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It's that time of year again when the summer sunshine entices thousands of tennis fans to enjoy the feast of entertainment served up at Wimbledon. There's no Rafael Nadal this year but you can be sure that the traditional strawberries and cream will be a hit with the spectators.

Waitrose have taken our love for tradition and embraced the flavour of the season to come up with the Berry Banger, a limited edition sausage that allows hungry tennis fans to combine two summer food favourites: strawberries and cream and barbecued meat.

Anna Lloyd, Waitrose sausage buyer, comments: "Brits love tennis and strawberries and cream have become accepted as an integral part of the festivities. Our limited-edition sausages always create a bit of theatre at the counter and never fail to put a smile on customers' faces. We hope they'll be a big hit this summer."

Will you be cheering on Andy Murray on a full stomach of Berry Bangers and mash? Creative ideas are always good for the food industry. We'd love to hear what unusual flavourings you'd like to see in your bangers?

Last week was National Sandwich Week, but what do you know about the history of one of Britain's favourite foods?

Evidence of people eating bread first appears in 7500 BCE, during the Stone Age. People have been eating sandwiches in one form or another since they began eating bread. So the history of sandwiches could be said to stretch back nearly 10,000 years.

Serving delicate finger food between two slices of bread was a culinary practice among upper class ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples (this "upper-crust" tradition carries over into modern English high tea).

The first recorded sandwich was eaten in the 1st century BCE by Hillel the Elder. The famous rabbi ate a mixture of sweet and bitter foods between two pieces of matzoh bread, as a symbol of Jewish slavery. The practice is now a Passover custom, known as the Hillel Sandwich.

However, food historians generally attribute the creation of the sandwich, as we know it today, to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. This Englishman was said to have been fond of gambling. As the story goes, in 1762, during a 24 hour gambling streak he instructed a cook to prepare his food in such a way that it would not interfere with his game. The cook presented him with sliced meat between two pieces of toast. Perfect! This meal required no utensils and could be eaten with one hand, leaving the other free to continue the game.

Approximately 2 billion sandwiches are purchased in the UK each year with the commercial market being worth approximately £3.5 billion - that's huge - bigger than the UK pizza market which is only worth c £1 billion. Around another 2.67 billion sandwiches are eaten by way of lunchboxes which contain sandwiches and it's thought that 6.24 billion sandwiches are made within the home taking the total amount of sandwiches made to 10.96 billion per year - that's almost 200 sandwiches per person each year.

Sandwiches are so popular that they even have their own awards ceremony - The Sammies - The British Sandwich Industry Awards. From sandwich bars to new sandwich concepts, the search is intensive and involves a wide panel of judges working for months across the UK with the aim of finding the very best. The aim of these awards is to encourage everyone in the industry to do things even better and to reward those who are doing the most to lead the way.

The true beauty of the sandwich has to be its versatility. They can be made from an enormous range of filings and they're quick and easy to make. Do you enjoy the traditional cheese and pickle or BLT or have you created your own special sandwich recipe? We'd love to know...

Made with Tony's Secret Formula, they're Gr-r-reat! Not only are Kellogg's Frosties super crunchy and great tasting, they are packed with carbohydrates - a great fuel for your body, and one serving provides half your daily needs (RDA) of three B-vitamins, which help convert food into the energy you need. A Gr-r-reat-tasting breakfast cereal!

That's the description on the Kellogg's website for one of the children's favourite breakfast foods. But what it doesn't tell us is that the popular cereal is laden with sugar.

The latest report, Going Against the Grain, from consumer group Which?, tells us that many brands perceived to be healthy, including Kellogg's All Bran, Bran Flakes and Special K have high levels of sugar. Morrisons Choco Crackles cereal tops the sweet mountain with more sugar to a serving than a Cadbury Flake, followed closely by Kellogg's Coco Pops Moons and Stars, Frosties and Ricicles, which were more than a third - 37% - pure sugar, according to the Which? report.

In fact only eight of the products surveyed qualified for a Food Standards Agency healthy "green light" for low levels of sugar, with 31 out the 100 cereals examined containing more than four teaspoons of sugar to a recommended serving. Only one of the 28 cereals specifically marketed at children, Kellogg's Rice Krispies, was found not to be high in sugar, but it was high in salt. Nestle Shredded Wheat was the only cereal to show a green lights in all categories.

Sue Davies, chief policy adviser at Which?, said: "Some cereals deserve their healthy image, but most simply don't. It's especially shocking that almost all those targeted at children are less healthy."

Cereal manufacturers need "to wake up to the fact that people want to eat healthily and provide them with the means to do so by reducing sugar and salt levels and making labelling clearer", she added. "With over £1bn spent every year, it's time they rose to the occasion."

