Granola miners push out another cart-full of raw granola from a local granola mine.

"We would've been toast," another comments dryly.

To the granola miners, cave-ins are common, and are just another routine part of their dangerous jobs.

The big cereal companies don't seem to care what happens to the granola miners. They're only concerned with getting the crunchy product out of the ground and onto the store shelves. Sure, the loss of life is regrettable--it takes four weeks to train them to go underground with pick and shovel, or sometimes giant metal spoons and bowls.

The granola mills work unceasingly, turning raw granola ore into usable bars, while its smokestacks pump tonne after tonne of sweet-smelling pollutants into the air.

The bars are shipped away in container trucks to the factories. The leftover slag is destined for the landfills. Some people say that the excess is recycled, and made into Grape Nuts. No one knows for sure.

Why do we need to rely so much on granola, when there are so many other breakfast alternatives available? Why must so many brave men die so that others can can feel slightly healthier? Why must we continue to strip our lands bare when whole-grain cereals can be grown cheaply and easily on the prairies?

Maybe people don't understand what it is costing them to get those delicious organic clusters into their bowls, or into their lunchboxes. They see a well-designed box at the supermarket, and they're blasted with glitzy media ads that praise the wholesome goodness of granola. They don't realize that hundreds of workers from Sarnia, Sudbury, and Sooke die every year from granola mine accidents, and dreaded Granola Lung, an occupational disease that makes miners cough up milky lung-fulls of muslix.

They don't understand that if someone doesn't come up with a sustainable model for granola land usage, soon the countrysides will be pitted with giant gaping holes, a regrettable consequence of granola strip-mining.

Do we really need to rape our lands so that children can have hot bowls of porridge every morning? Why destroy the natural beauty of our countrysides when we could be growing crunchberries and apple jacks?

Cereal advocates doubt that granola could even stand on its own if it weren't for the raisins and dates. Without the fruit, they say, you might as well be eating gravel.