Here's what I do with my life when I'm not doing science, internet, or girlfriend-related things. I'm a staff writer for my university's humour paper. Here's the first draft of something I wrote this week. Not all of it is my best stuff, but I thought I should pad it before sending it in (I'm writing from home this week), since it's a big issue.

Technically I don't own the rights to this now, but hey, it's not like I get paid anything.

The North American Sugar Board Presents: Interesting Sugar Facts!

Greetings, loyal customers!

We, your benefactors at the North American Sugar Board, are usually overjoyed to bring you new messages and information. However, the message today must take a serious tone, due to the nature of the circumstances. Lately, our product has been relentlessly maligned and vilified in the so-called "media." Sugar has been labeled as the culprit of numerous societal ills, from obesity to certain forms of sugar-related tumors. However, these allegations could not be further from the truth[1].

We here at the North American Sugar Board feel that sugar, as the "Gold Standard" of natural sweeteners made from sugar cane, must be well-understood by you, the consumers. As such, we proudly present this collection of little-known facts about your friend, sugar!

- Sugar is one of three kinds of carbohydrate: starch, fiber and sugar. Which category does it belong to? We'll let you be the judge.
- Most people think that sugar is loaded with empty calories. Not true! A single teaspoon of sugar has only 15 calories. Considering that the average human requires over 2000 calories per day to maintain a healthy diet, this rounds down to a mere zero calories per teaspoon!
- Did you know that you can feed sugar to dogs? It's true!
- Sugar has important pharmaceutical value. Folk wisdom tells us that, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." While this is true, at the time the expression was first used, sugar was quite expensive, and only available for the very wealthy. As a result, lower classes often used a spoonful of salt as an inexpensive placebo alternative, but it was found that this did not produce the same effects as sugar.
- When the sun explodes (and trust us, it's going to), it will compress itself and become so dense that a piece of it the size of a sugar cube will weigh the equivalent of 1 ton. This is equivalent to a sugar cube on Earth exploding, and compressing itself into a space so small that it would have density equal to that of really, really dense sugar.
- The reason we crave sugar is because we need it to survive. This is why over millions of years, humans with a propensity for eating more cookies, chocolates and candy survived, while those with less sumptuous diets died out. Simple evolutionary biology - sugar must be healthy!
- Scientists use sugar to grow penicillin, a beneficial strain of bacteria used to fight many types of infections. Why have someone grow it in a dish, then put the end product into your body? Cut out the middleman - eat more sugar!
- Sugar is used in many industrial processes, including the tanning of leather. Are you afraid to wear a leather jacket? Of course not. And if it's safe to put on your body, it must be safe to put in your body. That's how that works.
- Putting three or four sugar cubes into a suitcase before storing it will help prevent damp odors. Likewise, three or four sugar cubes in your body before aging will help to prevent the development of "old man stink."
- Vegetables are packed with lots of beneficial nutrients, making them an essential element of any healthy diet. However, vegetables have a revolting taste, which is too repulsive for most humans to force down their gullet without a spoonful of sweet, sweet sugar to ease the pain. In Africa, a country with very little access to sugar, 3.5 million children die every year due to malnutrition. Coincidence?
- Sugar helps to heal injuries. For centuries, sugar has been used to successfully aid in the healing of wounds, both physical and emotional. Sugar acts as an "emotional desiccant," drying the wound and preventing the formation of the deadly "Bacteria of Despair."
- Certain nosy "investigative reporters" would have you believe that large sugar companies are using sugar as an advanced form of mind control, allowing them to exert a malevolent dominance over the general populace. Not true.

Now that you've got a brain-full of knowledge, go out and get yourself another brain-full... of sugar[2]!

Rembrandt Q. Uppercrust
NASB Chair and Spokesperson

[1] Which is to say, a statement must be as far from the truth as itself. Claiming otherwise is as logically absurd as two people being taller than one another.

[2] Sugar readily bioaccumulates in the human brain.