I don’t know about the rest of you folk, born between ………, but aren’t you tired of hearing that we are too fat, too rich, too egocentric, too quick to spoil our kids, selfish, born to shop, born to eat, …It gets more ridiculous with every new study. Who is paying for those studies anyways?

Either there is something inherently wrong with all these new statistics, or increased knowledge about our bodies, improved medical diagnostics, increases physical activity, better eating habits, and improved awareness in general of our health and body are high risks factors; ie. They are killing us!

I look through the cracks of these new reports recently release from the Canadian Community Health Survey of 2003-2004, and I can see wholes as large as apparently the behind of most baby boomers. Who exactly are they surveying? I was never asked the questions. I see that 21% of us age 45049 have already been diagnosed with heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. In our parents’ generation, the generation we are supposedly worse off physically than, at that age were more concerned about raising their kids than running off for diagnostic tests.

We now know, many of us in our early 20s, who our blood pressure is, our cholesterol is. This alone is obviously not enough or is it the cause of us going on to have heart and stroke issues. I think that what these reports clearly show is that knowing too much about our bodies is bad for our health. We obviously can’t deal with this information.

It is bad enough that we now all have to micro-manage our retirement pensions, something that our parents never had to do, but we also have to micro-manage our health and even our health care.

It seems wrong that by the age of 20, young people are supposed to start planning for their retirement as well as already finding out enough about their bodies to make the healthiest of humans have anxiety attacks. Where is the fun?

I can seriously look at my parents and all those I knew in their generation, and cannot think of many men without a beer belly or woman without a Marilyn Monroe body (read “full-figured.) The most exercise any of them got was going fishing and mowing the lawn. Mom’s spent their days running around after the kids and ironing. Not a lot of real physical activity there. So why are we worse off?

The report further adds that those in suburban areas, is needing to drive everywhere, are worse off than any of us who lived in the cities because we city dwellers were supposed to walk everywhere. In what city? City dwellers are the worse for hopping into their car to drive to the corner store.

The baby boom in Canada, that started in 1947 and ended in 1966, was one of 4 large booms in the world. The reason for this huge “cohort” a word used by David Foot to designate a statistically significant population was that Canada had the most open immigrations policy. WE had women of baby-rearing years pouring into the country from all over the world. How can any study possibly compare the 60 year olds of today with our parents generation when they were 60. The entire demographic make-up is different, culturally, ethnically, as well as socio-economic. We just aren’t the same monoculture. We are diversified and encompass huge population subcultures.

We can now know if we carry genes for certain potential life-threatening conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer. We can change our genes to make our body produce and repair arteries and our heart. There are pills to prevent obesity. We know so much about, and control so much about our bodies that it seems impossible for us to be in worse shape than the previous generation. (At least we will all probably die with our own teeth.)

The survey also says that 58% of boomers say that they don’t think their weight affects the health of their heart? That has to be an out-right lie. In this day and age, there is no possible way that many people, that would be one of every two, would say that (even if they secretly hoped it to be true.)

I think that this survey had some serious design flaws. They certainly didn’t ask me or anyone I know.

With the constant assault from TV, radio, prints ads, we are so aware of every little sign of heart or ….that we are always running to the doctor for a test of some sort. I don’t know anyone who isn’t conscious of their weight and doing something about it. Even when weight isn’t an issue, I know very few people who don’t have some sort of physical fitness routing, structured or otherwise.

No, if any generation needs to be on their toes, it is the Echo (our children) I would agree that they do need more physical activity in their lives, but if they see that all the hard work their parents did to stay fit did nothing to help, we may be turning them off with surveys like this.

Let’s just keep our little secret.

There has been a flurry of new reports, based on years of sound medical research, and we all know how long those “new findings” usually last. Hormone replacement is just one of the more recent. And then there are the monthly changes of tune regarding red wine and coffee consumption. Does anyone of us really know what the true answer is anymore?

I really got my knickers in a twist when I read that there is apparently a problem with our over-consumption of bottles water. It isn’t good for the environment, and we are draining the resource of countries with little water (i.e.Pepsi is) for our own benefit, a bit ironic when you consider that we live in the country with the most fresh water in the world. I don’t drink “……” unless I have to.

Lets get to the basis of this over consumption. We were told by our doctors and Oprah and everyone else we trust that the only way to good health and longevity is by consuming (variously) 4-8 cups of water daily. How the heck are we supposed to get this if we don’t carry it with us. We certainly don’t have “public” water fountains anymore. Can you imagine in this day and age, with the scares about Avian flu and the certain pandemic coming our way, that we would actually stoop to sticking our mouth so close to a tap where so many mouths have gone before. We even now think twice about sharing our own water with our own friends. I have to admit that I was before my time; even in grade 2 I was squeemious about sharing a bite of my apple with my girlfriends, even though this was a major schoolyard bonding ritual with girlfriends. I would carefully take a bite where no other lips had come close, and if it were my own apple, eat everything but the area around the offending bite. Considering that the whole apple had been rolling around in my sterile school desk all morning, pushed in and out of sterile jacket pockets, and probably been used in a game of catch, not to mention a brief roll around the classroom floor, being so uptight about a mouth germ seems to have been the least of my worries.

