Thursday, August 30, 2007
Irony Part I
In an attempt to be fashionably healthy, you forswear all salt and adopt a twenty-five-cup-a-day water habit. You pour the wet stuff in so fast and furious that after a few days your cells become slightly flooded, diluting your electrolytes (the power workers of your body). This results in a slowing of neural transmissions. Your spatial judgement becomes impaired, as do your balance and reflexes. So instead of stepping over that cigar butt, you trip over it, falling off the train platform in front of the oncoming uptown express. And all because you didn't eat your salt. Shame on you.
Irony Part II
You're in the middle of the ocean in a raft. You have no water supply with you so you take a nice long drink of seawater. Soon you find you're thirsty again so you drink more...and more. Trouble is, sea water is just salty enough that you can never quite get enough water to flush the excess salt. Your cells, desperate to balance osmotic pressure, dump water until they shrivel and parch. Your heart turns into a spastic drum machine and your nervous system freaks as your kidneys lose their dictatorlike grasp on your body chemistry. Tomorrow you're raving mad. The day after that you're dead. Shame on you.
Page 18 of I'm Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown
(Cross-posted to Edible Foods)
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