The Change4Life campaign was launched in January to tackle soaring rates of obesity by promoting healthy eating and exercise. Official statistics from the National Child Measurement programme suggest that 22 per cent of children are overweight or obese by the time they start school, while nearly a third (31 per cent) fall into these categories at age 10 or 11.

But changing kids eating habits overnight poses a potential problem for parents. Anyone with young children will know that a major problem is trying to get them to eat the right foods. How many times have you heard child screaming 'I don't want that, I want ....? And how many times have you given in for the sake of a little peace and quiet?

Are you one of those who has tried and failed to introduce a beneficial eating plan to your children? Or have you been successful in implementing a healthy diet and exercise regime? We'd love to hear your experiences...

Today is April Fools Day and we thought it would be fun to remind you of just a few of the stories that have taken in the unsuspecting public in previous years.

In 1957 the BBC enthralled viewers with a spoof documentary broadcast about spaghetti crops in Switzerland. The hoax Panorama programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest. After the programme, the BBC received hundreds of calls from viewers wanting to buy spaghetti bushes.

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."

2006 saw The Daily Express telling us that biscuits were being mixed into tarmac to help make roads safer. "Scientists yesterday revealed that broken biscuits are in fact the perfect material to help resurface roads... Years of experimental research revealed that crushed-up ginger nuts are the best biscuit for a road's sub-base, as they are more porous and allow water to drain away."

BMW ran an ad in the Guardian in 2004 to unveil its new Satellite Hypersensitive Electromagnetic Foodration (SHEF) Technology, which would allow drivers to cook their dinners from their car as they drove home from work. All the dials for the home oven were built into the dashboard of the car and communicated wirelessly with the actual oven at home. Drivers could monitor the progress of their meal via a built-in oven-cam. The ad directed readers to a website that featured images of a roasted chicken and a sleek sedan, and offered recipes such as "chicken a la M42."

What's your favourite food related April Fools story? We'd love to hear...

Make sure you take some ID with you when you want to buy your favourite tipple at the supermarket. Tesco has just announced that it will tighten its procedures by introducing Challenge 25 in May.

Challenge 25 is to be rolled out to all Tesco stores, following in the footsteps of Asda and Morrisons, which have both introduced the policy over the course of the last year in an attempt to stamp out underage sales. Sainsbury's is due to introduce Challenge 25 in September.

Last week, Tesco, who operate a Challenge 21 policy, was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay £250 costs after a Blackpool store admitted it has sold alcohol to children on more than three occasions.

In the UK we currently have the following laws in place regarding the purchase and consumption of alcohol by minors:

• It is illegal to give an alcoholic drink to a child under five except under medical supervision in an emergency.
• It is legal for adults to buy alcohol for children over four to drink in the home.
• At the age of 16, young adults can drink beer, wine or cider with a meal in a restaurant, if it is bought by an adult and they are accompanied by an adult.
• By the time they reach the age of 18, they can buy alcohol and drink it in a pub. They can even hold a licence to sell alcohol.

From 2010, the Identity and Passport Service will begin offering identity cards on a voluntary basis to young people who will benefit from them in their daily lives. Are we going to see students and young professionals rushing to get one of these cards so that they can buy alcohol unchallenged when they go to the supermarket?

Do you believe that our current alcohol laws are outdated? Should our laws be updated to curb underage drinking?

Local food-buying cooperatives, which cut out the middlemen between producers and consumers, are taking the country by storm.

The concept is far from new, but it's proving increasingly popular. "Interest is definitely growing," says John Atherton of Co-operatives UK, an organisation that supports cooperative enterprise across Britain. "We're seeing rising numbers of buying groups and community shops. It's a trend that is set to continue."

As well as cutting out the middlemen, cooperatives are jointly owned and democratically controlled by their members - and it is the members who are the beneficiaries of the activities of the business.

Across Britain, food co-ops are sprouting up in school halls, community centres, farm sheds or even your neighbour's front room - anywhere, in fact, where rent is free.

The system is simple: find a supplier, buy in bulk and collectively cover the costs. Smaller co-ops will only buy what participants have ordered, whereas larger organisations operate as markets or even set up their own shops. Some of these "community" co-ops invite customers to become members. You pay a nominal fee to be able to shop from it, or have a say in how it is run.

So what are the benefits? In Trealaw, a small community in the Rhondda Valley, they have an Aldi, Lidl and an Asda and yet the Food Co-op has around 200 members. They collect their pre-ordered fruit and veg. every Thursday and reckon that for £3 you get what would cost you about £7 in the local supermarket.

Many cooperatives get their fresh supplies from local farms thus helping their local community and on top of that there's no expensive packaging to pay for.

Will the trend continue and more and more people use their local co-op or will the supermarkets bring down the prices of their fresh produce to win back customers? Do you use a local food cooperative and if so how does it compare in terms of quality and price?

