Thumbs up:The results of this year's Shiny Media gadget awards have been announced and Nintendo's Wii has been voted gadget of the year.

The games console beat the iPod nano into second place in a unanimous decision reached by a judging panel made up of gadget experts and readers of the Shiny Media website. The LG Chocolate Phone was declared to be the icon of the year, while the Nike and iPod sports kit was deemed to be the accessory of the year. Also mentioned was the carbon-neutral PC from Evesham. The company has promised to plant four trees for every computer it sells to minimise the carbon footprint of the product's manufacturing process.

Food for thought

Thumbs down:British consumers have displayed a woeful understanding of the foods they eat. According to a survey carried out on behalf of Splenda - a sugar substitute - more than half those surveyed could not name the ingredients of a Yorkshire pudding or Lancashire hotpot. One in 10 people thought they consumed no sugar in their daily diet (the average annual consumption is 15kg) and one-third did not know garlic grew in the ground. Jan Walsh, head of the Consumer Analysis Group, which led the investigation, said they did not anticipate British consumers would get such low scores.

"If we cannot manage to cook a simple meal from scratch, how can we be expected to proactively keep healthy with our diet?" she said.

Slicing up salt intake

Thumbs down:Reducing the amount of salt in sliced bread could save at least 7,000 lives a year, health campaigners in Britain have said.

Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) says that many consumers do not realise that bread is the biggest source of salt in their diet - contributing between one-fifth and one-quarter of the average intake.

The group has examined more than 100 widely-available loaves of bread and has highlighted how eating nine slices of some brands is enough to exceed the recommended maximum daily amount of salt.