You know it's troubled times indeed when the public turns to baked beans

Well, due to the rotten economy, and with food prices constantly rising, people here in Britain are turning once again to their usual favorite staple food: The baked bean.
The Irish have their potatoes, the Japanese have their rice, the Canadians have their moose droppings, the Americans have their two double cheese Big Macs with three large fries and two milkshakes (some things never change)—and the British have their baked beans.
Why baked beans? They're not just a sort of traditional food here, but they're also cheap and easy to fix. They're even high in both protein and fiber, but low in fat. What else could you ask for?
Thought of something yet? No? Well, I'll tell you. I would ask to squash the gas-producing quality out of every baked bean, if there was only a way to do it. Unfortunately, no such technique exists.
Needless to say, with the British scoffing these little beans up for all they're worth because it's the only thing they can afford to eat, Britain is a rather bad place to live at the moment. I honestly don't know why anyone would drive or take the buses or trains to get where they have to go. They could propel themselves there. Baked beans = natural propane. Remember that, folks. All you'd need is a bike or rollerblades.
It's especially bad on those humid, foggy mornings that are only too plentiful over here that tend to smell of ass. And I guess, in these tough times, that's because they really do.
Think I'm exaggerating? Well, recall, dear reader, that I'm from the place known as "Beantown." The first people to establish Boston as a metropolis were the British, and these limeys surely brought their baked beans with them. Baked beans fast became one of the things that early Boston was famous for, and you didn't necessarily need to ever eat any to discern that for yourself. Legend has it that in those early days, huge, smelly fogs would hang over the city for days, comprised almost entirely of the gaseous end result of all the baked bean-eaters.
If you've ever wondered why Bostonians are a cantankerous and irritable lot, you need wonder no longer. It's all a direct result of a rather painful history, my friends, and it runs in the blood of every native-born Masshole. There were Boston Massacres long before 1770, only you never read about those. It's something we'd just rather forget. It was far better, and more convenient, to point to the Red Sox as the source of all our troubles.
But I digress ...
Now, if I'm sitting down on the bench at the train station and someone bends over right in front of me to pick up something they may have dropped, I'm going to have to kill them, or myself, or both. It's a scenario I can just see happening—and which is why I'm so frightened by it.
I don't eat the foul things myself. I've never been fond of baked beans and, unlike most of the general population, I've got my pride. I'm not saying that I'm immune from letting rip myself. But, for all that's good and holy, I tend to do that in private and I never want to eat a food that so encourages that disgusting bodily by-product.
Having said that, the baked bean seems like the perfect foodstuff for the British. We are, after all, talking about the very same people who invented toilet humor.