It is perhaps the new year's most unlikely superfood, but hungover fry-up staple black pudding is being touted as the next health fad.

Food retailer and blog MuscleFoods included it in a list alongside avocado oil, black beans and seaweed as the big health foods to eat this year.

However the Institute of Food Research cast doubt on the claims, saying they rejected the term superfoods and instead advocated a healthy balanced approach to diet.

The benefit is already being felt by butchers north of the border, as orders fly in for black pudding from health-conscious Scots.

The issue was even brought up in Parliament, with a Tory MP asking for a commons debate on the tasty delicacy.

With a hefty fat content of 15 to 20%, black pudding maybe an unconventional candidate for the most health-conscious of consumers.

Claims that it is nearly carb-free were also debunked as black pudding contains oatmeal, and it is relatively high in calories, at between 250 to 300kcal per 100g.

Here are five facts about the latest "superfood".

The makers of Stornoway Black Pudding successfully applied for their product to be given protected geographical status - putting it alongside the likes of Champagne. Parma Ham and the Cornish pasty.

Now only black pudding made in or around the Hebridean town can be described as such.

The European Commission awarded the pudding Protected Geographical Indication after a campaign by four island butchers and their local MSP.

The first written recording of black pudding is thought to appear in Homer's epic poem Odyssey written in 800BC.

Describing the pudding, he wrote: "As when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted."

His hero Odysseus later gets into a fight for a prize of a stomach stuffed with pig blood and fat.

Black pudding has featured in a criminal case just once in British legal history.

A Perthshire man was arrested after he was alleged to have caused fear and alarm by being aggressive with a black pudding.

Charges were later dropped.

In the 17th century, theological debates raged about whether eating blood sausage was allowed.

Some claimed that consuming blood was forbidden in the Bible, and it was a violation of both Jewish and Christian law.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of those who reportedly abstained from eating the delicacy on account of the Old Testament prohibition against eating blood.

The origin of modern black pudding is hotly debated, with both Scotland and England laying claim to the first recipes.

Butchers in Stornoway are adamant the sausage originated with local crofters on the Isle of Lewis, and gained EU protected status for their version.

But rival pudding makers from Bury in Greater Manchester claim their black pudding has a longer history, having been brought to the town by monks in the 1500s.