I’m not a huge health nut. I’m a mindset immunity nut. So what am I doing writing about trans fats? There is a story here.
Not that long ago my wife and I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We soon found ourselves in the dairy isle so we got our cheese, sour cream, and some yogurt. Then we got to the butter. “Where’s the butter?” I asked her as if she would know. There wasn’t any. The shelf was bare. Seems there was a sale on butter and, since this was latter in the day, other customers had run off with it.
Our only alternative was the other brand and it was about twice the cost of the house brand that was on sale.
But by now I was hooked on getting a deal and we did need butter. So the only other choice was something that is not even a dairy product. It’s margarine, that molecular mash-up that often stands-in up to four times as often as butter in many families’ refigerators. Same color, similar consistency, and it even has the same packaging as butter. The one pound square this I got comes dressed in that familiar paper wrapper and its even exactly the same size as a pound of butter.
But of course it’s not the same.
It’s margarine.The label says that on the front. On the back is its ingredients and nutritional info including the trans-fat percentage. This is the thing that’s been linked to many diseases including some types of cancer. It’s a molecular freak that the body simply can’t use. If it tries to it will turn it into something even more deformed.
Now that I’ve had a chance to research it a bit I find that it’s probably closer to being plastic than food. Nothing will grow in it. Leave it out and no pesky flies will go near it. Won’t rot or smell weird if left out either. It’s definitely not butter.
So why did I buy it?
I was skunked by price. Outmaneuvered by the marketing and seduced by easy availability.
Sounds familiar? Many do it every day when they pick up a great book of advice, positive quotes, or read stories of successful people. Get their shot of motivation for the day to help them overcome a tough situation or just help them figure out what to do next.
What else can they do?
Real authentic passion and mindset immunity is in short supply. It’s rarity makes it expensive in time and effort to find it too. So we stick with the mind-candy even though we know that it’s addictive and eventually leads to system breakdowns. It’s loaded with trans-fat thinking that:
- is extrinsic, it doesn’t come from you it comes at you
- clogs the pathways of good clear creativity with rules and “guidelines” that are not your own
- it’s not natural to you so it may not quite fit and it doesn’t last very long
- it’s just cheap and instant and requires little work to get because there’s lot’s of vendors out there who are ready to give it to you
I’ve read some of those trans-fatty books. I know what they are like but I now know better.
Glad I’m finished with this post. Now I can go to my fridge, reach in for that chunk of margarine, and chuck it in the garbage trans-fats and all.
More power to you all.