A Problem Squared - 029 = Product Labels and Public Payrolls

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Happy Pi Day 2022!  In this episode... * Which edible products have protected names? * How much tax paid by a civil servant would pass into their own salary? * And of course. We have AOB-B-B-b-b-b....  To watch a crack team of 30 calculate 11 digits of Pi by hand, head over to Stand-up Maths on YouTube.   If you want a qualification of your own, why not take the Food Standards Agency Food Labelling e-course here, or if you'd rather do something else instead, just ask Bec for the source elements.  Get your Blue Dot Festival problems to us on the website below - we might just do it live! And, as always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on aproblemsquared.com. If you want want even more from A Problem Squared (and who doesn't) find us on Twitter and Instagram

Welcome to a Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like a snowman in that it's a series of independently assembled pieces which somehow magically all balance on top of each other in a fantastic structure which is very pleasing. I'm joined by Beck Hill, comedian and a bit like on a snowman, the carrot in that eventually she will always reach a great point. And I am Matt Parker, not dissimilar to the three pieces of coal on the front of the snowman in that I am terrible at approximating pi. Also, just to clarify, when you say the three bits of coal, do you mean like the eyes and the mouth, or do you mean the buttons?

I was thinking buttons. But you're right, I discounted face coal of which. Yeah. Or any other type of frontal coal. I also slammed into my intro without something where, is there a gender neutral version of snowman? Or is it like human snow? I don't think there is.

I think we just sort of accept that. Snowperson sounds so clunky. Yeah. Yeah. There's a problem that we're not going to solve this episode, but in this episode, we will solve. How food products are labeled. How much of the tax paid by someone who works for the government then pays their own salary. And some any other business nurses. And some any other business nurses.

So much any other business business. Stay tuned. Beck, how are you doing this fine middle of March? I'm good. I'm good. Hey, I've got some exciting news, Matt. That's my favorite type of news. I mean, you already know this.

It'd be awkward if you didn't. I'll play along. We're going to be doing our first ever live recording. Yes. I did not know what exciting news you were leading up to, but I did. Now that you've said it, I did know that news and I agree. It is exciting. We're going to do that.

We're alive for all of them, for the record. Yeah, we're not doing this posthumously. I don't know how to say that word. Posthumously. Posthumously. You're posthumous. After you're funny. Yeah.

And for the record, we recorded. Posthumously. That's it. We don't do it post hummersley yeah after um entree yeah we made that mistake one time and we were very tired we were real lethargic um but the difference is the audience will be there and the audience will be live. Yes. Yeah. Which might be you if you are attending Blue Dot Festival this year. That's the gap I'm leaving for everyone listening to go and then wave their arms around in the air,

celebratory style. We will be on the evening of Friday the 22nd of July. Hey, that's Pi approximation day. Oh, that's exciting. Yay. 22 over 7. That's roughly Pi.

Oh, my goodness. Wow. Oh, wow. So we'll be playing the evening of Pi Approximation Day. That's pretty exciting. As is Groove Armada. It's us. Us and the groove.

Yeah. And no one else are entertaining you on Friday night. And then Bjork on Sunday. So what a festival. Yes. It is a good festival. That's when I will take on my alter ego. Yeah, yeah.

Beck is Bjork is what we're trying to say. I used to get that a lot when I had my black hair. Yeah. Everyone would say that that would be my, I looked more Bjorkish. If you are going to Blue Dot Festival and you want us to solve one of your problems, you can mention when you go onto the problem posing page that you will be at Blue Dot. Put it in big capital so we can see it when it comes into our spreadsheet. Blue Space Dot.

Yep. And then we'll find it. Blue Space Dot. And we will. It is a space festival, so it's appropriate. It is. That is true. And, uh, and yeah, we might choose, we might choose your problem.

For people unfamiliar with blue dot festival, it's at George Will Bank radio observatory. So it's on the site of a massive space radio telescope. It's a very nerdy festival. It's come to the surprise of no one that we have been booked and we haven't at all planned what we're going to do. Hmm. Because we don't have the problems yet, Matt. Yeah. Well, I assume because different podcasts do different things for live, live versions. I assume we're just going to sit down like this, ignore the audience and do a perfectly normal podcast recording. That's my, that's my vision of what's going to happen.

Well, we only have an hour on stage and we take quite a bit more than that to record this. Way longer than that. Okay. Right. That's awkward. Huh. Maybe if anyone listening is going to Blue Dot and wants us to do something in particular that is different from the usual.

