Charles Dickens, spontaneous combustion, and a healthy diet.

Robert Lustig, a health and nutritional guru, has confirmed an idea that I have entertained for years, that the human body contains about 10 times the number of bacterial cells as actual human cells.

But before you change your identity from a human one to a microbial one, bear in mind that's the microbial bacteria cells are much smaller than our human cells. Roughly, very roughly, a bacterial cell is 1/10 the length of a human cell. Cubed, that means that 1,000 bacterial cells would fit into a human cell. So, in terms of mass or weight, we still dominate bacterial cells at the ratio of 100 to 1, if I calculate correctly.

Huzzah! If you weigh a hundred pounds, you have one pound of bacteria in and on your body, mostly in your large intestines, and that number varies greatly depending on your last visit to the bathroom.

But, the bacteria are very important to our health and well-being and they shall not be ignored, and it's important that you feed them the right food. The right food according to Robert Lustig is fiber. They're very content munching on fiber, and if they don't get it they get very temperamental and start eating the mucus that is secreted by the colon walls, which apparently is deleterious to our health. Bad things may happen, although I'm not sure what they are. Maybe a lot of inflammable gases are released increasing the risk of spontaneous combustion.

People used to spontaneously combust a lot. . It was a literary device Charles Dickens used in his novels when he couldn't think of a more creative way to dispose of his characters, a sort of deus ex machina. Murder was more popular, but spontaneous combustion was more dramatic and immediate.

Is spontaneous combustion really a thing? I don't know, but I'm not taking any chances, and I'm going to eat more fiber.