We are all familiar with the British Christmas Day lunch of roast turkey and all the trimmings, but we thought it would be interesting to discover some of the foods that people in other countries eat to celebrate the festive season.

Czech Republic - The traditional meal consists of fish soup, fried carp and potato salad followed by sweet biscuits is eaten as dinner on Christmas Eve.

Haiti - Fried pork or goat with spicy pickled carrots and cabbage and fried plantains followed by a sweetened potato, fig and banana pudding known as Pain Patate.

Romania - Force-meal rolls in cabbage or in vine leaves, sausages, blood pudding and cozonac (a Romanian Christmas cake). The Romanians eat their festive meal late at night on the 24th.

Italy - Italians probably have the longest Christmas lunch, it's not uncommon for the feast to last 5 hours. Most families will have about 8 courses including antipasti, a small portion of pasta, a roast meal, followed by 2 salads and 2 sweet puddings - then cheese fruit, brandy and chocolates.

St Kitts and Nevis - St. Kitts has a carnival over the Christmas holidays - one huge party with music and dancing in the streets. Festive foods include black pudding, goat water, conchs, Johnny cakes, and roti.

Tanzania - Tanzanian's have their main feast on Christmas night consisting of pilau, chai, and a chicken, red meat, or seafood.

Mauritius - The Mauritian Christmas feast is often served as a picnic and includes cold meats, fish terrine and salads.

Armenia - The traditional Christmas meal consists of fried fish, lettuce, and spinach. The meal is traditionally eaten after the Christmas Eve service.

Sweden - The Swedes eat their festive meal of ham, herring and brown beans on Christmas Eve, usually after attending midnight mass.

While you're tucking into your roast turkey, spare a thought for researchers at the McMurdo scientific research station on Antarctica, or anybody else in remote places, whose Christmas dinner may just consist of a meal of dehydrated food.

If you've spent Christmas abroad what did your festive meal consist of? We'd love to learn more about other traditional festive cuisines...

The typical Briton is giving up fish and chips in favour of Thai takeaways and choosing locally grown food over expensive organic produce, but still failing to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, according to The Independent on Sunday yesterday.

For the first time, the Government has produced a wide-ranging assessment of British eating, using food diaries, surveys and official industry statistics.

It appears that we prefer locally grown produce to organic and free-range food. This is probably understandable as we become ever more cost conscious. However one of the more worrying statistics in the Government report tells us that more than 200,000 people in the nation's poorest homes often go an entire day without food.

Thai food is becoming the biggest growth area in the £30.5bn a year eating-out food sector, which includes food-serving pubs, restaurants and takeaways. We spend £7.6bn annually on fast food, including fish and chips, pizza, burgers and Thai, Chinese and Indian takeaway. But the figures reveal that the traditional British fish and chip supper accounts for only 3 per cent of food cooked outside the home.

The report comes as ministers prepare a campaign urging us to "Buy British" as a way of helping the UK through recession. From tomorrow, local food producers will be encouraged to bid for more public sector contracts, while Food minister Jane Kennedy will pledge that the Government will do all it can to promote British food within European free market laws.

Before the advent of large supermarkets, greengrocers and butchers selling local produce were easy to find. These have now disappeared in favour of convenience stores that only sell tinned produce, making it harder for people without their own transport to purchase fresh items. And as more and more families consist of two breadwinners, we are turning to takeaway food as a quick and easy meal solution.

Maybe now is the time to re-evaluate our eating habits. How could the Government persuade you to "Buy British"?

Christmas draws ever closer, and as the recession continues to bite, this seems like a good opportunity to ask our readers to do their bit and share a bit of festive cheer.

For many of us the high cost of food will no doubt be causing some concern. How do we provide the family and guests with the meals they crave on a reduced budget?

There must be many of you out there who have some helpful tips to share with us. So come on all you chefs, both professional and amateur, we'd all love to read your Christmas recipes and other cost cutting ideas!

Statistics from the UK's largest free to use discount and voucher code website have revealed that sales related to online supermarket shopping have outstripped electronic and gadget related online sales for the first time since internet retail was established.

It appears that we are turning to online supermarket sites to hunt for bargains on essential items such as bread and milk, as well as exclusive offers and discounts on home delivery.

4238 people from across the UK took part in the research which revealed that Tesco leads the way when it comes to the most popular online supermarket website with 44.2% of people saying they shopped at the retail giant leaving ASDA trailing with just 23.2% and Sainsbury's with only 11.7% of market share.

Apart from the obvious convenience and time saving factors, what other benefits can you derive from shopping online? Unless an item is out of stock, you'll get everything that was on your list AND you won't buy all of those extra things you hadn't planned on buying.

Do you do your grocery shopping online? Are you completely satisfied with the service you receive? We'd love to hear your experiences...