Back when I lived in the USA for a bit – 6 months in 2004 – the highlight would have to have been Beano. As the slogan says, in the euphemistic fashion so common in that strange country, it ‘helps stop gas before it starts’. That is, it’s anti-fart juice. Prepare a delicious plate of rice and beans, or maybe baked beans on toast, and sprinkle some beano on it. No farts at all, or such is the claim.
In fact, in many airports and railway stations in the US, you’ll find signs like these:
Strangely, I never found beano on restaurant tables next to the salt and pepper. Or the waiter never seemed to come around with a massive beano bottle – ‘cheese? pepper? beano? But I much prefer that old adage: better to fart and stink a little than bust your bum and die a cripple.
21 December, 2009 at 8:02 am
funny, i’ve lived here a long time and never seen any of those signs…
21 December, 2009 at 8:15 am
As many sociological studies have shown, Jim, we don’t notice those things that are part of our familiar landscape. And even on the roads, we notice at best about 60% of the signs.
21 December, 2009 at 10:06 am
The logical conclusion is that americans fart more. Lack of control. Unlike someone else someone mentioned the other day on this blog. The reason for this is that they are generally too fat and eat too much junk. They invented junk. Therefore they fart more. It’s an identity thing. Ethnocentricity.
21 December, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Breathtakingly illuminating, Steph. According to scientific studies, men fart slightly more than women, although both do about 40-50 a day, most of them micro-farts. However, even though they fart less, women’s farts stink slightly more than men’s.
21 December, 2009 at 1:27 pm
breathtaking seems applicable to farting. But scientific studies? (Does anyone care that much?) Were they american? I’d need to see evidence before I was convinced that diet wasn’t more important than sex (and cultural environment).
21 December, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I should have written ‘scientific’ – they are about as persuasive as those well-endowed studies that argue that people with symmetrical faces have more sex, or that men with bigger dicks and women with bigger tits have more sex.
21 December, 2009 at 3:19 pm
ah I see … and given there obvious fascination they probably concluded that bigger farts were better too.
21 December, 2009 at 3:19 pm
so what it’s 4.20am I can’t spell.
12 January, 2011 at 8:33 pm
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