb topping) rather than traditional puff pastry laden with butter. That means they score green and amber – rather than unhealthy red – on the Food Standards Agency’s “traffic light” system.

Roger Whiteside, the group’s chief executive officer, said: “Greggs is well-loved for its traditional pasties and sausage rolls, but we recognise that our customers are increasingly looking for lower calorie and lower fat options.”

Greggs’ move is part of a wider push by brands to be seen to be offering healthier options. Amid concerns about high obesity rates in the UK – researchers recently predicted that by 2025 Britain will have the highest obesity levels among both men and women in Europe, at 38% – food and retail giants have been reformulating their products and encouraging consumers to consider healthier choices.

Pizza Express last week linked up with Iceland to debut its new Artisana range of frozen pizzas, including five that are made from a sourdough base instead of its conventional bread version. Earlier this year Italian eaterie Bella Italia became one of the first chains to introduce spiralised vegetables to its menus and McDonald’s introduced a new salad mix.

Malcolm Clark, coordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign, which is part of the Obesity Health Alliance, said the move by Greggs was a step in the right direction. “Providing healthy options is a good step, but making healthier food the standard promoted item and standard customer choice would be much better.

“Hungry customers’ good intentions may still often crumble at the sight of cheaper, less healthy savoury snacks and the rows of doughnuts and other iced goodies tempting them.”

Greggs began to bring in healthier options earlier this year – a strategy that appears to be paying off as its “balanced choice” products now account for 10% of sales.

But the latest move may incur the wrath of diehard fans of its steak bakes and sausage rolls who have set up a Facebook group where its 6,000 members post reviews of their culinary experiences.

Greggs joins trend for healthy eating with sourdough pasties

Benedict Cumberbatch joins celebrities backing Stephen"s Story as donations leading £2.eight million

“The general oncologist and team I’ve been seeing will discuss the events with my professor in the morning and we will see exactly where we go from there … It is even now a situation of taking each day as it comes, but at the second the days just preserve on coming!!”

This week he also released a 10-minute YouTube video called When Existence Offers You Cancer, featuring interviews with his mum, his college teachers and his ideal friend. In it he makes use of the pay out-off line that “cancer sucks but lifestyle is wonderful”.

Manford has now rushed to organise a gig in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust right after speaking with Mr Sutton at his hospital bedside this week. The charity gig in Birmingham offered out in four minutes.

Manford mentioned it is set to be “a excellent evening” since the terminally-ill teenager who inspired it is “just phenomenal”.

Mr Sutton has caught the public’s imagination with his positivity and refusal to really feel sorry for himself after being diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 15.

The teenager, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, last yr set up a bucket list of factors to attain ahead of he died – like raising £10,000 for the believe in.

He upped the figure to a £1 million after turning out to be an Web sensation and has now raised far more than £2.eight million with the complete rising swiftly.

His cause is aided by a number of celebrities, including Sherlock star Cumberbatch and Scorching Fuzz actor Pegg, the band Coldplay and footballer Ben Foster, who have all posed for pictures holding indications to inspire folks to donate, posted on Twitter with #thumbsupforstephen.

Manford has explained he would like to support him raise £5 million.

The stand up comic, who met Mr Sutton at a charity gig two years ago, visited the teenager in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on Thursday.

He informed LBC radio: “He is wonderful. Even in his bed there with his tubes and masks with nurses coming in each twenty minutes to give him medicine, he was even now speaking about undertaking a sky dive and hoping to get in the Guinness Guide of Records and diverse factors on his bucket record.

“He was talking about placing the fun into fundraising.

“He mentioned, ‘Don’t tug on people’s heart strings and make folks really feel guilty – don’t make men and women truly feel guilty because if they come to feel guilty they will give a fiver, if they are possessing entertaining they will give 20 quid’.

“We chatted for a couple of hrs and he is very savvy. There is also one thing about him.”

Celebrities including Stephen Fry and Russell Brand have already backed Mr Sutton’s fundraising efforts, and music mogul Simon Cowell has pledged to make a “significant donation”.

