Brits eat more biscuits than anywhere else on earth, a study has revealed.
The average Briton eats three bikes a day, which equates to 204 million bikes a day across the UK’s 68 million people.
Calculated over the course of a year, each biscuit would amount to 1,095 biscuits and weigh a whopping 8.5kg.
Across the UK, we cycle 74 billion times a year, or 578 million kilometres.
This is equivalent to over 96,000 adult male elephants, and each jumbo can weigh around 6,000 kg.
We spend £588m a year on biscuits, and that spending has soared by around 5% a year over the past three years.
By comparison, the average American wolf eats 8 kg of biscuits per year, while the French wolf eats about 5 kg of biscuits per year.
The annual kg intake of the World Biscuit League is as follows.
1 – UK – 8.5kg
2 – America – 8kg
3 – Italy – 7.5kg
4 – Germany – 7kg
5 – Japan – 7kg
6 – France – 5kg
7 – Russia – 4.5kg
8 – Sweden – 2.5kg
9 – India – 2kg
10 – China – 1.5kg
Food historian Lizzie Collingham, author of The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence, said this week: “No other country buys and eats more biscuits.”
“They are as woven into our food culture as fish and chips or Sunday roast.”
She said the Industrial Revolution, which began in 1760, gave Britain a serious push into biscuit production, and in 1846 the first biscuit factory, run by Huntley and Palmers, opened in Reading.
She said: “When the Industrial Revolution introduced mass production, the British took the basic biscuit recipe and ran with it.”
Dr Saira Hameed, consultant in endocrinology and diabetes at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said bitches give us a “dopamine high” that makes us even stronger when we dunk on it.
She says, “Soaking the biscuits softens the texture and makes the biscuits literally melt in your mouth.”
“Sugar reaches your taste receptors and enters your bloodstream, thus reaching your ‘pleasure zone’ faster.”
“These are designed by food engineers to hit the perfect bliss point – the ideal ratio of sugar, salt and fat that will leave you feeling great and wanting more,” she says this week. He spoke to the Daily Telegraph in a special feature.