More than half of all Britons have been injured by biscuits, according to a new survey.
Injuries range from being scalded by hot tea or coffee while dunking to breaking a tooth while eating biscuits, reports the Daily Telegraph.
An estimated 25 million adults have been injured while eating during a tea or coffee break - with at least 500 landing themselves in hospital, the survey found.
The custard cream was found to be the worse offender. It beat the cookie to top a table of 15 generic types of biscuit whose potential dangers were calculated by The Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation. Custard creams get a risk rating of 5.63, this compared to 1.16 for Jaffa cakes, which was the safest biscuit of all in the evaluation.
Research company Mindlab International were commissioned by Rocky, a chocolate biscuit bar, to conduct the research. It found almost a third of adults said they had been splashed or scalded by hot drinks while dunking or trying to fish the remnants of a collapsed digestive. It also revealed 28 per cent had choked on crumbs while one in 10 had broken a tooth or filling biting a biscuit.
More unusually, three per cent had poked themselves in the eye with a biscuit and seven per cent bitten by a pet or "other wild animal" trying to get their biscuit.
Mindlab International director Dr David Lewis said: "We tested the physical properties of 15 popular types of biscuits, along with aspects of their consumption such as 'dunkability' and crumb dispersal."
According to Mindlab’s calculations, here is the full list of the UK’s riskiest biscuits, together with their ‘danger’ rating:
Custard Cream 5.64
Cookie 4.34
Chocolate Biscuit Bar 4.12
Wafer 3.74
Rich Tea 3.45
Bourbon 3.44
Oat Biscuit 3.31
Digestive 3.14
Ginger Nut 2.99
Shortbread 2.90
Caramel Shortcake 2.76
Nice Biscuit 2.27
Iced Biscuits/Party Rings 2.16
Chocolate Finger 1.38
Jaffa Cakes 1.16
There has been no response so far from the Health and Safety Executive, but commentators have not ruled out the possibility of government legislation either to ban biscuits altogether, or to introduce compulsory training for their use. Higher Education colleges are already believed to be laying plans for an NVQ in Biscuit Dunking.
The GOS says: Makes you proud, doesn't it? Bit surprised about ginger nuts, though. I'd have thought they were fraught with dangerous possibilities.
By the way, I made up the bit about the government.
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