We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how olive oil might not be the best choice for roasting spuds.

It turns out the kind of oil you use for nonstick pans matters no matter what you’re cooking in them, too.

According to cookware brand Circulon, “there are several reasons to avoid using cooking sprays on your nonstick cookware”.

Speaking to the New York Times’ Wirecutter, Fran Groesbeck, a managing director of the Cookware and Bakeware Alliance trade association, said that – ironically – some non-stick sprays can ruin the coating on your pans.

They can leave a thin film behind after use, she said, and it’s especially hard to spot on nonstick pans.

“You can’t necessarily see that residue, because nonstick coatings are all black, but if you don’t properly clean it off after you’re done cooking, then your food will start to stick.”

This film is made up of ingredients not usually seen in non-spray oils, like soy lecithin. As they linger on an often-reheated pan, they polymerise, becoming next-to-impossible to remove.

But that’s not the only unwanted side effect. Because these sprays typically have a lower smoke point than many other oils, they begin to burn on your pan – corroding the nonstick surface further.

Speaking to EatingWell, cookware company Our Place’s associate director of product development, Stephanie Hong, said: “Many spray oils also contain chemical propellants, which are prone to breaking down under high heat. This instability can lead to scorching, residue buildup and long-term damage to the nonstick surface, ultimately causing the very sticking you were trying to avoid.”

If you want to use less oil, try wiping your nonstick pan with a paper towel dipped in your usual oil, Circulon shared.

Alternatively, you could place regular oils in a mister bottle, though Hong warns this could carry its own risks.

“The ultra-fine oil particles (even from pure oil options or refillable oil-misters) can burn and carbonise during cooking, leaving behind a stubborn residue that bonds to the pan’s surface and gradually impacts the pan’s nonstick performance,” she told EatingWell.

She added, “To preserve the quality and lifespan of your nonstick pans, skip aerosol sprays” altogether.

From his early beginnings as a child actor to his stand-out performance in Netflix’s Sex Education, Asa Butterfield has become one of the most recognisable British actors of his generation.

Asa recently reunited with the streaming service for the British drama Unchosen, in which he plays a lead role opposite Molly Windsor and Fra Fee.

In the dark psychological thriller, he plays one half of a young couple living in a religious sect, whose lives are turned upside down thanks to the arrival of a new face in their community, who poses questions for both of them.

But aside from the roles you might associate with Asa, there are plenty more you’ve likely forgotten all about.

Here are nine more of Asa’s past shows and films from long before Unchosen that might have totally slipped your mind…

While people generally think of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Hugo or the Nanny McPhee sequel when it comes to Asa Butterfield’s early work as a child performer, he actually started acting before any of that.

In 2007, he had a minor role in the British comedy Son Of Rambow, appearing alongside a number of other future stars of his generation, most notably Will Poulter.

Asa had a small role in the film, playing a young member of the Plymouth Brethren.

A year after his big-screen debut, Asa appeared in the first season of the period drama Ashes To Ashes, itself a spin-off of Life On Mars.

Then just 11 years old, Asa played a small role in the show’s sixth episode, appearing as schoolboy Donny, in an episode which also guest starred Phil Davis.

That same year, Asa landed the role of Mordred in Merlin, a young Druid who quickly forms a bond with Morgana in season one.

Asa went on to appear in three episodes of the BBC fantasy series, which featured Colin Morgan as the titular wizard in his younger years.

Mordred was reintroduced later in the series, but had been recast, with Alexander Vlahos taking over the role from season five.

Based on the novel series of the same name by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game was one of Asa’s first leading roles.

In the sci-fi adventure, he played Ender Wiggin, a young man in a dystopian future who is sent to an advanced military academy where he is trained to prepare for an alien invasion.

Abigail Breslin starred as Asa’s sister Valentine, with the all-star cast also including Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Sir Ben Kingsley and Hailee Steinfeld.

One of celebrated director Tim Burton’s most overlooked offerings came in 2016, when Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children arrived in cinemas.

Asa played teenager Jake Portman, one of the central “peculiar children”, in the family movie, which also featured Eva Green, Dame Judi Dench and Samuel L Jackson.

While the film itself was met with a somewhat lukewarm reception, Asa’s performance was well-received, even sparking comparisons with another former Tim Burton collaborator, Johnny Depp and earning him a Teen Choice Award nomination.

Asa played a romantic hypochondriac working as an airport baggage handler, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a terminally-ill teenager, played by Game Of Thrones star Maisie Williams, in Then Came You.

When the two friends become close, Maisie’s character enlists her new pal to help her carry out her eccentric bucket list in the time she has list, helping him learn life lessons, come out of his shell and face life-long fears along the way.

