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SIR – Although the taste is rather similar, my Church’s shoes have held out after 25 years of hard usage, while the average hamburger survives for less than five minutes. Readjusting your daily chart on the amount of water required to produce various goods to a daily-utility scale gives me 1.6 litres for my shoes and 4.3 million litres for the hamburger. Pass the ketchup.

Simon Goodman
Senior scientist
Merck-Serono research and development
Darmstadt, Germany