THE STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA, They Sent It Back Too, Monday (NNN) — The Food Standards Agency has announced new mandatory voluntary targets for food manufacturers to cut the amount of salt in bread, bacon, breakfast cereals and soup by 2012.

The FSA says reducing daily salt intake to 6 grams from the present 8.6 grams could prevent twenty thousand deaths from high blood pressure. “The best way we can achieve this is to make food taste as much like cardboard as possible. Sugar’s out too. This will also allow us to meet obesity targets, as no-one will be able to face eating and will merely have to drink themselves to death. ’Cos they can’t smoke any more either.”

McDonald’s has complained of people bursting in off the street, grabbing handfuls of those little salt packets and running out again. Police have warned of gangs of youths shooting each other with knives over contraband seasoning and speaking something that sounds like English but would probably be better transmitted by SMS.

Cardboard manufacturers looked forward to a windfall, with Ryman’s announcing a new line of pre-salted notebooks and filofaxes in salt and vinegar, cheese and onion and crispy bacon flavours. “Just quietly, sir, we’ve got some juicy pens in too, since you’re a regular and all.”

GIRLS GONE BALD, Debbie Does Dialysis, Monday (NNN) — Two thirds of people have not changed their diet or lifestyle to reduce the risk of cancer, a Newsnight poll has found.

One cancer expert said new ways were needed to convey health messages. “Fifteen percent ‘hardly ever think about’ cancer,” said Professor Karol Sikora of Cancer Partners UK. “This doesn’t bode at all well for the cancer or media industries.”

Cancer marketing has used the “saturation” approach for many years, where people’s morning paper tells them that eating more, eating less, eating chips, eating fruit, eating at all, drinking tap water, HPV vaccines, lack of HPV vaccines, sunlight, lack of sunlight or thinking too much about cancer all increase the risk of cancer, illustrated with a Page 3 spread of Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey, conducting a self-examination of Kylie Minogue’s bottom in closeup.

Innovative approaches that were directly relevant to people’s lives may prove more effective. “It’s amazing how much of a difference Jade Goody made to cervical screening. We need to find more previously disliked celebrities to sacrifice.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said government policies had contributed to a fall in smoking rates, almost compensating for deaths at the hands of crazed smokers desperately nic-fitting.

INHUMAN RESOURCES, Work Harder Not Smarter, Thursday (NNN) — Employees with difficult colleagues and a poor working atmosphere were 60 per cent more likely to be depressed, and 50 per cent more likely to use antidepressants, says Dr Marjo Sinokki of the Finnish Institute of the Bleeding Obvious.

Business was quick to protest that the right mental attitude was essential to remaining competitive and cost-effective. “Self-esteem costs a fortune in wages and produces employees with ambition and other problematic behaviours,” said the Confederation of British Industry. “Without depressed and beaten shells of workers, we can’t possibly compete.”

The Treasury concurred, with figures showing the health of the economy requires most workers to die of directionlessness within six months of retiring.

“The U.S. work environment right now is far more tenuous and toxic than in recent history,” said Josh Klapow of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “With layoffs and downsizing, the opportunities for increased stress, negativity and pressure have all greatly increased and are doing wonders to keep people in bad jobs at low pay and long hours, for our future prosperity. God bless America!”

BUPA has offered discount bulk Prozac, Valium and Thorazine to businesses, to be placed in the tea room next to the sugar and the bromide.

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COSTA DEL SOL, Glasgow, Friday (NNN) — A “binge-tanning” epidemic has put malignant melanoma above cervical cancer as the most common cancer in women in their twenties.

There are now twice as many cases of melanoma as there are breast cancer, causing concern amongst newspaper proprietors. “A half-page closeup of breasts hasn’t nearly as good an excuse,” said Desmond Murdoch. “Though topless beach babe shots are pretty newsworthy and informative.”

There are also questions as to whether excessive tanning causes cessation of brain activity and chronic footballer shagging, or if this is just coincidence.

20 minutes of booth tanning is equivalent to a day at the beach, minus yelling kids and sand in your bikini bottoms. Unregistered back-street bootleggers offer underclass girls tans on the sly, along with pirated MP3s and DVDs and authentic Louie Vitton and Dolchie ett Gabbarner merchandise.

“The fact is the jury is out on the relationship between UV exposure and malignant melanoma,” said Kathy Banks of the Sunbed Association, puffing on a cigarette and trying to fight off crocodile hunters wanting her skin for a handbag.

Substitutes for tanning beds can be nearly as problematic. Danielle Lloyd has appeared in her seventeenth celebrity nude charity calendar this year for the rehabilitation of chronic bottled tan snorters.

“We recognise the right of individuals to make informed choices,” said Charles Darwin of the Ministry of Health. “If they die before they breed, this may be a self-solving problem.”

SOMEWHERE, Er, Hold On A Tick, desu desu desu! (NNN) — US research suggests that mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age. As usual, the Internet is to blame.

Professor Timothy Salthouse found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline when the brain is sufficiently full of puns, memes, lolcats, favourite porn sites and burnout from dealing with idiots. “And then there’s b3ta, which appears to be composed entirely of prions.”

To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols — without using a keyboard and mouse.

All participants failed dismally. “One started eating the desk. Others gibbered, screeched, masturbated furiously and flung their own faeces at the researchers through the bars.”

Professor Salthouse said that, apart from burning the Internet in a series of worldwide electromagnetic pulses — as it had been specifically designed with the aim of surviving being nuked from orbit — the most important thing now was to give him more funding. “Understanding more about how healthy brains decline could help us understand what goes wrong in serious diseases like Alzheimer’s. Now we just need to find someone on the Internet with a healthy brain.”

LANCETHRUST, Gruntfuttock, Tuesday (NNN) — Researchers disappointed millions of mediocre men today when they concluded that dosing your girlfriend with testosterone won’t get you lots of free sex either.

Procter & Gamble’s Hornymoma patch is prescribed to boost libido in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, which is defined as persistently diminished or absent desire for sex with medical researchers. Researchers said the patch’s effectiveness could not be proven, and that it also led to such side-effects as stroppiness, an uppity attitude and a really quite impressive right hook.

“The effects on my wife were not at all what I’d first pictured,” said Dr Ike Iheanacho, walking in with a waddle, tenderly rubbing his hindquarters and declining all offers of a chair.

Procter & Gamble said Hornymoma had been thoroughly tested and had been shown to be effective, giving their quarterly numbers a proud and vigorous response with lasting power.