#399 High Fibe

They say that cleanliness is next to godliness. And so it can be said for the colon. Because regularity is next to godliness as well. People who are stove up exhibit all manner of strange personality characteristics. Perhaps because the toxins linger too long in the lower gut and get reabsorbed into the bloodstream and from there get deposited in liver, kidneys, pancreas, and endocrine glands. The main job of the large gut is to reabsorb the fluid component of what is loosely called chyme and transform the resulting semi-dehydrated mass into discrete lumps known as feces. But the survival of the feces depends on many factors that move it along to its eventual extrusion if not extinction. Or I should say the survival of the good health of the person doing the extruding. Notably, you need to move it along. If you don’t it’s like a shoe sitting in a puddle. Eventually its components break down and get dissolved into the solution. In the case of the gut, when that fluid gets reabsorbed all manner of biological consequences ensue. Of course I’m simplifying here. I’m not a doctor and if I was, I think I would choose another area than the colon in which to specialize. I got one of those internet joke lists the other day. This one purported to be from doctors who had conducted colonoscopies. The statements on the list were supposedly from patients undergoing the procedure. Which, as you may imagine, is intrusive to a large degree, since it involves shoving an instrument into a fairly private area. Having a doctor go spelunking in the cave of your gut is, to say the least, a lesson in intimacy. The comment on the list I most appreciated was the patient who muttered: “Now I know what a muppet feels like.” In any event, one of the secrets to good colon health is fiber. And that’s why each day I eat a bunch of another great invention, baby peeled carrots. At first I was amazed that they were able to train babies to do such a thing. After realizing that there wasn’t a pre-toddler child labor force in Bangladesh or somewhere, I was amazed they were able to find so many carrots that were baby size. The bag of carrots I have actually says mini-peeled carrots so other people must have made the same mental miscalculation. Then I realized this was an example of a more sophisticated technology. These carrots weren’t small to begin with, they were the equivalent of carrot lumber. That’s right, the same technology that fashions logs and boards and veneer in our venerable timber industry is being used, in miniature, to fashion tiny carrot logs. Like they got these H.O. scale mills, turning carrots on a lathe-like device and fashioning perfect little fiber-filled logs ready to be popped in your mouth, chewed up, run through the system and then reconfigured into their nearly original form. Don’t believe me? Type in carrot slash colon dot com and log on for more info.
America, ya gotta love it.