Then Came You was met with a muted response upon its release in 2018, with the cast also including Nina Dobrev as Asa’s love interest, Peyton List and Tituss Burgess.

The same year he was sharing the screen with Maisie Williams in Then Came You, he was cast as fellow Game Of Thrones star Sophie Turner’s love interest in another film.

In Time Freak, Asa played a Physics prodigy going through a break-up, who decides to go back to the beginning of his relationship in an attempt to try and work out where things went wrong.

However, through this process, he – naturally – stumbles upon the art of time travel, which he uses to try and fix the situation. You won’t believe this… but it has complicated results.

The black comedy Greed featured Steve Coogan in the lead role of a billionaire high-street fashion tycoon, loosely inspired by Philip Green, who employs a meek and mild-mannered journalist (played by comedian David Mitchell) to help him pen his memoirs.

Greed, a satire on the fashion industry and super-wealthy elite, featured a sprawling cast that included everyone from Isla Fisher and Shirley Henderson to reality star Ollie Locke and Doctor Who’s Pearl Mackie (with cameo appearances from Stephen Fry, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, James Blunt, Keith Richards, the late Caroline Flack and, for some reason, Louis Walsh).

Asa played Steve’s character’s son, who had an unhealthy obsession with usurping his father’s position and status.

The Netflix original horror Choose Or Die centred around a fictitious video game platform that forces its users to make split decisions (putting is in mind slightly of the now-removed Black Mirror special Bandersnatch) with potentially fatal results.

Asa played one half of a pair of friends who become obsessed with the game, alongside an eclectic cast that included everyone from former Coronation Street star Angela Griffin and Eddie Marson to Nightmare On Elm Street’s own Robert Englund, playing a demented version of himself.

Unchosen is now streaming on Netflix.

Netflix finally released the long-awaited second instalment of its hit rage drama Beef last week, with the series quickly rising to the top spot of the streamer’s most-watched TV shows, according to its public ranking system.

Season one of the Emmy-winning series starred Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as two strangers who turn a road-rage incident into a long, fury-filled feud. The 2023 series racked up awards for its writing and performances.

The second iteration features a new cast and a whole new beef, in which a struggling Gen Z couple goes head-to-head against a well-to-do millennial married couple in a blackmail saga.

Oscar Isaac stars as Josh, the general manager of a country club, who’s at odds with his wife, Lindsay (played Carey Mulligan), in season two’s opening scene. Two of the country club’s employees — Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley and Charles Melton’s Austin — catch Josh and Lindsay’s big fight on camera, and so ensues the beef that drives the season.

On top of that, the billionaire owner of that same club, Chairwoman Park (the latest screen outing for Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung), is trying to cover up a big mess dealing with her husband, Dr. Kim (played by Song Kang-ho), and gets everyone entangled in that mess.

We’ve watched all of season two – and these are our thoughts about the show…

I thought the ensemble cast for season two was quite a mixed bag when Netflix first announced it, but given the millennial-versus-Gen Z plot, it makes sense now.

Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny all give great performances. Cailee’s Ashley is an absolute menace by the end of the season, which I’m sure was the whole point of her character’s arc, but the actor played a clingy, controlling girlfriend well. I’m still thinking about those scenes on the planes where she loses it. Oscar was great, too, at flipping the switch between calm and unhinged with his character, especially in his scenes with Carey’s Lindsay.

The real standout for me was Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park. She was the perfect unexpected villain in this scenario. I have my qualms about season two’s story, but this cast wasn’t half-bad. — Njera

Out of the main cast, I was really only familiar with Charles Melton’s work, specifically his incredible turn opposite Julianne Moore in May December. So he was an exciting lead for me.

I’m still sitting with how I felt about Cailee Spaeny, Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac — mostly because their characters were so terrible that I can’t imagine saying anything “good” about them. But yes, I guess that is the whole point. We’re seeing the worst of people in this show — but I just can’t help but keep comparing their character arcs and personalities to the first season’s leads. They just didn’t grab me as much as I thought they should.

That said, I can’t praise Song Kang-ho and Youn Yuh-jung’s performances enough. Make them the leads in another, better Netflix series! — Erin

Charles Melton. Listen, I hated that his character was ridiculous and annoying. But he is so hot that I overlooked it during every moment that he did something questionable. I also loved Youn Yuh-jung and Song Kang-ho’s performances as Chairwoman Park and Dr. Kim. If the series had been focused more on them, I probably would have enjoyed it more. — Erin

Charles Melton’s Austin was probably my least favourite at the start of the season, simply because I couldn’t take him being the idiot boyfriend to Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley. However, I feel like he did his job because he played the role convincingly, and he may not have been as dumb as he seemed by the end!

