Deep Fried Mars Bars in Your Calorie Controlled Diet
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: A couple of mild ones.
Description: A few days ago they announced three-person babies on the NHS, so it is time this wee tale hit the public consciousness. Another month or two and it will no longer be sci-fi, but a Government initiative.
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Human beings last mutated about fifty thousand years ago. In that era we lived close to nature, and natural selection, the survival of the fittest, would have worked pretty well. We lived in family groups subsisting on berries and the meat we could get by hunting. Even the strongest families would not eat their fill every day. The vagaries of weather and the relative abundance of game would ensure that there were times when you went to bed with an empty stomach.
Our bodies developed an efficient system for dealing with this feast and famine lifestyle. When the clan downed, say, a woolly mammoth, everyone gorged; faced with this abundance our digestive system tucked reserves away as fat mainly in bums and tums; next time we were reduced to a handful of unripe raspberries we recycled the fat and survived until the next successful hunt!
Nowadays nutrition, like everything else, has become highly specialised. About a third of people, mostly in Europe and the United States, feast all the time: there is never a time of famine. Another third, many in sub- Saharan Africa, are hungry all the time spending a brief lifetime on the verge of starvation: they never know the joy of a pot belly or lardy bum.
We take great pains to make sure that even the unfit will survive. On the global scale we send food aid to stop people dying as a consequence of war, pestilence or drought, at least until they have reproduced and then we take care of their kids. At a more local level we do everything we can to keep addicts to food, tobacco, booze or other drugs alive until their dodgy genes can be passed on. With all this intervention it is no surprise that our genes have concluded that there is no need for mutation since everything is obviously hunky-dory.
So here we are, fifty thousand years down the road, still eating whatever is put in front of us and collecting fat the way wee boys collect postage stamps (well, they did in my day!). Many of us find it hard to save money for our retirement but we have no bother accumulating enough fat to last several lifetimes: we could give up eating food at retirement age, living on our fat, planning, perhaps, a light meal to celebrate our eightieth birthday.
We have to face the facts: it is imperative that we intervene to redesign our genes since they have lost the will to do it themselves. Everything we eat is classified as it goes through the system. Buttons and safety pins, part of the diet of most adventurous two year olds, pass through totally unchanged. Things like broccoli are basically indigestible but are retained as nurseries for e-coli before they join acids and enzymes to tackle the rest of the input.
Everything else is food and from the mouth to the end of the small intestine it is broken down into its component parts – basically simple hydrocarbons composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen – or discarded. The processed intake is then rebuilt to a pattern dictated by our DNA so that it can be transferred to the bloodstream for transmission to our working parts. This is a very basic schematic – anyone who has smelled a fart will recognise that hydrogen sulphide has an important though minor role in the digestive process.
The way forward is to change a couple of genes so that buttons and safety pins are joined by saturated fats as intake that is not recognised as food. Lean meat, potatoes and two veg will still be digested as before but greasy chips and cheap burgers will glide through to be evacuated from the end of the large intestine totally unchanged. The worse your diet, as we understand things at present, the slimmer you will be in the future. The guys who eat nothing but sausage, eggs and chips fried in lard will be in danger of becoming bulimic! If you see a fat person in future you will know that he or she eats too much of a healthy diet.
The only effect of indulging in deep fried mars bars will be to increase the size and protein content of your jobbies. It will be expensive to change the genetic structure, so unmodified humans will still be found in the poorest countries. For them, the waste from western societies will be full of nutritious protein. In future the big-hearted folk in the West of Scotland will be able to donate their shit directly to Oxfam or Save the Children.
Swearwords: A couple of mild ones.
Description: A few days ago they announced three-person babies on the NHS, so it is time this wee tale hit the public consciousness. Another month or two and it will no longer be sci-fi, but a Government initiative.
_____________________________________________________________________
Human beings last mutated about fifty thousand years ago. In that era we lived close to nature, and natural selection, the survival of the fittest, would have worked pretty well. We lived in family groups subsisting on berries and the meat we could get by hunting. Even the strongest families would not eat their fill every day. The vagaries of weather and the relative abundance of game would ensure that there were times when you went to bed with an empty stomach.
Our bodies developed an efficient system for dealing with this feast and famine lifestyle. When the clan downed, say, a woolly mammoth, everyone gorged; faced with this abundance our digestive system tucked reserves away as fat mainly in bums and tums; next time we were reduced to a handful of unripe raspberries we recycled the fat and survived until the next successful hunt!
Nowadays nutrition, like everything else, has become highly specialised. About a third of people, mostly in Europe and the United States, feast all the time: there is never a time of famine. Another third, many in sub- Saharan Africa, are hungry all the time spending a brief lifetime on the verge of starvation: they never know the joy of a pot belly or lardy bum.
We take great pains to make sure that even the unfit will survive. On the global scale we send food aid to stop people dying as a consequence of war, pestilence or drought, at least until they have reproduced and then we take care of their kids. At a more local level we do everything we can to keep addicts to food, tobacco, booze or other drugs alive until their dodgy genes can be passed on. With all this intervention it is no surprise that our genes have concluded that there is no need for mutation since everything is obviously hunky-dory.
So here we are, fifty thousand years down the road, still eating whatever is put in front of us and collecting fat the way wee boys collect postage stamps (well, they did in my day!). Many of us find it hard to save money for our retirement but we have no bother accumulating enough fat to last several lifetimes: we could give up eating food at retirement age, living on our fat, planning, perhaps, a light meal to celebrate our eightieth birthday.
We have to face the facts: it is imperative that we intervene to redesign our genes since they have lost the will to do it themselves. Everything we eat is classified as it goes through the system. Buttons and safety pins, part of the diet of most adventurous two year olds, pass through totally unchanged. Things like broccoli are basically indigestible but are retained as nurseries for e-coli before they join acids and enzymes to tackle the rest of the input.
Everything else is food and from the mouth to the end of the small intestine it is broken down into its component parts – basically simple hydrocarbons composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen – or discarded. The processed intake is then rebuilt to a pattern dictated by our DNA so that it can be transferred to the bloodstream for transmission to our working parts. This is a very basic schematic – anyone who has smelled a fart will recognise that hydrogen sulphide has an important though minor role in the digestive process.
The way forward is to change a couple of genes so that buttons and safety pins are joined by saturated fats as intake that is not recognised as food. Lean meat, potatoes and two veg will still be digested as before but greasy chips and cheap burgers will glide through to be evacuated from the end of the large intestine totally unchanged. The worse your diet, as we understand things at present, the slimmer you will be in the future. The guys who eat nothing but sausage, eggs and chips fried in lard will be in danger of becoming bulimic! If you see a fat person in future you will know that he or she eats too much of a healthy diet.
The only effect of indulging in deep fried mars bars will be to increase the size and protein content of your jobbies. It will be expensive to change the genetic structure, so unmodified humans will still be found in the poorest countries. For them, the waste from western societies will be full of nutritious protein. In future the big-hearted folk in the West of Scotland will be able to donate their shit directly to Oxfam or Save the Children.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.