Today I was suddenly hit with a revolutionary weight-loss idea: Surgical installation of a shunt in the patient’s gullet – say, as a sort of rocker tube set just above the top of the ribcage where it meets the throat. It allows the ejection of chewed and swallowed food and liquid before it reaches the stomach or intestines. That way the patient can eat all they want without actually absorbing calories from any excess amount! Even diabetics would be able to eat whatever they want with virtually no risk.

It’s switchable, so you can leave it on bypass when you’re eating the minimum necessary calories. Ejected food would make fine fertilizer, so it wouldn’t go completely to waste.

Better still, make the shunt work both ways. You can use it to eject food you don’t want, and you can also use it to “eat” food that you don’t like! Hate broccoli but your doctor says you need to eat more of it? Dump it in a blender, and then shovel it into your shunt! You’ll never taste it, but all those vitamins and other nutrients will be absorbed by your body. It’s a perfect solution to the modern obesity epidemic!