Generational Smackdown: Who Loves Local Eating More?
APRIL 22, 2007
Q. It seems like there is a generational factor involved in the local/sustainable foods movement. What is your opinion on this theory? Do you think those of us of the Gen X/Y era are more interested in reviving some of the "forgotten" household arts, or does the enthusiasm cross generations?A. Local eating appeals across the generational spectrum, but in different ways. Many of the Boomers remember childhoods when they ate more locally, and when food tasted more like real food. Their generation lost contact with those traditions, and we hear from a lot of them that they feel that loss in a very real, even urgent, way. At the same time, many people of the so-called Gen X/Y era grew up with an almost virtual relationship with their food - food came in a box or a bag, sometimes precooked but almost always far, far removed from where it came from. Every generation comes to a point where it questions its norms and wonders about the sides of life that it has missed - and food is such an intimate part of life, yet has been rendered so incredibly sterile, that it is coming up for some profound questioning. Then there's the fact that the generation rising right now is living through an ecological catastrophe. (The ecological catastrophe isn't "coming" - we're living it right now. Climate change, mass extinctions, the disappearance of 90 percent of the world's large fish populations...these global, system-wide changes are happening now.) We'd be profoundly shocked if young people weren't reacting strongly to all of this. Fortunately, they are - and are driving an upsurge in local eating. -JBM What kind of relationship with food did your generation have? How did it affect the way you think about food now? Let us know.
