Laying a log

I take is as axiomatic that the true purpose of medical science is to enable us to abuse our bodies and not suffer the consequences.

Exercise and diet are no fun whatsoever - there has clearly got to be a better way to avoid obsesity whilst being able to indulge in one's favourite foods ad nauseam.

One solution that has been tried is to replace fats with non-digestible equivalents, which pass through the gut without delivering their calories. Unfortunately, they pass through in pretty much the same form that they went in, with unpleasant results for the launderer of the household. It is also exceedingly difficult to produce, for example, a plausible replica of foie gras from these indigestible fats.

I propose an alternative. Take the humble E. coli and endow it with the ability to synthesize cellulose. Add a little more metabolic plumbing, and you should have gut bacteria which can snatch sugars and lipids from your gut and convert them directly into indigestible roughage before they can be absorbed.

A simple pill containing a starter colony of these bugs should populate your gut with an army of cellulose-generating, calorie- sapping allies. Within days, the pounds will start to fall away; within weeks, the most enthusiastic gourmand will find himself becoming more sylph-like despite his excesses.

You will appreciate, of course, that the details remain to be resolved. But this should be a relatively trivial problem.