We Were Supposed To Be The Bigger And Stronger Generation

When I was growing up in the 1950's and '60's, we constantly heard that we were bigger and stronger and healthier than any generation before us. Our parents were raised in the poverty-stricken Depression, or in countries ravaged by war, so we were fed more meat and dairy products than they could ever have imagined.

Antibiotics and vaccinations meant that we could survive and avoid illnesses which had buried our parents' siblings, aunts and uncles before they even reached adulthood.

When we were young parents, while watching our parents, then in their 50's and 60's so youthful, playing with our children, we expected to be even more so. And now we're that age, and for many of us with living parents, we're discovering that our parents are actually in better shape than we are. Or that we're suffering from medical conditions a decade or more before our parents did. Or that we have serious weight problems, while our parents never did.

One friend and her siblings are troubled to discover that they all suffer high blood pressure and cholesterol, though their father, close to a hundred doesn't, and their mother who died well after her ninetieth birthday didn't either.

Another friend and her siblings have all been seriously overweight, suffering many of the associated medical problems since their forties and fifties. One sibling already died of obesity-related problems in his forties. Their parents lived to over eighty, slim and trim, suffering from fewer medical problems than their children.

My parents, well into their eighties, are both slim, but I've been overweight for at least twenty years, even though I have always eaten healthier food than most people. I' referring to fruits and vegetables, not lots of meat, poultry and dairy products.

As we were growing up the predictions were that we'd outlive our parents. I'm beginning to have my doubts. There are a few reasons. One is that a couple of generations ago, weaker people/children died young. They didn't survive illnesses, which today have medicines to control and cure. That's the simple math.

Another reason we may not survive as long as our parents are the very diet habits which made us bigger and taller as kids. We've eaten too much meat and dairy. Most of us were given bottles of sweetened milk or sugary artificial formulas as babies. In the early twentieth century babies were still breastfed. That gave our parents a long-term health advantage we never got.

Doctors and statistic charts were too involved in our childhoods, and they still control parents. The aim to gain as much weight in the early months and years set kids up for trouble as adults, middle-age and if we make it, old age.

Recent health articles bemoan the fact that today's children suffer from medical conditions once only seen in the middle-aged and elderly. But that's for another post.