Honestly, everyone’s characters pissed me off the whole show for different reasons, but I still think the actors delivered great performances.

The comedic moments are what really kept me tapped into season two, like when Lindsay went after that coyote trying to save poor Burberry (Lindsay and Josh’s dog) in the woods. Or when Austin thought “misc” on an invoice was a typo for “mist”. Austin’s ditzy moments actually had me screaming. He was the highlight of the show for me. — Njera

My biggest complaint about this second season is how incredibly overstuffed the story feels, from the plot itself to the many characters the show forces us to follow.

We start off with the basic inciting event: Ashley and Austin witness a horrific fight between Josh and Lindsay and capture it on video. They then use that footage to blackmail their boss and his wife to get Ashley health insurance and a promotion with a pay bump – nothing yet for Austin, as he points out.

But then the story unravels into all kinds of mayhem that goes far beyond each couple’s relationship turmoil and their “beefs” with each other. What starts off as a character study of these four peculiar individuals becomes some kind of suspenseful corporate thriller when the show turns its focus toward a third couple: the country club’s billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park, and her much younger husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Kim. We get into the flaws of their relationship as well, but the main focus is on the death that Chairwoman Park is trying to cover up after her husband accidentally kills a patient during surgery at their clinic in Korea. She has to pay off all the clinic employees to keep them quiet and used the country club to clean said hush money.

Somehow, this turns into a money laundering scheme/conspiracy, and while entertaining, this is where the show started to lose me. It felt so far removed from what the original premise was that it no longer felt like a follow-up to Season 1. Granted, it is an anthology series, so I knew season two wasn’t going to replicate everything from the first season, but it felt like the show tried so hard to top its breakout success that it got away from itself.

Beef season one wasn’t perfect, but there’s a reason why it resonated with so many viewers. It tapped into themes and ideas that the average disgruntled person could relate to. Season two has its moments as well, though more often than not, it trades them for wildly ridiculous plots that don’t amount to any great revelations. The finale is proof of that. — Njera

Season one of Beef was one of the top shows of 2023. It won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series, and both its stars won the Outstanding Actor Awards in the limited series categories. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong were incredible leads who you were rooting for even while they were raging against each other. You could feeeeel their energy through the screen.

Unfortunately, that same energy just did not translate for me in season two. Maybe if I’d gone into the show knowing that it’d had a very different feel from season one, I could have adjusted my expectations. But from the first moments of season two, I knew that it was unlikely the show would reach the bar season one set. I imagine it’s pretty hard to replicate that success for any TV show, but season two of Beef felt totally undercooked. — Erin

The first season of Beef immediately grabbed me within the first five minutes of the show. The road-rage incident was the perfect setup — it had action, rage, suspense and you immediately wanted to know where the story was going next. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong were excellent in their roles and proved why that debut season was such a runaway hit.

Season two gets off to a much slower start, and even Josh and Lindsay’s fight didn’t feel as dramatic as it could’ve been. The stakes didn’t feel big enough, not even when they got caught red-handed by Austin and Ashley. The plot sounded boring on paper and played out exactly like I thought it would on screen (before things went haywire).

The season didn’t feel like a drag to me because the action of the Chairwoman Park storyline made up for the parts that were lacking, but if we’re comparing one and two, there’s no competition to me. — Njera

Alison Herman at Variety called it “overcrowded and unfocused” in her review. “But over eight episodes, Beef loses focus and overcrowds this already expanded premise,” Herman writes. “By the closing credits, season two is no longer mainly about the acrimony between its antiheroes and what it brings out from within them.”

Aisha Harris at NPR said ultimately the show is “well done”. “Season two is compelling enough largely because its stars gamely tap into the spirit of the show’s M.O.; at any given moment, each character may reveal the worst of themselves, which looks different for everyone,” Harris writes.

While I agree that each character has some truly terrible personality traits, I’m not convinced it taps into the same modus operandi as the first season and definitely not nearly as well.

Christopher Campbell at Rotten Tomatoes rounded up the early reviews of the season, with most critics saying season two was worth the wait. I totally disagree with that! Maybe if the show didn’t seem so sprawling — six episodes instead of eight, 30 minutes each instead of 45- to 55-minute episodes — it would have felt like less of a time investment for something not nearly as focused as season one.

It’s very interesting to see how mixed the reviews are. But I’m more curious to see what folks have to say about it on social media as more people dig in over the weekend. — Erin

If you’re looking for the same fervour as Season 1, skip it. But if you’re a huge Charles Melton fan, enjoy. — Erin

If espionage thrillers are your jam, you might enjoy the latter half of the season. Might not be the Beef you’re expecting, but it’s quite a series of events. Also, if you tend to get FOMO, you might just want to get this binge-watch out of the way to avoid spoilers on socials. — Njera

We all know kids and teens are reading less – and an increasing number are enjoying it less, too.