Or if you're, if you want to hear the live episode with a live audience and you want to hear how that is different, you know, give us a shout. A problem spread.com. Yeah. We're open to comments,

suggestions before and after how you feel about a live recording one. I suspect people will be able to spot when the laugh track stops two thirds of the way through the episode. Because that's when we got kicked off stage and we had to record the rest of it in the green room out the back. Where they get absolutely zero solutions. So that's pretty news Pretty much it Yeah good news What about you Matt? Well March is famous for the other Pi Day

The Pi approximation day On the 22nd of July 22 over 7 The other Pi Day is the 14th of March Because the date 314 That makes more sense And at the time of recording, I've just gotten back. Unless you write it, you know, the correct way.

The correct way. Which would be 1-4-0-3. Yeah. It would be 2-0-2-2-1-4-0-3. No, wait. No, it would be. If you do it the proper, proper way, it month day so that would be two zero two two ignore all of that then you got zero three and then you got one four that kind of works so i'm prepared to

allow it because the iso standard year month day in there somewhere is three one four which is pi which is very exciting so i just got back i went up to a small town called, I think, Houghton Leigh Spring. Some people say Hooton Leigh Spring. I don't know the correct pronunciation. It's up north. Different people have very strong, but very different opinions about how things should be pronounced. It's kind of halfway between Durham and Newcastle, people who know these places. And I went up there because in the late 1800s, that's where the person who calculated pi by hand to the most number of digits lived. And so I went to where they lived and I tried to calculate pi myself with some help by hand. When you say by hand, do you mean like with your fingers?

That's a good point. It's not like by hand and I'm using my hands to operate a calculator. It's like pieces of paper, pens, that's it. Oh, see, I wasn't even thinking pieces of paper. I'm thinking you're holding up your hands in the air and you're like... Oh, to form a circle. One, two, on your fingers, three, four. Not like making the shapes. So like one person does three. Using your fingers as an abacus. And someone does like a heart for the decimal point.

And then. Well, you said calculating. You're not just displaying it. No. Yeah. Calculating part. No. As in.

Yeah. We had a lot of pens. We had a lot of paper. A lot of paper. There were 30 of us. So, you know, take it seriously. We ran like, you know, like warning tape, like, you know, like don't cross this line tape down the down part of the room. And on one side, you were allowed to have calculation devices because we weren't doing any of the actual pi

there. On the other side was the pi calculation zone and you were not allowed to get out any calculation devices. So if people wanted to check their phone or something, they had to go step out of the calculating arena into the calculation zone, we called it. Our goal was to calculate 100 digits, which is an incredible amount of calculation work, which is why we had 30 people working around the clock for a weekend. Oh my goodness. Do you want to know how many digits we got right? Seven.

You're not far off, both in number and rhyming. We got 11. So I bet you did that guy proud. They would be real, real upset. They would be rolling in their grave had their grave not been lost by the council. Yeah. They were buried in the local cemetery in 1882.

And in 1970, they bulldozed all the headstones and lost the location and the gravestone for William Shanks who did the calculation. Him and his wife were buried in the Hillside Cemetery in Houghton and for unknown reasons a bulldozer. It was the 70s. The UK were bulldozing everything. You need an archaeologist to go in there and find the person who's got all their fingers up in the air. Local historian found the headstone in 2010. They did a big dig, not specifically for this one person, but they tried to find all the missing headstones and put them back up.

But they don't know where to put them. So they just kind of dotted around the region where they should have been. Yeah, so it's like knocking over someone's, like, carefully arranged... Yeah, it's like being in an art gallery and knocking over a sculpture. Oh no! You're trying to put it all up. Putting the nativity scene back together Be like, oh, I think Jesus was on the horse

Can only find two wise men Yeah, but we put a load of effort into this And had a bunch of error correction And at the end, just messed up on the final bit There you go That's really disappointing But, you know, it was the friends we calculated along the way. That's, you know, the real meaning of Pi Day.

If people want to watch us only get 11 digits, the full video is up on my Stand Up Math YouTube channel. Bec, our first problem is from Dennis, who put this into the problem posing page at a problemsqugrad.com. They said that while they were grocery shopping, they noticed that there are some words that may freely be used on products, whereas others can only be used on specific ones. I think Dennis must live in Germany because they've given two German examples.

They said the word premium can be used freely. There's no, no, I guess the obligation for premium, whereas the German word for chocolate can only be used on certain products. And that's why many products boast they contain choc or choco to get around that. The problem for you Beck is I'd like to know more examples, which are or are not reserved on food products. Yeah. Um, you know how sometimes I'm like, hey, I don't have much time this episode. I'll pick something that should be relatively quick. I'm familiar with that from every single episode. And I was like, I was like, I'll Google reserved definitions for food labeling. A list will come up and I'll choose some interesting ones to talk about.

