Will an all-swede diet enable me to lose weight?
Yes, if you eat two average-size swedes a day you will be ingesting about two kilograms (4.4 lbs) of food - a huge amount of bulk yet with a total calorific value of under 500 when raw and about half that if boiled.  Five hundred calories is only one-third of the minimum amount required in a women's daily diet, or one-fifth of a man's.  You will always feel full but will lose weight very, very fast if you stick to a max of two swedes a day.  If an all-swede diet is intolerable, use swede as a substitute for bread, potatoes and other starchy foods but eat some protein and green veg with it. 

Is a swede-only diet safe?
No. It will kill you far quicker than the Atkin's diet.  The graveyards are full of people who tried to survive on carrot juice and other crank diets. Click here for some tasty swede recipes.

Will an all-swede diet make me fart?
Yes, you will be making a significant contribution to greenhouse gases and global warming.

How will friends and colleagues react to my non-stop farting?
They might find it amusing at first but ultimately (i.e., after the third fart) will find it objectionable. 

Is it possible to conceal my responsibility for these odours?
Yes.  First you must master the technique known as phantom pharting, allowing the gases to escape silently.  You then have to find a way of avoiding the blame for the odours.  One way is to be the first to notice the pong.  A remark such as, "Phew, burn a piece of rag," should be enough to get you off the hook and deflect suspicion to others.  If someone gets in first with an accusation, the standard blame-avoidance technique is to say something like "A fox always smells his own hole first."

Will this blame-avoidance strategy work indefinitely?
No, someone is bound to notice that the odours are always accompanied by your presence.  Since only extremely stupid people will be reading this FAQ, it should also be pointed out that the above blame-avoidance techniques will work only when three or more people are present.  If only two people are present, the farter will be caught by a simple process of elimination, so to speak.

Did dinosaurs eat swedes?
No, the swede is a recent arrival on the vegetable scene.  The first recorded description was by the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin in 1620. He believed it was a cross between the cabbage and the turnip, and his theory is supported by modern genetic research.

When you equate the swede with royalty, do you mean kings and queens or powerful hereditary figures such as George Bush or Michael Corleone?
Both.  For example, a quasi-royal will have inherited his "throne" from a powerful father and will have access to enormous family wealth and swede crops.  Like true royalty, he will also be surrounded by wealthy courtiers or influence peddlers, as well as court jesters like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.

Do swedes have sex?
Are you joking? They have little else.  These are a few of Swedish film titles currently in production: Lapping it up in Lappland, Norrbotten and Väster-botten; Västervik's Vanishing Virgins; Kum to Kungsbacka; and Huge Hooters in Hudiksvall (see film still).

How did the swede get its name?
There is no doubt that the swede gets its main names from Sweden. In America it is known as the rutabaga, derived from rotabagge - the Swedish word for swede which comes in turn from the Old Norse for root+bag. In Germany it is the Schwede, in Italy the Svedese, in France the rutabaga or navet de Suede. These scraps of evidence look like reasonable proof that the swede originated in Sweden but there are other rivals for the honor, particularly Bohemia.

Why does the word rutabaga amuse people?
According to Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, rutabaga belongs to a group of inherently funny words such as duck (regarded as the funniest word in English), Cucamonga and kumquat.  Read the Wikipedia article.

How did the swede turn Europe into the first global power?
Cultivation of the swede spread like wildfire through Europe in the late Middle Ages, empowering one northern nation after another and ending the stranglehold of the south.  Only northern nations have the right climate for growing this unique power vegetable.

What is so special about the swede?
No one is sure of the reasons for the swede's ability to release the martial energy and intellectual powers of entire nations. It is a good source of calcium, potassium, magnesium and folate.  Potassium builds muscle and metabolizes protein and carbohydrate. Magnesium is essential for heart health. Calcium builds healthy bones. Folate helps the body form red blood cells and assists in the formation of genetic material.
   But maybe the northern renaissance owes more to the swede's impact on cattle diet.  Cattle flourished on the swede, both its root and its foliage making excellent fodder.  That in turn brought a greater supply of fresh meat to people. In humans, the brain's neural connectivity depends on the availability of phospholipids. They make up 60 per cent of the brain and come mainly from meat, fish and eggs. The more meat humans have, the bigger their brains, which is why northern Europeans, and some Americans, are so smart. (It is notable that the North defeated the South in the American Civil War.)

Where is the evidence of the relationship between swede cultivation and northern European dominance.
The first documented evidence of a relationship between the spread of the swede and the overthrow of southern hegemony comes from Bohemia, one of the earliest beneficiaries of the cross between the cabbage (18 chromosomes) and the turnip (20 chromosomes), resulting in the swede or rutabaga (38 chromosomes).  On May 23, 1618, Bohemian protestants stormed the royal palace in Prague and threw two of King Ferdinand II's ministers out a window - the so-called defenestration of Prague.  That marked the start of the 30 Years War and the subsequent freeing of northern Europe from the shackles of the Vatican.

Aren't your dates a bit dodgy?  After all, 1618 is only two years before Caspar Bauhin logged the arrival of the swede, in 1620, and two years is not enough to allow a new vegetable to propagate very widely.
Bauhin was late getting in on the act.  There is every reason to believe that the swede originated in Sweden in the early 16th century and was widespread in northern and central Europe by 1620.  In 1683 a combination of swede-eating Polish, German, and Austrian forces defeated the Turks in the Battle of Vienna, thus permanently ending the Turkish threat to Europe: in a matter of years the swede had overcome the menace of both Islamic and Roman Catholic hegemony.  From that moment on, Europeans grew in confidence, fighting and conquering each other frequently and then moving on to conquer the rest of the world.

Do historians and dietitians accept this account of the significance of the swede?
They better if they wish to continue enjoying the ownership of fully functioning kneecaps.

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