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Longevity
by author Sabitri Ghosh

Probably no one understands baby boomers as well as David Foot. The Toronto-based demographic whiz can even pinpoint the precise moment at which the more than 10 million Canadians born between 1947 and 1966 will likely begin to think seriously about their health: when the beloved family pet takes off for the big kennel in the sky.

"In your teens and 20s, you figure you’re never going to die: you can eat anything and do anything," said Foot, speaking in Ottawa at a recent Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) market trends symposium. "In your 30s, you’re too wrapped up with raising kids. In your mid-40s, all of a sudden the cat and dog get into some trouble, and you have to deal with a close family friend–namely, the pet–dying. This is the first introduction in the family to mortality–you wake up and realize life isn’t forever."

And with that realization comes a new readiness to hear the gospel of natural health. "All of a sudden," Foot observed, "you say, ‘I’d better start to exercise; I’d better start to eat sensibly; I’d better start to look at vitamin supplements; I’d better start to think more spiritually.’"

Dominating Society

Baby boomers–a generation bracketed by the end of the Second World War and the advent of the birth-control pill–have swept through successive decades like a force of nature. They flooded schools and then workplaces, shook up old institutions, eroded many of the values held dear by previous generations, and left a radically altered social landscape in their wake.

"They are all the mega-trends around us," remarked Foot, whose 1996 book Boom, Bust and Echo (MacFarlane, Walter and Ross) chronicles the impact of boomers on society as they age. "Whatever they do, they’re dominating society."

He pointed to the drop in the national crime rate, which coincided with the aging of the boomers, as just one example of how their sheer weight of numbers can tip the statistical scales: "When they were young and committing crime, crime looked like a big problem. Now that they’re older and can’t run as fast, crime has decreased."

In the 1970s, boomers wanted to be where the action was, and headed to the cities. Urbanization became the order of the day. As they began marrying and raising families, they moved to the suburbs, which swelled in size throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As Foot succinctly put it, "They moved from smoking grass to mowing it."

Cocooned in their homes, boomers fed a host of new businesses–from video stores to pizza delivery companies–that catered to their suburbanite lifestyles. With changing work patterns, their free time grew ever more limited and fragmented, and they became increasingly picky about how they meted it out. "The vigilante consumer appears," said Foot. "Anyone who wastes her time is in real trouble."

"Doctors Don’t Get It"

Sabitri Ghosh is an award-winning writer and researcher whose work appears in publications such as the Globe & Mail and World Vision.

Source: alive #241, November 2002