You'll write some jokes based on the list. Job done. Oh my goodness. I have had several phone conversations trying to find this information. I have spoken to the Food Standards Agency. I have spoken to the food standards agency. I have spoken to trading standards. I have spoken to so many people trying to find this information in an easily accessible way for the public because all the information out there is for food manufacturers who need to know what they

can and can't put on their labels. There's no like listicle. No. To put it all together for the average human. None. Right. So I first tried contacting the press office at the Food Standards Agency. Oh, yeah.

They were sort of like, oh, yeah. I don't know if we do have that information available in that way. I will go and try and find some and come back to you. And as of the recording, they have not come back. They have not come back to you. No. They don't have very high standards. That's the problem.

I think they were just a bit surprised that anyone wanted to know. I mean, that's true of the vast majority of this podcast. I spoke to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute to see if they had a list because they were saying, oh, do you want to report a violation? Oh my gosh. And get this, Matt. It's called a food crime.

A what? No. There's called a food crime What? No There's literally a department called the food crimes unit No, that's what a kid calls vegetables On food.gov.uk There's food crime, understanding food crime and how to report it And it's not like a health thing It's all encompassing, so types of food crime and how to report it that's it's not like a health thing so it's all-encompassing so types of food crime include theft illegal processing waste diversion

adulteration substitution misrepresentation or document fraud those are a lot of food crimes a lot of food crimes i want to know where that, like, where's, you've got CSI, you've got NCIS. Yeah. I want FC food crime. Yeah. Food crime. Sustenance division. Oh, actually, no, here it is.

The National Food Crime Unit. The NFCU. I would watch the NFCU. I would watch the NFCU. National Food Crime Unit. Then they even the NFCU. National Food Crime Unit. Then they even use NFCU. Of course they do. So I looked into that.

I looked into how you would report it. They've got law enforcement capabilities. Wow. Yeah. They're like proper food police. Yeah, they're the food police. Wow, that's incredible. The way that they tend to work, though though is that they sort of work within the industry rather than specifically being public facing.

Just so you know, they also work closely with the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit. I'm sure they've got a hotline between the two. Yeah. So when I contacted the Food Standards Agency, it was mainly about that because obviously you can report it. But that was when I found out that if it's misrepresentation, if you're trying to report it, if you're whistleblowing, you can kind of go straight to them because you're within the industry. You're on the inside. You can say what's happening. But if you're like a consumer and you're saying oh i think that this has been

misrepresented then you go through trading standards is it like when there's like a hostage situation in american films and the local police are like oh no the feds are here and then there's like a bit of wrangling between who's got authority. So like advertising standards, like this is our scene. And the NFC, you were like, we outrank you. Oh, Matt, you're jumping ahead. Oh, sorry. Advertising standards. I'll have you know, I've spoken to them and they're not really involved.

That was implied. Do you know what? It wouldn't be so much that they would be trying to get like in as the people on the case the advertising standard agency would be there like oh this is not our problem this isn't an advert we're not not involved here. This is your thing. So I spoke to the Trading Standards Institute because they have like advice guides and stuff like that, consumer advice. And I thought they might have a list of the things that you're supposed to conform to so that as a consumer, you know what they should legally be doing and you can say, oh, this is wrong.

Someone should be made aware of that. They do not have that. They do not have any information on that. They told me to call the advertising standards Association, which I did. I think you were a pawn in a inter-department prank. Oh, it was very, I felt like I was in a Douglas Adams book. The bureaucracy was fantastic. Everyone I spoke to was really, really nice though.

And also I think just a bit confused because they'd never had this question. So what I could find is links to all the legislation that each food type has. Oh, goodness. By the way, during my research, I thought maybe the information is on the Food Standards Agency website. I might be able to find something on there, but it's like hidden amongst other. Yeah. So I did a course.

You went and got a qualification. I did. I literally got a qualification. I did. I literally got a qualification. So I now have a certificate. I'll let them put it up online. It's with my full name because I was like, well, it's official. I don't want to say. So it's Rebecca Hill.

This is to certify that Rebecca Hill completed the food labeling and e-learning course on the 23rd of February, 2022. I tried to save the image because it's like embedded on a webpage. Oh. And it, it, but it's like within the webpage. And so I went to view source and it's just like all the elements that make the certificate. Oh, it's all layered up. It's like a blank version. Yeah.

So if anyone wants one of these certificates. And you know how to edit HTML. I can save all the elements. I can save all the elements. You just chuck your name in. That's exactly how qualifications work. As someone who didn't go to uni, I'm quite chuffed now that I've got another qualification. That is great. Tell you what, though.

