THE LAB, Borg Cube, Tuesday (NotScientist) — Dedicated Monsanto geneticists, working for the good of humanity and a badly-written space filler in the newspapers, have produced a fabulous array of valuable new cash crops with 100% all-natural artificial flavors that developing countries can grow to pay the interest on their ludicrous debts to the International Monetary Fund.

“Bananas that taste like banana flavoring!” said Cylon Number Six of Monsanto Public Relations. “Strawberries that taste like strawberry flavoring! Brewed coffee that tastes like instant! I was really disappointed the time I ate a strawberry as a kid, it didn’t taste anything like strawberry flavor. Now your kids will never have to suffer the same way.”

The wholly natural artificial flavoring builds on examples from nature: bacon with the magical taste of bacon, Quorn with the magical taste of Quorn and Budweiser with the magical taste of urine. The latter example also produces urine with the magical taste of Budweiser.

Some flavors for specialist niches were not a success. “Ice cream that tastes like vanilla dental dams turned out too gritty for the lesbian market, probably because no-one actually uses them.” Authentic™ ManJuice™ chewing gum for the gay market was considered too “outré” at this time, as no-one could actually bring themselves to use the word “tasteless.”

The company looks forward to continuing to feed the world at very reasonable rates on heavily patented non-breeding seed. “Without us, the poor would starve. Starve, you hear? Naturally grown Big Macs with the magical taste of a New Jersey chemical vat will save the world. Anyone who hates Monsanto hates humanity and probably turns tortoises upside-down in the desert,” said Six, nibbling on a Red Dye No. 1 fruit fresh off the vine. “We do what we must because we can.”