The Land of Sandy Autos: A Fable
If you pour sand in your engine, expect to spend a lot of time and money on car repair
People in the Land of Sandy Autos (LSA) start each morning taking care of their cars. The usual routine, which 99% of men and women embrace, is to mix a teaspoon of sand into a car’s fluids.
Each person has their own opinion of the best method to use, and the media buzz with experts. Some pour the sand directly into engine oil. Others swear it’s better to put the sand into the fuel tank, the brake fluid, transmission fluid, or some other target. A common strategy is to vary each day where to put the sand.
Car repair costs in LSA are out-of-control, increasing at a rate far higher than salary increases. As you are reading this, car repair absorbs fully 17% of the Gross Domestic Product in LSA. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling, schools are going downhill, and homeless people shiver on the streets. LSA cannot effectively address any of these problems because one in six dollars has to be spent on auto repair.
In fact, auto repair is an entrenched industry, the only growth area in a bleak economy. Massive car hospitals revive the sickest vehicles. College students compete for spots in mechanics training institutes, knowing they have a secure future in that career. Auto parts makers thrive. Car scientists invent ever more sophisticated fluid additives to keep the cars running longer with their sandy engines and gas tanks.
A few dissenters try to get their neighbors to wake up. “Just don’t dump sand into your cars,” they say. These dissenters never use sand in their cars, and can go tens of thousands of trouble-free miles with simple preventive oil changes and routine maintenance procedures.
Forget any help from the government of LSA. The elected officials receive tens of millions of dollars from the car repair industry. These businesses are also the biggest paid advertisers in the media. So newspapers, TV shows, and radio hosts debate the merits of different kinds of sand and whether it’s best to add it to the engine or brakes. But very few dare to discuss the strategy of just
If you put animal foods and manufactured foods into your body, expect to spend a lot of time and money on medical care
ceasing to use the sand.
Of course, you may be smiling at the silliness of the LSA citizens. You may be frustrated that they don’t see the obvious fact that they are destroying their cars and causing their own problems through deliberate actions that are easily stopped. You appreciate their cultural norm is warped and weighing down the country.
So let’s consider the USA instead. Cars here have it much better than in LSA. People really take care of their vehicles. Unfortunately, people don’t take such good care of their bodies.
Health care costs eat up 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, sucking in money needed for the next generation. Health care is the growth industry that defies a down economy. College kids vie for a place in medical school.
And things are getting worse. More and more people are overweight or obese. The Centers for Disease Control project that as many as one in three in the USA will be diabetic in the next few decades. Prescription drugs are seen as necessary and desirable – just like food and water – as drug companies formulate ever more sophisticated drugs to save people from their own bad habits.
So what is the sand that Americans are dumping into their bodies every day, convinced their habits are normal and necessary? All you need to do to answer that is cruise supermarket aisles and pay attention to ads, which push the most profitable foods.
Animal foods and manufactured foods are the USA equivalent of the LSA sand, damaging your blood vessels, your digestive system, eyes, kidneys, liver, lungs, and every other part of your body. Animal foods include meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products. Manufactured foods include sodas, energy drinks, chips, white flour, white sugar, white rice, bottled oils and margarine, and many other factory products. All these choices are sprinkled with persistent organic pollutants, toxic chemicals that disrupt reproductive and thyroid hormones and damage a developing fetus.
The people of the LSA and the people of the USA have a lot in common. Both can easily end their nightmares. It’s as simple as keeping the sand out of cars and the disease-inducing foods out of meals. Just thrive on a whole foods, plant-based diet, and you will enjoy your miles (and years) problem-free.
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Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on a whole foods, plant-based diet that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease as well as get you to your perfect weight.
Tags: getting healthy, Janice Stanger, Plant-based nutrition, reverse chronic disease, whole foods
Janice, what a sweet fable and such a good way to demonstrate the irrationality and denial associated with eating animal foods and manufactured foods. A great way to get the message across that we can easily, with some conscious attention and willingness, get the “sand” out of our engines. Thank you, julie