Didn't learn a huge amount. I learned some. I learned that when it comes to food labeling, there's three different types, which is the, you're going to love this, the fancy name. Right. So the fancy name. The name when it's in trouble. Fancy name. Right.

So the fancy name. The name when it's in trouble. The fancy name is when the brand for the food is so well known that even though it doesn't tell you what it is, you know what it is. So, for instance, Coca-Cola. Oh, okay. When you have the fancy name, you don't have to say specifically what it is on the name of the food, but you have to have a description. So it'll say something like. Carbonated drink or something. Yeah.

But you don't have to have like on the main label, Coca-Cola, open brackets, in case you didn't know it's a drink. That's right. Yeah. So you don't need that. That's for fancy name. There's the legal name, which brings us back to this problem. That's what. Yeah. So you don't need that. That's for fancy name. There's the legal name, which brings us back to this problem. That's what this is mainly about where say chocolate, cheese, beef, you know, that's the legal name. I'm imagining that's one food product you just described. Oh, don't even get me started on the rules for combination foods.

started on the rules for combination foods. Oh boy. Oh, never get the off-brand chocolate cheese beef. That's right. It's like that, uh, when they fed all those recipes into the, into the generator, they called it AI, but it was, it was a generator. Um, and then there's the customary name. And then there's the customary name. So the customary name is when it's not a brand, but it doesn't need to be the legal name. So for instance, a Bakewell tart.

Oh. You know, people know. Oh, okay. Yeah. I believe Cornish pasty is one. I was not going to say meat filled pastry sack. They can just say Cornish pasty. Yeah. I was like, oh, I know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. meat-filled pastry sack. They can just say Cornish pasties.

Everyone's like, oh, I know what that is. Yeah, that's right. So I learned some stuff like that. I learned those sort of things. But getting back to Dennis or Denise, their problem, they wanted to know what the reserved descriptive names are. So these affect a whole bunch of different things. I won't go through them all because we'll be on this forever, but bottled water, bread and flour, cocoa and chocolate products, fattened oils, fish, fruit juices, and nectars, honey, jam, and similar products,

products containing meat, milk, and milk products, soluble coffee and sugary extracts, and specified sugar products. Is this similar to like, like reserve geographic names, like cheddar cheese or champagne? Oh, Matt. Oh boy. It's very similar to that. But it's not quite the same. Yeah. So this isn't the same because what you're describing is protected geographical food and drink names. Right.

And you can find out about that from the government website. This is UK government, by the way. I should say this is all what I've been able to find to do with the UK because I'm not going to go international. I'm sorry, Germany. You can't afford going to go international. I'm sorry, Germany. You can't afford the international dialing. I can't, no. So the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is what you're after, or DEFRA for short.

I guess that would be like the Marvel version of the TV show if you've got the food crime unit. So it's a different police squad, different food enforcement spinoff. Yeah. But they kind of all work together. Yeah. So the protection types are protected geographical indication. If it says it's from a particular place, it has to be from that place.

Protective designation of origin. One of the processes in making the food has to take place in place the protective designation of origin one of the processes in making the food has to take place in that right in that area so if you were to make a cornish pasty you can make it using ingredients from other places but it would need to be made in you got to make it in that sort of right okay right yeah uh then there's the traditional specialty guaranteed that's like if you've been making cheese for 50 years, so you get to have your special logo on there to say that it's like a traditional thing. And some of these must become generic. It's a bit like, like a, a brand name like Hoover or Kleenex

has been used so much. it just becomes a generic phrase. Like cheddar, like cheddar cheese. Is that like anyone can make a cheddar, even if they're not in the cheddar region? Right. So it looks like the word cheddar itself, anyone can say cheddar. You don't have to be in cheddar. Gotcha. But there are some, so there's one here that is a protected food name with protected designation of origin. And that is West Country Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese.

Oh. So that is registered that it is made by West Country Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese. And then there's another, which is Orkney Scottish Island Cheddar. And that is a protected geographical indication. That's the opposite corner of the UK. Yeah. Those are more to do with almost brands. In fact, you can look at registered names from around the world that work in the UK.

So I looked up Australia. Like Barossa Valley or something, maybe. That's right. Yeah. So there's over 5,000 products in the database. When I plugged in Australia, 66 come up. Oh, okay. That's fewer.

And all of them are the same type of product. Oh, let me guess. Are they all wine-based? 100% all wine-based, correct. Oh. They're the only type of food that we have registered with the UK. They're all wine-based, yeah. But then what we're talking about here is closer to like food for like ingredient fraud

where you're claiming by in the title that you're using certain ingredients and potentially you're not totally so going back to the chocolate example that dennis uses in their problem here for something to legally be classified as chocolate, it needs to consist of 35% total cocoa solids and 14% dry, non-fat cocoa solids and 18% cocoa butter.

