One of my adult students told me that she enjoyed going into the countryside to collect snails to eat. When I tell my nephews and nieces that French people eat snails their reaction is ‘Yuck’. No other activity is more likely to widen the gap between two nations than this. I ate one as a type of initiation ceremony. The garlic and butter sauce around it was pleasant, but who wants to chew a piece of rubber? I picked up a leaflet in the doctor’s surgery which told me that Magnesium is a mineral that helps in more than 300 chemical reactions in our bodies. There followed a list of magnesium rich foods. Number 3 on the list was ‘les escargots’, 50g of which give 128mg of magnesium. I think I will stick to numbers 4 and 5 on the list, cashew nuts and dark chocolate!