Doof!

It's often said (though I can't actually remember anyone saying it, but I'm somewhat sure may have read it somewhere) that celery takes more energy to eat and digest than you get from it. I doubt that's true and, in any case, there's a limit to how much celery a person can eat.

Surely science can do better than this? MaxCo. is therefore scouring the Sigma catalogue to identify the active ingredient in its forthcoming product - Doof! (yes with an exclamation mark).

Doof! will be a dense, chewy comestible flavoured with either chocolate or liqourice (we have yet to decide). Its active ingredient will be a relatively inexpensive soluble, absorbable chemical that reacts with ATP - the body's energy currency. Ideally, this chemical will a branched molecule with multiple functional groups, each capable of reacting with (and effectively destroying) one ATP molecule. The reaction will, necessarily, be exothermic but slow enough that eating a Doof! bar will not actually cause you to explode or incandesce.

Each mouthfull of Doof! will, therefore, deduct a sizeable amount from your body's energy balance, leaving you feeling slightly warm and a little tired. Overdosing on Doof! will be almost impossible because, if you try, you will simply become too weak to eat any more until your body has replenished its ATP supply. In this regard, it will be far, far (or at least slightly) safer than drugs such as DNP that cause your body to haemorrhage energy, but which remain active up to and beyond the point of death.

Roughly speaking, we can expect 1lb of Doof! to equate to about half a pound of body fat lost. And this neglects the fact that, while your stomach is full of Doof!, you will feel too full to each much actual !fooD