So it needs to have minimum of those percentages for it to legally be classified as chocolate. That's reassuring. And if you want milk chocolate, you only need 20% dry cocoa solids, but you need 20% dry milk solids. So, and milk in itself, at the moment, milk is legally, within the UK, needs to be something that came from an animal

that was milked, essentially. Oh, okay. Because I was thinking, what are they cutting milk with? But no, it's just to use the milk descriptor. Yeah. It needs to have been milked out of something. Yeah. So there was a big uproar about it, actually.

I remember a couple of years ago, because you and I both use a brand of oat milk. Oat milk. But we can't say oat milk, apparently. But we can't say oat milk. And I hadn't even picked up on this, because I remembered when it first came out that it was called oat milk. But we can't say oat milk, apparently. But we can't say oat milk. And I hadn't even picked up on this because I remembered when it first came out that it was called oat milk. And then I was like, what? They can't use milk. But I swear they have that on the packaging.

And if you look it up, I went through to my kitchen, took out a carton. It's oat drink. Oat drink. It doesn't say milk. They've had to take milk off the... Could they put like milk substitute? No. No, they can't have to take milk off the... Could they put like milk substitute? No. No, they can't have the word milk because it...

Wow. You can't even have like not milk. No, because there's a whole thing where you have to define it by what it is, not what it isn't. So you can't say... That's interesting. And it gets really messy because obviously for years... I mean, there is a brand called I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. I Can't Believe That Title's Not Legal.

Yeah. The standards change so much from case to case that I don't think they'd be able to keep it updated because it's really confusing. Even when it comes to things like for something to be said that it's been fortified with vitamins, there is no specified minimum limit of vitamins. All it says is it has to have a significant amount as declared by the Food Standards Agency. So it's classic ambiguity to cover edge cases. They're just like, it's got to have enough. And then if it ever comes to a court case, then they'll get down to the nitty gritty of what's significant. Exactly. Milk chocolate, you would have to say milk, right? So you couldn't have vegan milk chocolate. You can have vegan chocolate because chocolate in itself doesn't have to have milk or animal

products. It just has to have a certain amount of cocoa, basically. Is this, because I thought it was an urban legend, but maybe this is true. Is this why places like McDonald's and other fast food places have a thick shake, not a milkshake? Because I always heard, like the urban legend was, there's not enough dairy in a thick shake to be called a milkshake. I don't know if you stumbled across this in your phoning around. I actually didn't come across that at all. Because it's that one and Froot Loops.

Fruit is spelt F-R-O-O-T because there's no fruit in a Fruit Loops. Yeah, there was actually legal cases. There was legal cases against Fruit Loops and Captain Crunch Crunch Berries cereals for suggesting that they had fruit in them. But Fruit Loops are fine. Fruit and Lips are fine. Basically, they were found to be fine because there's nothing in the spelling or the packaging to suggest that there's any real fruit in it whatsoever. But I'll tell you who did get in trouble. Tesco.

And in fact, quite a lot of supermarkets have done this. Quite a lot. Asda, Audi, Marks and Spencer. Loads of them. But Tesco in particular, basically they created a sort of in-house brand. So using Tesco as an example, they had Woodside Farms for their Tesco value brand. You know, the meat was from Woodside Farms. Not a farm.

Not a farm. No, no. Just, they just had a brand called woodside farms and so everyone was like oh that sounds nice that's nope and then a real farm singular called woodside farm that does do oh and they are a farm yeah and they would do proper you know free range and they would do proper, you know, free range pigs. They would sort of sell from the farm direct to sort of local butchers and that sort of thing. Yeah, when Tesco brought out and they were like, oh, Woodside Farms, everyone was like, what? And they were like, nope, that's not us. So the National Farmers Union filed an official complaint with the trading standards. I would think that Tesco could both come up with an original name for a farm and probably

afford a farm. Just buy a small farm and just drive your lorries through it. Right. And there you are. Or just hit the animals. Tick and no. It's just like everything goes through, you know, Tesco Valley Farm or whatever. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I see that. Yeah, they could. They probably do. Not to give evil ideas to a corporation, but that feels like an easy. No. But maybe at that level of audacity, they're like, screw it. Let's just come up with a fake name and pretend.

So I thought I'd run a couple of other different examples past you. For instance, I learnt this. Do you know what the difference between fruit juice and fruit nectar is? Oh, is it like pulp? It can be. Is it a density thing? Sort of. Viscosity?

