Rails - May 2006 - does has_many: add a has_<associated_class>? method

Hi,

I have a Country class which has_many: regions. At the same time, the  
corresponding countries table has a boolean column named has_regions.  
It happens that when I try to access that attribute using  
country_instance.has_regions? , I can see in the logs that Rails is  
querying the database with a SELECT that''s counting the regions in that
country. Obviously, that''s not what I want, as I already have the  
required info in the has_regions column, so there''s no need to make a  
database query.

Is this "synthetic" method documented in the Rails docs? I
can''t find
it in the has_many documentation...
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations/ 
ClassMethods.html#M000530

How can I avoid that query? Is there any way apart from changing the  
name of the has_regions column?

Thanks in advance,

xavi