Vitamins are little pills named A, B, C, D, E, and K that the government recommends you have certain amounts of. These recommendations are based on the requirements of the Minimum Daily Adult, a truly pathetic individual that the government keeps in this special facility in Washington, D.C., where he is fed things with names like “riboflavin.”

Physicians generally pooh-pooh the value of vitamins, but this is because you can get vitamins into your body without the aid of physicians. If the only way it could be done was for a team of eight surgeons to implant a special $263,000 trapdoor in your head, physicians would say vitamins were the best thing since luxury German automobiles.

The truth is that vitamins are very good for you, and each morning you should take a vitamin A pill, followed by a vitamin D, followed by an E, until you have spelled the healthful mnemonic phrase “A DEAD CAD BAKED A BAD CAKE, ACE.” This will probably be plenty of vitamins for you, but be alert for the Four Major Warning Signs of Vitamin Deficiency, which are:

Nosebleeds

A sudden fondness for Wayne Newton

Unusually thick coats on woolly caterpillars

Death

If you notice any of these signs, you should add the phrase “A BEAKED DAD BEDDED A BEAD-BEDECKED BABE.”

Foods contain vitamins. Your mother told you this. She also told you that the vitamins are always in the most repulsive part of the food. If you were eating a potato, for example, she’d say, “Be sure to eat the skin, that’s where the vitamins are.” They learn this in Mother School. So with any given food, you should always eat the skin or, if it doesn’t have a skin, the rind, the core, or the pit. If it doesn’t have any of these, you should eat the wrapper.

Foods also contain minerals such as zinc, iron, magnesium, steel, and aluminum. At least, that’s what I’m supposed to tell you. I personally think the whole idea that there is metal in food, especially blatantly soft food such as Twinkies, is absurd. The only idea more absurd is the deranged notion that eating metal is somehow good for you. If God had wanted us to eat metal, He would have given us much better teeth. Thank you.

Fiber is definitely the number one hot trend in the world of natural health, threatening to break all the old records set by “pH balance.” Remember, back in the 70s, when every product you bought—food, shampoo, tires—was advertised as being pH balanced, even though nobody ever knew what the hell it meant? Well, it’s like that with fiber today, and so naturally I recommend you eat all the fiber-rich foods you can shove down your throat. These would be mainly your cotton candy and your Slim Jims.

This is a touchy subject for me to discuss without having the vaguest idea of what I’m talking about, but here goes. Many people feel it is wrong to eat animals, on the grounds that animals have souls. I would have to say, although I certainly have nothing but the deepest respect for this position, that this is pretty stupid. I mean, I don’t want to offend any religious group, especially if it is armed, but I frankly don’t see how anyone can say that all animals have souls. Obviously, some animals do: Lassie clearly did, and probably so did Trigger. If anybody ever tries to eat Lassie, I’ll be the first one to attempt a citizen’s arrest.

But nobody’s going to look me square in the eye and claim that, for example, toads have souls. I am not saying that it’s okay to eat toads, of course, unless the alternative is starvation, or what they serve you under the heading of “snack” on commercial airliners. I’m just saying we have to draw the line somewhere.

I, personally, follow what I call a “modified vegetarianism” system, under which it is okay to eat meat provided that it has been disguised so you can’t tell what kind of creature it came from. A perfect example is hamburger. There is no way to tell, just by looking at a hamburger, where it originated.

We believe it is from cows, because we are told this by burly cleaver-wielding men in Chicago with bloodstained garments, but we would not have come to this conclusion independently. So under my system, hamburger is fine.

Lobster, on the other hand, is out. There is no way you could not know you were eating a lobster. When you walk into a restaurant, often the first thing you see is a large tank containing lobsters wearing handcuffs and trying to scuttle behind each other so you won’t pick them. If you order a lobster, you don’t get to use the kind of euphemisms you use with cows, such as “beef” or “steak”: you say, “I’ll have a lobster,” and when they bring it to you, you just get this naked lobster, and you’re supposed to eat it. I think this is wrong, and I imagine it goes without saying that I also feel very strongly about blatant organs, such as tongue.

To answer that question, locate yourself on the medical chart provided here. Chances are the chart shows that you’re above your proper weight. The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in “calories,” which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.

AGE FEMALE SMALL AVERAGE BIG MALE SMALL AVERAGE BIG 18-25 E F A B C D 26-31 F A B C D E 32-39 A B C D E F 40-50 B C D E F A Over 50 C D E F A B Dead D E F A B C

A—You could definitely stand to lose weight. B—No question about it, you have a weight problem. C—Based on your weight, you should get on a diet. D—It would certainly not hurt you to lose some weight. E—You are carrying too much weight for your body type. F—You must make more of an effort to control your weight.

Obviously, the only sane way to lose weight, and to keep it off, is to ... Hey! Who are you guys?!! Wait a minute!! You can’t just barge in here and ...

So as I was saying, the only sane way to lose weight is to get yourself on, and then stick to, a regular, planned, conscientious program of purchasing newly published diet books. Here are some that I especially recommend:

All of these books are very excellent, and there are thousands more that are just as good, many of them offering such proven and time-tested features as consecutively numbered pages.

Perhaps the best diet book is Dessert Makes You Fat, by Ernst Viewfinder, who has several credits toward his Associate’s Degree in Motel Food Administration from Southwest Buford County Community College (“Where the Leaders of Tomorrow Are Frowning at Blackboards Today, Visa and MasterCard Accepted”). His theory is that people get fat because they eat too many desserts, so he has developed a diet designed to encourage you to skip the dessert. Here is a typical day’s menu: