The past 100 years has seen Japan adopt Western culture and molest it by openly catering to the whims of its seedier side. Society in the West is an unhealthy marriage between greed and lust and we want more of it and we want it now. In most countries our rapacious desires are confined to the Red Light District, but in Japanese cities, stressed out business executives can indulge in their passion for sniffing girls used underwear by chucking a few yen into a vending machine at any major railway station. However, I do hear that their trains are very efficient!

It was only a matter of time before Japan came up with a bizzare solution to another of the West’s sins – sloth. After years of intense scientific research we now have the latest high tech gadget from Japan – fat burning underwear. This technological marvel is a dream come true for large loafers who can’t quite make it out of the house. The futuristic underwear is selling like hot pants (sorry!) in Japan as men and women who wish to lose weight the easy way snap them up.

Goldwin, the company who make the underwear, charge around US$40 a pair, so you may have to end up wearing the same pair for more than one day - a little unhygienic but hey, at least you might be slim!

There is no scientific proof that the underwear actually works but Goldwin claim the key to the underwear’s fat burning magic, is a resin which coats the fabric and prevents it from stretching. The wearer of the underpants therefore has to exert more muscle strength in order to walk about, supposedly using up more calories and therefore maximising your fat burning potential.

The theory behind the claim is tenuous at best and it strikes me as a lot of effort to go through, just to avoid going to the gym or pursuing some other physical activity or sport. It also seems that men who wear the fat burning underwear, will end up speaking like a eunuch for the day, as constriction is all part of the method in the madness.

I guess humans are always going to come up with ideas on how to make our lives easier and fat burning underwear is another one of those crazy ideas which I can’t really see catching on. There are far more sensible ways to slim down, and crushing your nuts is not one of them in my book. I wonder how long it will be before we see used fat burning underwear being sold in vending machines at Tokyo’s railway stations!