CakePHP find call result in many "SET CHARACTER SET utf8" queries. Why?

Question

What is the reason for CakePHP to do the query "SET CHARACTER SET utf8" 38 times in a row for a simple find("all") (recursive property default at 0) ?

I use MySQL as database and let's say I create a users table which looks like this:

CREATE TABLE users (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
username char(50) UNIQUE,
password char(40),
post_id INT,
created DATETIME,
modified DATETIME,
CONSTRAINT PRIMARY KEY (id),
CONSTRAINT FOREIGN KEY (post_id) REFERENCES posts (id)
    ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE
) ENGINE=INNODB;

and a posts table which looks like this:

CREATE TABLE posts (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
title VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
content TEXT NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT PRIMARY KEY (id)
) ENGINE=INNODB;

In my users_controller.php, I write in an action:

$log = $this->User->getDataSource()->getLog(false, false);
$this->User->find("all",
array(
   'conditions' => array('id' => 3),
   'recursive' => 0
));
debug($log);

I haven't tested this with the data above, but showed the tables above because they are similar to my current database. I use 25 tables with engine=innodb.

The debug is an array of 41 queries, where 2 queries retrieves the user and the post. The other 39 queries are identical and looks as follows:

    Array
(
    [log] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
            (
                [query] => SET CHARACTER SET utf8;
                [error] => 
                [affected] => 0
                [numRows] => 
                [took] => 0
            )

        [1] => Array
            (
                [query] => SET CHARACTER SET utf8;
                [error] => 
                [affected] => 0
                [numRows] => 
                [took] => 0
            )
                 .
                 .
                 .
            [38] => Array
            (
                [query] => SET CHARACTER SET utf8;
                [error] => 
                [affected] => 0
                [numRows] => 
                [took] => 0
            )

Is this supposed to happen? In my config/database.php file, it doesn't matter if I set encoding to 'utf8' or not. I do want 'utf8', but I don't want 38 unnecessary queries.

var $default = array(
    'driver' => 'mysql',
    'persistent' => false,
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'login' => 'mylogin',
    'password' => 'mypassword',
    'database' => 'mydatabase',
            'encoding' => 'utf8'
);

Answer 1

this sort of thing is expected in debug, cake uses the information to work. when you turn off debug it should all go away

Answer 2

Problem solved. It was a mistake from my part. The constructor in AppModel had the line:

$this->query( "SET CHARACTER SET utf8;" );