Get your facts right about Fish and Chips

For more fish and chip facts, visit Woody's website.

Fish and chips are popular at celebrity weddings. Fans are rumoured to have included Steven Gerrard and Alex Curran, Wayne Rooney and Coleen Mcloughlin, Myleene Klass and Graham Quinn, John Terry and Toni Poole and Dave Gardner and Davinia

Taylor to name but a few! And there’s more….

Fish and chips are a big favourite for family takeaway meals. £1.2 billion a year is spent in fish and chip shops nationally. They outsell Indian takeaways on a meal basis by four to one - and fish suppers outsell them by two to one. In 2008 over 250 million fish and chip shop meals (featuring fish) were sold throughout the UK, proving that UK's fish and chip shops are still the nation's favourite hot takeaway outlet.

Cod is the most popular fish sold in fish and chip shops, accounting for 61.5% of fish sold, followed by Haddock at 25%. Other white fish such as Plaice are also popular. Some shops offer locally landed fish depending on what is available in the market place, but the vast majority of the cod and haddock sold in fish and chip shops come from the sustainable waters of the Barents Sea and Iceland.

More than one in six of us can't resist going to the fish and chip shop at least once a week and nearly 70% of us choose to take our fish and chips home to eat. Those from Yorkshire prove to have the biggest cravings! Nearly 70% of us take our fish and chips home to eat.

Fish and chips have 9.42 grams of fat per 100 grams. Beating all other takeaways - the average pizza has 11, Big Mac meal with Medium fries has 12.1, Whopper meal with medium fries has 14.5, chicken korma 15.5 and doner kebab 16.2. The same goes for calories - 595 in the average portion - where the average pizza has 871, Big Mac meal with medium fries 888, Whopper meal with medium fries 892, chicken korma 910 and doner kebab 924.

There are around 10,000 fish and chip shops all over the UK, employing some 61,000 people. They sell 424.8 million meals a year, that's seven meals from a fish and chip shop each year for every man, woman and child in the UK. 58% of these are fish and chips. This

amounts to 255 million fish and chip meals a year. A portion of chip shop chips contains less fat than a prawn mayonnaise sandwich and can provide you with a third of your dailyrecommended Vitamin C.

Fish and chips was the only take-away food not to be rationed during the Second World War. Frederick Lord Woolton, Minister of Food at the time, even allowed mobile frying vans to carry fish and chips to evacuees around the country.

As far back as 1838 Charles Dickens wrote about fried fish warehouses in the classic novel 'Oliver Twist'. These warehouses acted asthe forerunner to fish and chip shops - but the partner to fish wasn't the traditional chip as we see tod , but either bread or baked potatoes. The fish was sold by street vendors who carried the goods in trays hung around their necks. The fish was purchased cold for about a penny a portion.