As a child I was told that an apple a day would keep the doctor away. Now, low salaries and poor working conditions keep the doctor away. Far away. As in Perth. Or toyi-toying in the parking lot outside casualty.

And it turns out that apples are rotten to the core with dangerous sugars and killer acids. If you had to eat one a day your teeth would fall clean out of your head, you’d lose your job, be ostracised by society and end up getting shanked in Pollsmoor after being forced into racketeering to stay alive. All because of apples.

I was also told that sunshine was good for you. If I started choking on a lump of gruel or cut myself and began bleeding on the carpet, my mother would smack me across the head and say, “Go outside and stand in the sun – that’ll fix you.” But the sun isn’t good for you at all. After giving you a fabulous tan, it leaves you with squamous cell carcinomas that gnaw away at your skin until you wake up one morning and find there’s nothing left to stop your meat from falling out. Even worse, it makes your face go all splotchy and people will start mistaking you for Zakumi, the diseased mascot of the 2010 World Cup.

For almost my entire life I have had to put up with my parents, ex-girlfriends, lawyers, paramedics and magistrates telling me that beer is evil. Pinot Noir, on the other hand, is good. What absolute rubbish.

Wine is only good for cleansing your palate between beers. Recent studies have shown that beer improves cardiovascular function. Don’t ask me how it accomplishes this. God works in mysterious ways. All I know is that thanks to beer, I have a heart that beats louder and faster than a Malian jina djembe and I can run the 800m in under four minutes. Beat that if you can.

I remember growing up and my mother telling me that I couldn’t have chocolates because they were bad for me. Well, it turns out that chocolate was only bad for her because she had to pay for it.

Chocolate doesn’t make your willy fall off, as I was led to believe. It is packed with antioxidants that expand your arteries and quite possibly your mind. But make sure you stick to chocolate with a high cocoa content. If you can only get your hands on the cheap stuff, dip it into a bowl of cocaine first. The effect will be similar, except with cocaine you may develop microscopic holes in your brain.

Everyone knows marijuana is harmful. Or is it? Perhaps we are just saying that because we have come to associate it with police brutality. Well, here’s a shocker. Recent studies on mice suggest that anti-inflammatories found in the drug prevent the clumping of brain proteins, a major cause of Alzheimer’s. After the study the mice kept misplacing their car keys and eating way too much cheese, but that seems a small price to pay.

As an adolescent I had to contend with a mother who would don protective gear to clean my room. “But mummy,” I would cry as my emergency food reserves were shoveled into a lead-lined bag, “maggots are good!” It was too terrible for words. The maggots – the only real friends I had as a child – would be taken around the back of the house where unspeakable things were done to them.

It has since been proven that maggots, unlike many mothers, can cure all sorts of things. Placed on an open wound, maggots will happily munch away on bacteria and dead tissue, stimulating healing and preventing infection. Some work colleagues may find this less of a conversation piece than you might think, but this is nothing more than jealousy on their part. If they complain too much, give them an open wound of their own and offer to share your maggots.

I was also taught from a young age that anger is a negative emotion. Every time I threw a tantrum, my mother took me gently by the hand and led me to the bathroom where she would whip my quivering buttocks with a bamboo rod, coat hanger, hair brush and, once those had snapped, she would start in with her teeth, nails and feet.

I quickly learnt to bottle up my anger. When I turned 21, I went out and killed the local rugby team. Looking back, it might have been better for my blood pressure had I let my anger out in smaller bursts.

One of the most enduring myths, usually propagated by slack-jawed mouthbreathers who believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, is that pre-marital sex is wrong. Even though post-marital sex is an even bigger myth, the fact remains that nothing else you do has the ability to reduce stress, lower cholesterol and improve circulation while simultaneously exposing you to ridicule, legal proceedings and life-threatening diseases.

My point, if there even is one, is that nobody knows anything. What seems like a good idea today – like taking Viagra or owning an iPhone or a Vietnamese potbellied pig – could end up decimating half the world’s population I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I’m simply saying … actually, I don’t know what I am saying. Forget I ever mentioned it.