The stats speak for themselves. When The National Literacy Trust polled almost 115,000 kids in early 2025, it found just one in three (32.7%) kids aged eight to 18 years old said they enjoyed reading in their free time.

This marked a 36% decrease in reading enjoyment levels since 2005.

Among teens, particularly boys, reading enjoyment drops even more. One in five (18.8% of) boys aged 14 to 16 report enjoying reading, compared to 37.7% of girls.

It’s not just a UK issue, either. In a US-based survey of Gen Z students by Walton Family Foundation and Gallup, 35% admitted they disliked reading, with 43% saying they rarely or never did it for fun.

In a TikTok video, a teacher known as Ms C, admitted one of her students had revealed they’d never finished a book before.

Discussing why older kids are reading less, she said there are “many reasons” like “increased pressure inside and outside of school, a desire to spend more time socialising, and, of course, the phones”.

But an even more “obvious” reason, she said, is that “adults have lowered the bar for how much you should read as a teenager” to the point where “the bar cannot be found”.

She explained: “There are many educators who have the mindset that you shouldn’t teach whole books because kids just won’t read them.”

“In the past I’ve taught at schools where teaching novels is actually discouraged,” she claimed.

I asked teachers and school librarians in the UK for their two cents on why kids are falling way out of love with reading by the time they reach their teens.

Sol Elliott, librarian at Overton Grange School, suggested more time spent online, especially on social media, plays a key part: “The technology that brings a lot of young people towards reading also keeps far more people away from it.

“The dopamine hit of social media use is hard to compete with, especially when we are working with people whose brains are developing quickly.”

Sarah Parsons, director of education at the Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust, said: “Sadly, we see in our schools that teens find it hard to maintain the reading habits that they may have developed during primary school.

“Increasing demands on their time both within and beyond the classroom, combined with the growing influence of technology, have all contributed to a decline in regular reading among our teenagers.”

Research suggests there was a 52% increase in children’s screen time between 2020 and 2022. Kids aged eight to 14 years old who use the internet spend an average of 2 hours 59 minutes a day online across smartphones, tablets and computers, typically on YouTube, Snapchat, Google (search), Facebook and WhatsApp.

Nat Parnell, CEO of the Westcountry Schools Trust, also suggested social media plays a major role in teens reading less: “The risk is that the short bursts of gratification teenagers get from social media and texting are far more immediately satisfying than reading, which requires much greater effort before enjoyment is reached. It is not really a fair competition.”

Besides being a nice way to switch off and unwind, there are several benefits to kids reading for pleasure. It helps introduce children to a range of experiences and viewpoints, which can help build empathy. It can also boost confidence and spark creativity.

Reading enjoyment has also been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status, and it’s linked to higher scores in reading assessments.

Schools are trying to address the reading crisis – but it’s not easy. Parnell said their schools ensure all students have structured reading opportunities. “We also banned mobile phones in school some time ago,” she noted.

Parsons said their are a few strategies they’re deploying to try and boost reading: providing dedicated time each week for independent reading, for example, as well as exposing kids to texts that stimulate meaningful discussion and debate.

For Elliott, it’s been a case of tailoring the school library collection to the pupils’ tastes “in the hope that they will pick up a healthy reading habit as they grow up”.

“A lot of these choices are informed by internet trends and TikTok friendly genres (Fantasy, Romance, Manga etc.),” said the librarian.

“I genuinely fear for the health of our society if a meaningful cohort of young people are not reading regularly and interacting with serious literature,” Elliott added.

“I am optimistic, though, that when a school is sensitive to its young readers and pays attention to their interests that we can help them turn into regular readers.

“All reading is good reading, and I can only hope that stocking my library with magazines, comics and manga, will lead a good amount of them to a Zadie Smith novel, or a play by Arthur Miller.”

If you’re hoping to spark a love of reading in your teen, here’s what might help:

• Buy books related to a favourite film, TV series, or which matches their interests or hobbies.
• Let them choose what they read.
• Be a reading role model – make sure they see you reading for enjoyment, too.
• Set screen-free time before bed and encourage activities such as reading, colouring or journalling to wind down.
• Help them find their own spaces to talk about books, suggests Scottish Book Trust – try Goodreads or #BookTok on TikTok.
• Encourage different reading formats – e-books, comics and e-magazines still count!
• Take them to library,school and book shop-hosted events focused on reading.
• Check out our picks of the books to gently steer teens towards reading once more.