This story is irresistible to a woman who writes so often about the effects of diet on health. What I didn’t realise is that what you eat could also get you banged up! Dr John Bond, a researcher at the University of Leicester and scientific support officer at Northamptonshire Police, is the inventor of a revolutionary forensic fingerprint technique that will help put unhealthy criminals behind bars.

He claims that criminals who eat processed foods are more likely to be discovered by police because their fingerprint sweat corrodes metal – just shows you what fast food does to your stomach if just the sweat can eat away an external surface like that! Apparently the police already love consumers of processed foods as they tend to be leave better fingerprints for the police to identify.

It’s down to the fact that sweaty fingerprint marks made more of a corrosive impression on metal if they had a high salt content – and processed food, fish and chips and burgers tend to be high in salt as a preservative. The body needs to excrete excess salt, which comes out as sweat through the pores in our fingers, and so when you touch a surface it will be high in salt if you eat a lot of processed foods – the higher the salt, the better the corrosion of the metal.

Not sure whether I should be encouraging fast food diets in criminals, to aid their capture, or encourage them to switch to the Mediterranean diet!