No, I think you're thinking too specific. Does it need the involvement of an insect? Sugar content. Needs to be aged in a barrel. Has to come from the nectar region of Spain. It's got to be at least 20% neck. Well, let's make it easy for you, Matt. What do you think specifies a fruit juice?

I mean, a fruit juice, okay, a fruit juice needs to be an extract from some kind of fruit and then diluted with it. Oh, is it dilution? Is it fruit juice? You can add water and nectar is all the moisture has to come from the fruit? Other way round. Oh, no. Yes. So close.

So fruit juice is literally the juice from the fruit, right? That is it. Right. Whereas nectar. You can do a couple of different things to fruit juice, but just, you know, please. You can reconstitute it from concentrate or whatever. Yeah. No, no.

That is a different name. Of course. That is reconstituted from concentrate is fruit juice from concentrate. Oh, okay. It's just got a longer name. Okay. Got it. Yeah.

But for it to be just fruit juice, it is the juice from the fruit. Right. I thought fruit nectar sounded like it would actually be more pure. Like it would be like a. That's more legit. Yeah. It does sound more legit. but I tell you what, fruit nectar is the product that is obtained by adding water to any of the following fruit juice, fruit

juice from concentrate, concentrated fruit juice, water extracted fruit juice, dehydrated fruit juice, pounded fruit juice, fruit puree, concentrated puree, or any mixture of the products mentioned above. Wow. So if I have guests around and say, would anyone like, in the suite of beverages available, anyone want some fruit nectar? I can get them a glass of water with a handful of sultanas

thrown in there and job done. I actually didn't say fruit. Fruit was not one of those options. Fruit wasn't an option. Oh, God damn. You'd have to juice the raisins. What if I soaked the sultanas in there overnight? Yeah, that would probably work, actually.

It's high school. Okay, good, good, good. But don't milk them. That's a whole different thing. No, good. But don't milk them. That's a whole different thing. No, no. I've got another one for you. Do you know what the difference between natural mineral water and spring water is? Oh, and hey, let's say bottled drinking water.

Do you know what the difference is between those three? Well, I know in America, particularly, you get bottled drinking water as just municipal tap water in a bottle i suspect mineral water the water can be from anywhere but you've got to have mixed in a certain level of soluble things and i'm guessing spring water has to have literally like come out of the ground but you're probably going to tell me 12 of it has to have come out of a rock and the rest can be, you know, tap water. You're close. So both mineral water and spring water must come from an underground source tapped at

a natural or drilled exit. They must both be free of parasites and bacteria, which cause disease. That's just true of most food. That's true. That is a good point. They must be bottled at a spring. I feel like that's just a blanket statement. Yeah, it shouldn't be

in there. No parasites is my rule of thumb. Why they had to specify that specifically for water makes me a little concerned, but carry on. It must be bottled at a spring or borehole. The spring or borehole must be protected from pollution.

That's my nickname when we're off air. That is what I say. Borehole. Shove it in your borehole, she says. I do not protect your borehole from pollution. So natural mineral water has to keep its original purity so it means the properties have stayed the same from source to bottling spring water doesn't so it can change it doesn't have to remain stable it also means that obviously you can add things to spring water but you can't add things to natural

mineral water right yeah so those are sort of the main, main differences there. But again, that all affects on whether you can say something. If you're going to sell water, you have to say whether it's natural mineral water, spring water or bottled water. And it has to fit into those things. Jam is a fascinating one. Jam has more rules than any of the other ones I found. Jam.

Jam. So you need a certain amount of fruit in order for it to be classified as jam, like per kilogram. Right. So it changes depending on the type of fruit that you're making the jam from. So for instance, passion fruit jam, obviously not very common. You only need 60 grams of passion fruit in a kilogram of jam in order for it to be classified as passion fruit. There's cashew apples, specifically cashew apples, weirdly.

Ginger, red currant, black currant, rosehip, rowan berries, sea buckthorns or quinces. All those, basically all the specialty fruits, 250 grams or under. Any other fruit, your main ones, strawberry, raspberry, that sort of stuff. 350 grams you need. No, blackcurrant, blackcurrant is 250 grams. Oh, sorry. There is also a product called Extra Jam, which is where you need way more.

So you would have to have 450 grams of strawberries per kilogram. So you'd need to have almost 50% strawberry in extra jam. Half sugar. Jelly has the exact same because let's face it, the jelly is jam. I'd be interested to test the jam that goes in donuts when they say jam donut, because I definitely don't think that they're made with that much. Oh, well, you are now qualified to, you know, speak on such matters. Yeah.