Benedict Cumberbatch joins celebrities backing Stephen"s Story as donations leading £2.eight million

Fertility mystery solved: protein identified that joins sperm with eggs

A human egg surrounded by sperm. Photograph: Wealthy Frishman/e-mail

A fundamental key to fertility has been uncovered by British scientists with the discovery of an elusive protein that makes it possible for eggs and sperm to join together.

The molecule – named Juno following the Roman goddess of fertility – sits on the egg surface and binds with a male partner on a fertilising sperm cell.

Japanese researchers identified the sperm protein in 2005, sparking a decade-extended hunt for its “mate”.

Comprehending the procedure by which the molecules interact opens the door to new developments in fertility therapy and contraception.

“We have solved a prolonged-standing mystery in biology by identifying the molecules displayed on all sperm and egg that must bind every single other at the moment we had been conceived,” explained lead researcher Dr Gavin Wright, from the Wellcome Believe in Sanger Institute in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire.

“Without having this crucial interaction, fertilisation just can’t happen. We may possibly be capable to use this discovery to improve fertility remedies and develop new contraceptives.”

The Sanger Institute group first produced an artificial edition of the sperm protein, known as Izumo1 following a Japanese marriage shrine.

This was then utilized to search for binding partners on the surface of the egg. A single protein, Juno, was identified as Izumo1′s “other half”.

Juno’s relevance to fertility was unveiled by female laboratory mice engineered to generate eggs lacking the molecule.

All the animals were infertile, their eggs incapable of fusing with standard sperm. Male mice missing Izumo1 have been also unable to conceive, highlighting this protein’s role in male fertility.

The analysis, reported in the journal Nature, also suggests that Juno plays a part in stopping extra sperm fusing with an currently fertilised egg.

“The Izumo-Juno pairing is the first identified essential interaction for sperm-egg recognition in any organism,” stated co-author Dr Enrica Bianchi, also from the Sanger Institute. “The binding of the two proteins is really weak, which almost certainly explains why this has remained a mystery until now.”

Soon after the original binding of sperm and egg, Juno bows out, becoming almost undetectable following 40 minutes, the scientists identified.

This might support describe why as soon as an egg is fertilised by one particular sperm cell it puts up a barrier towards others.

Fertilisation involving more than 1 sperm would lead to the formation of abnormal doomed embryos with too numerous chromosomes.

Juno belongs to a family members of “folate receptor” proteins, but in contrast to its brethren is unable to bind to folic acid. The researchers looked at three folate receptors, and discovered that only Juno interacted with Izumo1.

The scientists are now screening infertile women to see whether Juno defects underlie their condition.

If they do, a simple genetic screening check could assist medical professionals supply them with the most suitable treatment method whilst steering clear of wasteful cost and stress.

Regular In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) therapy, with sperm randomly fertilising eggs in a laboratory dish, could not work with out Juno.

However, it may be achievable to bypass the all-natural mating of Izumo1 and Juno employing intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (Icsi). This is an more and more popular approach of IVF which involves injecting a sperm straight into an egg.

Major fertility skilled Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in reproduction and developmental medication at the University of Sheffield, said: “I consider this is a really thrilling paper. We are nonetheless remarkably sketchy about some of the crucial molecules concerned in the early phases of fertilisation when the sperm and egg very first interact.

“However the information could be immensely beneficial to aid in the diagnosis of infertility but also in the style of new novel contraceptives for both people and other animal species.

“The identification of the Juno protein opens up many thrilling prospects. Probably the most obvious biomedical application of this discovering is regardless of whether screening for this protein (or its gene in a blood sample) could be used as a test of fertility.

“We know that fertilisation failure in IVF is fairly rare, and so I suspect the lack or dysfunction of this protein is most likely not a key trigger of infertility in couples. Nevertheless, it would be helpful to know how several women have eggs that lack this protein so we can properly assess this.

“The second, and probably most likely application, is no matter whether scientists could devise medication or vaccines that could block the way this protein performs or how the sperm protein Izumo1 interacts with it. This could lead to a new and novel non-hormonal contraceptive for each people and other species of mammals.”

Fertility mystery solved: protein identified that joins sperm with eggs