Sugar gives you cancer.

Update on the job front. Manager has accepted my resignation gracefully although at this stage she still thinks she can persuade me otherwise. Nope. However I have cunningly averted her rage by suggesting that I might resume working there on a new contract after resigning this one. That is a possibility. I could consider working Saturday and Sunday just to get me out of the house. Working alone for long periods can drive you nuts.

The weekend would be the hard part for her to cover since the (mostly) youngsters she is likely to get applying are not going to want to work weekends. I can have Smoky-Drinky on Wednesday, the weekend means nothing to me. However I am going to let the resignation take full effect. I want to see how the company handle my final pay before deciding whether to go back. I have not heard good things on that score.

We are now at the stage where Mopman works mornings to mid afternoon and then I work the rest to closedown. It is far too much for what they are paying. Food grade cleaning is not a trivial job and if the company want the best, they are not going to get them on the wages they offer. Especially not at this workload.

On Panoptica, I have settled on the main character being 10538, with a quote from ELO’s ‘10538 Overture’ as a starting credit. That song was one of the things that set the story in motion, a long time ago. Everyone has a number, not a name. Nobody needs a name when every interaction involves your ID number. That’s all the identification you need. It also reinforces the ‘prison’ aspect of Panoptica.

Watch for that becoming law soon. Every time I say something about Panoptica, the Mail has the story the next day.

Right. Digressions out of the way, here’s the meaning of the title.

Now that we are to give up carbohydrates, especially sugar, the Church of Science has unearthed new scriptures to support their latest fatwa.

And… it’s crap. At least, the report on what is actually likely to be real science is crap. The real science does not look like it’s all that good either.

One. They used mice. Mice are not human. They do not react well to human diets.

Two. They used mutant mice who are genetically predisposed to a hereditary form of colon cancer. If you are part of a family where this cancer is hereditary you will need to take more care of your pipework than someone who is not at such hereditary risk. The findings can only apply to those who have a family history of the botty-lumps and strictly speaking, only if you and your family are genetically mutated mice. I don’t think they have WiFi in those cages but you never know. Perhaps the mice do read this. Perhaps there’ll be a comment one day of ‘Eeek, eek eek’.

If you do have such a history, get the arse camera inserted at the first opportunity. Caught early, this one is easy to snip out. Caught late and you get your arse sewn shut and the unfashionable version of the bum-bag on your side forever – if you’re lucky.

Three. Butyrate causes gut cell proliferation. This is very, very old news. It does not necessarily cause cancer but if you are genetically predisposed, it can make the lumps grow faster. Normally it just causes rapid gut cell shedding and replacement. In an environment permanently coated with digestive enzymes, decayed food, shit and bacteria, this is actually a good thing. Especially since many pathogenic bacteria start out by sticking to the gut surface. If you are rapidly shedding and replacing the surface cells, bye-bye pathogen.

The whole ‘butyrate causes cancer’ bollocks was comprehensively shattered at least twenty years ago. Here it is again, back to see us like the one that won’t flush.

Now it is linked to carbohydrate. It can’t be directly linked to sugar at once because free sugars are not going to make it to the colon. Starch will, especially retrograde starch (heated and cooled, as in frozen oven chips) but mostly that’s a good thing too. Well, unless it’s too much, in which case the gas production could get you banned from elevators and enclosed spaces, in case you burst them.

You need that butyrate from your gut bacteria. It encourages your gut to shed and replace its surface cells, and shed attached pathogens and orther nasties from the surface at the same time. If you have a family history of colon cancer you’d need to be a bit more careful about it but if you don’t, get them chips in the oven now.

In Scotland they send you tests for botty-lumps on your 50th birthday (happy birthday, please shit on the card and send it back) and every two years after that. In England and Wales they don’t start the poo tax until you are 60 (we want 10%, squeeze it out and hand it over). For most of us this is fine. For those who have families with a history of the botty lumps, get to a doctor at the very first sign of a red-spattered pan and demand the arse camera. Do not wait for their crappy birthday card.

It might only be haemorrhoids. Unpleasant but not dangerous. If the lumps are in the family, do not assume.

But butyrate does not cause cancer. It might make it worse if you have the wrong genes but it does not cause it.

When they get around to ‘sugar causes bowel cancer’, as they will, remember that your gut is a very long pipe and it’s grabbing everything it possibly can absorb, all the way down. The sugars are gone long before they get to the colon. Any not absorbed have been used by bacteria (which are present along the entire gut, yes, even in your acidic stomach).

The last paragraph of the article, a direct quote from the research paper, is true. They foiund that a lot of carbohydrate makes bowel cancer worse in mice genetically predisposed to bowel cancer. That is all the experiment could conclude.

Now sit back and watch it spin.