If there's any listeners who works within the baking industry and makes jam donuts, can you tell us where you get the jam from and what the ingredients are? I'm interested to see whether it's classified as jam. We want to get right to the center of this jam donut. And a final interesting thing that I found during this massive quest that I've been on was the way that eggs are labeled. So free range, I was sort of already aware of. Free range, they have to have continuous daytime access to open air runs, access to ground mainly covered with vegetation,

and there needs to be at least four square meters of ground available per bird. Okay. And then there's like requirements in relation to their housing and fittings and things like that. So it's still not a huge amount of space, but it's the best if you're looking for, you know, mass produced eggs. Yeah. Not terrible eggs. Yeah.

Yeah. But barn eggs, this is where it got me. Barn eggs, all they have to do, they have to be provided with at least 15 centimeters perch space per hen. Plenty. That per hen plenty that's like that's like saying like i've had chickens they're barely 15 centimeters yeah so that that's like the space that you get when you're on the tube at peak like rush hour they have to have floor space providing at least one square meter for every nine chickens. I mean, that's 30 centimeters just over that. That's like.

Squared per chicken. Yeah, it's like roughly a square foot per chicken. Which is way more than their perch space. Again, that's like the size of a chicken. Yeah. More than their perch space, but like not, not much. Not by much. So yeah, that just like, that blew my mind because barn eggs occasionally.

Yeah, barns, misleading. If there's no free, fresh. Yeah. Yeah. If there's no free range, I'm like, oh, barn, that blew my mind because barn eggs occasionally, if there's no free range, I'm like, oh, barn, that doesn't sound too, you imagine like there's big barns, like the big red ones that you might have a toy figurines of the kid or whatever. You think the eggs are from the Midwest of America? They're basically battery ones. They're just not in a cage. Now barn, barn's bad.

Don't worry. We shoved these chickens in a dark shed and now they're barn. Yeah. So there's loads of stuff like that out there. Unfortunately, I mean, as far as I know, this is the only time it's all been put into one place. That is amazing. I mean, Beck, you've done an incredible amount of research.

You've phoned people. You've got a qualification. You've pushed out what it means to solve a problem i can honestly say i'm a little bit extra jelly about the amount of effort you've put into this so and given uh denise dennis uh only said you know what are some words that are reserved i think i can very happily give you a preemptive free range ding that that is a problem solved. Thank you.

It's time for a dinglet. That is a little problem. Got a little problem for you, Matt. John wants to know how much of a public servant's salary is paid by their own taxes? That's, I mean, really interesting. You're right, because if you're a public servant, you're paid by the government, but then you have to give back the money to the government that they then use to pay you, and I guess other people as well. I assume there's no easy way to cut out the middle person, like just reduce my salary by my tax.

I get, obviously, it's got to circulate through all the right ways. And so I thought I'd very quickly run the numbers for John. And I may be biased as having worked as a teacher, being paid by the government, I thought I would look at teacher salaries to see if you're a teacher, how much of your tax is paying for your own teaching salary. Teaching salaries in the UK, if you're just like a standard classroom teacher, you'll start on about £25,700 at the moment, and you'll cap out at just shy of £37,000, which is roughly $35,000 up to about $50,000. You're then going to be paying some tax on that. I thought I'd take someone who's capped

out at the top of that. So they're on 36, almost 37,000 pounds. They're going to pay just shy of 5,000 pounds in tax of a year. And the UK government budget is 842 billion pounds. Now, yes, that money comes from different places. It doesn't all come from income tax. Obviously, there are different types of taxes. They can borrow money. They can finance it all sorts of unusual ways, up to and including just printing some money, because as we know, money is made up. However, we still know the percentage of the total budget, which came from our hypothetical teacher's salary tax, and it's roughly 0.00000006%. If you're earning a pretty standard amount of money in the UK, 0.00000006% of the government spending came from your taxes. And then you just work out that percentage of the teacher's pay.

And so my generic civil servant working for the government of a year, 0.02 pence comes from their own taxes. 2% of a penny, give or take, comes from your own tax that you paid. So not much. Really takes the authority out of, I pay your taxes, you know. If you are a teacher, and at this point I was like, you know what, I'll look up the average salary across the UK, which is normally given as the median salary. So roughly half the UK who earn a salary earn under £31,280 and half people who earn a salary earn above that,

which is subtly different to the household income, which is disposable income post-tax per household. That's worked out differently. It's actually quite hard to get an approximate mean average salary because it gets dragged up by high earners on the order of $38,600. But in reality, it's probably a bit lower. What a way to find out that you've been under. Well, I mean, that's why you don't use mean because mean is deceptively high because the people earning more than it like you drag it up more from the high earners than the low earners drag it down so it's a skewed average

i thought that's what the average uh no that's where isn't it if there's like if nine people earn one pound and then one earns ten pounds. Then the average is like two pounds. Oh, because you divide. So that's why you will almost. No, hang on. Wait. No. Because then the mean would be like one pound. No. The mean would be like a pound ninety. The median would be a pound. Oh, I'm thinking the median.

