A calorie count with my pint in the pub? No thanks | Emma Kay

This has caused unrest with the hospitality sector. So what’s the inherent issue here?

Well, it’s further obligations that pubs would have to shoulder at precisely the wrong time.

Of course obesity is important. But now, pubs need to pour pints for every patron they can get. The only numbers they worry about are the losses they inherited from Covid.

Calorie counting is not altogether accurate. Based on a system of averages, it doesn’t heed our own complex digestive system. It has us imagining food as a mathematical problem to be solved rather than something to keep us alive.

Calorie countdown to perfection also dismisses those with eating disorders, exacerbating their stress and anxiety.

Leave the beer pumps alone.

Like it or not, Covid-19 is here to stay in our media

Should storylines involving the coronavirus be on TV’s or in mainstream media?

Do our popular media have a social and moral responsibility to address one of the largest cultural milestones in medical history?

Or is it all too distasteful and fresh?

The question of if we ought to be relieving our experiences of coronavirus through popular culture, is a complicated one. It can depend on a multitude of factors, such as personal experience and loss along with how the show depicts the storyline. We had shows such as the romantic comedy mini-series, Love in the Time of Corona back in August last year which used remote technology and was one of the first shows to document our early days of lockdown.

Some series have put the pandemic in a starring role. For example, The Good Doctor centred an episode on the coronavirus back when we still knew little about it. The opening title card read: ‘Honour the heroes….many of whom have given their lives. Do your part. Wear a mask.’ The purpose of this episode is obvious in its aim to educate and make people aware of the virus while handling it in a professional and sensitive manner. People would be hard-pressed to find holes in this dedicated depiction. Complaining about the presence of the coronavirus in a medical television drama is rather self-righteously redundant.

Some shows may decide to ignore ‘the corona problem’ altogether and present a polished facade of a world that breathed past the pandemic. This is also perfectly fine as some storylines might be unable to be woven around the story of the pandemic or the pandemic is irrelevant to the story.

The most we are likely to start seeing is popular media sprinkling coronavirus references in the background to ensure we understand its place in our lives. There will always be plenty with good intentions who scrupulously edit scripts to ‘get corona right’ as well as parodies such as South Park doing a ‘pandemic special’ that pokes fun at heading back to school post-lockdown. Of course, we will get ‘bad takes’ in which the media uses the coronavirus to make an audience sit up and listen in hopes of creating more money-spinning content. Even so, all of these portrayals of the virus will be there to show different ways of dealing with something very dangerous, very real and very central in all of our lives.

Even in our post pandemic world, we will still need to acknowledge what we have stepped out of and accept that it was something pretty horrific. Sure, having coronavirus mentioned in your media can be somewhat jarring but we must come to grips with ushering in the new normal.

Make way for the caterpillar conundrum

Colin the Caterpillar is a crumbly chocolate chum that has graced British birthdays for a decade.

If you don’t know, Colin is a long chocolate log cake with a goofy smiling marzipan face that can be purchased from Marks and Spencer. It is popular for its looks and ease of slicing and distributing among children.

Colin has been wearing the chocolate caterpillar crown for a long time and lots of other chocolate caterpillars want a nibble. We have Sainsbury’s Wiggles, Tesco’s Curly, Co-op’s Charlie, Clyde and Free From Frieda at Asda, Cecil from Waitrose and Morrisison’s, with their rather creative, Morris.

With so many imitators creeping onto the shelves, why is Aldi’s Cuthbert the only store to have no wiggle room from Marks and Sparks legal team? Especially as they are donating some revenue from Cuthbert to charity. As Aldi says: ‘Let’s raise money for charity, not lawyers’.