But the point is, we now seem to be taking flak for doing what we have no choice in doing. Drinking water from bottles. We have also been told that it isn’t good to refill your bottle for repeat use. Who said? The retailers. What if you keep the bottle in the fridge between uses. How many people who use their own water containers carefully sterilize them between uses. I bet they stay in the backpack or fanny belt between runs and get a cursory rinse before refilling. How is that different.

If we counted the number of public fountains or places to get a glass of water, before they actually started charging for glasses of water in some places, (professing it was for the cost of the dish washing!) You would be as parched as in a desert. In many, many restaurants, you have to plead with the busy waiter to bring you a glass of water, and if you ask for water, you are often asked, “Which brand would you prefer?” In Vegas, one of our table servers showed up immediately with a pitcher of water, but asked if I would like to order a bottle of water, or would the tap be OK. What did that mean, “OK!” If I went ahead a drank the water in his hand, it would be tantamount to saying that I had no class and no concept of what lethal contamination I was about to ingest.

So, there you have it: a severe lack of public fountains and immense fear of using them if they did exist. In Calgary along the public parkways, there were often older fountains, but many noted that the water was not safe for human consumption. You could basically rinse your face with it, or water your dog.

To add an even higher disgust quotient to this story, I just read that a 12-year old in Florida for her science project showed that the water in public toilets was cleaner than the water used to make ice cubes in some fast-food restaurant.

And now the fat and unfit part of this whole campaign to make those of us who took what life gave us and are now finding that we screwed up in some way. The Heart and Stroke foundation spent millions of who’s dollars to tell us that as a demographic, we are in worse shape than our parents.

Only a dummy would spend money to figure out that the differences between our generation and that of our parents has to be immense. Did Mom and Dad have McDonalds (Who have apparently forgotten to include the wheat and …in their fries which means that they have slightly …their fat content.) They went through a depression and learned frugality and fear of being poor. WE became risk takers and learned that bankruptcy was just another word for “starting fresh.” My Father would have died from a broken heart if he ever was overdue on a bill, and for years, he wouldn’t buy a new vehicle unless he could pay cash.

Our parents often grew up on farms where they had to work before and after school to help out, not only getting exercise, but waiting until dinner was called before sitting down with the family to a meal; a meal with likely no prepared foods. It may have been high in fats, starches, sugars, and everything that we now live in fear of, but it was worked off by outdoor work and play. There was no TV to keep everyone sedated after a heavy meal.

Many of us, certainly the tail end of the boomers, grew up in cities where you couldn’t even play a game of tag that encompassed several blocks. Everyone started putting up fences, and we were no longer encouraged to walk through a neighbours yard.

Next to TV, availability of fast foods, lack of open spaces for games of tag, I think the biggest factor in bringing us indoors, and certainly our children, was the fear factor. We started hearing about strangers and lurkers. Not the Boo Bradley type of fiction, not the ones we made up of the escaped from the mental institution, but of the very real, flasher type. The world started to get ugly.

I should also add here that we found that what couldn’t be earned through hard work could be bought. Firmer breasts, thinner thighs, state-of-the-art knees: if we didn’t take care of ourselves properly, we could buy a repair kit. 

These are just a few not excuses but reasons why we are different than our parents’ generation. And our children will be different again. We have apparently handed them everything, so they will never learn the value of a good day’s work. Can you not list off a few dozen of the so-called X-generation that are energetic, innovative, socially conscious, and enthusiastic, without even trying. I can.

I guess we did something right. I guess we are doing the best with what we were given to work with. We walk and run, do yoga and pilates, watch our fat intake, even as we take our handful of supplements every day. And we are still being told that we are in worse shape than our parents.

Well, I find that hard to believe. Just remember that we find out early when our cholesterol or blood pressure is out of whack. Our parents simply waited until they had a stroke or heart attack. I don’t think that it is fair to compare our ….phobias to our parents who didn’t go to the doctor for a yearly check-up or mammograms.

And what about the cultural diversity we are trying to compare. We are trying to compare a whole new multicultural society with the rather Waspy culture of our forefathers. And the French.

How many of you fellow baby boomers can count on your two hands the number of your friends who don’t exercise, watch what they eat (or at least talk about it a lot) and are not obese. How many can count the number of our children who aren’t happy in what they are doing, even if it may not be what we would have done. Maybe we are just calling confusing different with wrong. It is fairly clear that our children have little intention of following our “program.” Post secondary education is not as important to them, nor is that first JOB. Travel and life experience seems to have taken the forefront. Perhaps because they saw their parents tied down to a job for most of their years. It is well-known that the youngsters now consider each job a stepping stone to the ultimate life choice, not a career carved in stone. Work to travel seems to be the act now. But it isn’t the “hippy back-pack hitchhiking trip to Europe of the ‘70s now. It is a far more pragmatic and planned trip between stints at different jobs and school. …..

Maybe, in the end, we just know too much about our body. Maybe we were happier when the biggest concern in our lives was getting food on the table or organizing a game of scratch baseball in the corner lot after dinner.