01-27-2017, 10:54 AM
To quote Indiana Jones, it's not the years, it's the mileage...
For those of us on the leading edge of the X cohort, we've never really known anything but brief pauses in political and economic upheaval, and at the same time, steadily accelerating technological and medical advances.
When we were children, cancer was almost always a death sentence, organ failure only slightly less so. Today, thanks to the refinement of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, we're shocked when someone not in their eighth or ninth decade succumbs to cancer. We saw the same thing with the AIDS panic in our teens and 20's. In our 40's, we'd be frustrated when a doctor (usually Boomer or Silent) told us that we had to wait for our 50's to get knees and hips replaced, those joints often the casualties of our cohort's iconic modes of pre-driving transport, the skateboard, the ten-speed, and the moped.
At the same time, we've seen food costs plunge dramatically as a share of household income, partly from the increase in female participation in the business world, and partly from improvements in distribution and preservation, which radically cut the cost per calorie per meal. Compare that to the days of Hamburger Helper (debuting in 1971) and other "meal extenders". To my mind, that's the biggest contributor to the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, with our aging close behind.
For those of us on the leading edge of the X cohort, we've never really known anything but brief pauses in political and economic upheaval, and at the same time, steadily accelerating technological and medical advances.
When we were children, cancer was almost always a death sentence, organ failure only slightly less so. Today, thanks to the refinement of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, we're shocked when someone not in their eighth or ninth decade succumbs to cancer. We saw the same thing with the AIDS panic in our teens and 20's. In our 40's, we'd be frustrated when a doctor (usually Boomer or Silent) told us that we had to wait for our 50's to get knees and hips replaced, those joints often the casualties of our cohort's iconic modes of pre-driving transport, the skateboard, the ten-speed, and the moped.
At the same time, we've seen food costs plunge dramatically as a share of household income, partly from the increase in female participation in the business world, and partly from improvements in distribution and preservation, which radically cut the cost per calorie per meal. Compare that to the days of Hamburger Helper (debuting in 1971) and other "meal extenders". To my mind, that's the biggest contributor to the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, with our aging close behind.