I'm thinking the median. Median is the one you always see median used when you're looking at salary and household students and you're thinking about their parents, it turns out the number of taxpayers it takes to contribute a whole penny to a teacher's salary is somewhere in the 40 to 60 range of parents. And given class sizes and average number of legal guardians, that's about the number of parents of a class of students. And so it turns out almost exactly, if you're a teacher and you look at your class, all the tax paid by all their parents contributes pretty much one penny to your annual salary. So it's worth remembering on parent-teacher night, if there's any, we pay your salary, etc.

An entire class's worth of salaries of parents is one penny of your annual salary. So there you are. That's a fun fact. I give you your dings. I will accept 0.02 of a ding per annum. Percentage of your ding. Per annum. Percentage of your ding.

A-O-B. It's time for any other business. And we've got a few bits in today. Yeah, we've got one from Jack. This is in response to episode 027, where we talked about postcodes and Scrabble. And they said, the UK has a referencing system for every property, including individual flats slash post boxes slash structures, even Stonehenge.

Oh, Stonehenge. You know the one. I mean, that's got less than 20% stone in it, so they had to change the name. Yeah. Even that place, cool. The UK referencing system is called the UPRN or Universal Property Reference Number. They can be up to 12 digits long. And unlike the postcode data set, which is owned by Royal Mail, the data set is open data, licensed under the Open Government License.

I didn't realize Royal Mail owned postcodes. That's interesting. I wonder if that means if they privatize it, then companies can own where we live. We also had more feedback on the Scrabble postcode thing. Oh, and everyone who said they count as proper nouns or something, we're discounting all of those comments because the whole conceit of the question was

it's a game where you can play postcodes. So they count just by definition. Jono, however, has a very interesting point that when I was talking about the postcodes, I wasn't factoring in letter distribution. And they have pointed out that a lot of my winning options were illegal because there's only one Q, there's only one Z. And Jono, you're completely correct. I mean, and as they point out, I upheld the seven tile limit, but I totally ignored the letter distribution. So, I mean, I think they've got a very good point. I'm going to say that this new version of postcode Scrabble

has a different letter distribution. I was using the points from the normal one. I don't think I can talk my way out of it. Well done, Jono. You're right. I should be undinged. I think you get an honorary. What is an unding?

Gnid? Yeah, gnid. Gnid. I will accept. Well, it should be nid. It should be the G as silence. Silence, yeah. Nid.

I will accept my knitting that I did not factor in. I did not factor in tile distribution. And we just wanted to give a shout out to Ken Floor, whose problem we're not solving, but finished their problem with best wishes, warmest dings. That made us laugh. I mean, they were trying to reopen the how far can you see thing and we're not touching it, but I do love best wishes, warmest dings.

Yeah. It's very sweet.'s very very cute speaking of some nice feedback we did also get some reviews yes on itunes thank you by username artistic penguin they may have made this account just to review our podcast they've given us five stars the title of their review is came for Matt, stayed for Beck. Thank you very much. Which of us comes off better in that description? Huh? Interesting. They don't listen to many podcasts, but they keep up to date with a problem squared.

Good work, artistic penguin. And we have another review from Dom Davis. And I love this because Dom has written this as if it's copy for our bio. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, but share your problem with Beck and Matt and your problem will be squared. I mean, that's the joke. If you like random problems solved in innovative or sometimes downright bonkers way, then this is for you.

And if you want your shared problem to be halved and squared, simply provide square root 0.5 of a problem. Okay, that is that joke is rigorous. That's, you know, factually accurate. Thanks, Dom. You square it and you get a half. It's pretty good. And we should probably

thank our three random Patreons. Yes, thank you to everyone who sponsors on Patreon because of the fantastic Patreon people. You're now getting two episodes a month Ish There's one every two weeks Which is actually slightly more than two a month You're welcome

Specifically, you should thank Either Jean-Louis Fuchs Or Jean-Louis Fuchs Depending on how you read it Thanks to both of them Simon Hudden And Stephen Hart Or Stepan Hart depending on how you read it. Thanks to both of them, Simon Hudden. And Stephen Hart.

Or Stepan Hart. You have been listening to A Problem Squared, a podcast made by us, Matt Parker and Bec Hill. And, of course, our producer of these ones your card? Hang on. The backs of them are maybe. No. The backs of them Maybe No Ah, interesting That rules out half of those