When I worked with forecasting infant and family trends back in the 2000s there was a noticeably growing interest for nutrition among parents. Food was no longer only food, it had to be healthy, fresh, local organic, tasty and sometimes even "nutraceutical". Mothers started breastfeeding their babies again,...
Most personal insolvencies these days are caused by expenses related to the two service industries we depend on the most in our modern society – healthcare and education. And not surprisingly some of the most disruptive technological and social innovations are happening in these two areas as well.
Much of the skyrocketing healthcare costs in the United States have been attributed to lack of preventative care. Obesity rates have climbed in response to insufficient physical exercise and nutritional ignorance or at least by our slant toward self-deluding eating habits. Health monitoring and simple checkups add to the costs and time spent in doctor’s offices.
Lenore Skenazy, aka "America’s Worst Mom" and creator of the name and movement Free Range Kids is my favorite dispatcher of Onion type (but true!) news stories from Securistan. Yesterday she shared an article about the perceived threat of a sledding hill. “Paxton, a small town in Illinois, where the land is flat as flat can be, is about to lose its only sledding hill to the Abominable Insurance Man.”
Sledding hills are of course only one of many natural “dangers” we systematically eliminate from the overprotected lives of our Homelander kids. To quote Skenazy's sardonic remark: “Yes, and let’s hope kids forget that there was ever a time when they could play outside, walk to school, or meet up at the park, while we’re at it. Let’s hope they forget there was ever anything to childhood except Kumon and cat memes. What a glorious future.“
A little over a year ago American Heart Association made the a projection that the obesity epidemic would reach a level where 83% of American men and 72 % of women will be overweight or obese in 2020. The percentage today is 72 and 63 percent respectively. But recent news suggest that general obesity levels have stagnated. So has childhood obesity.
I think the key here is the word projection. Many forecasts are simply extrapolations of current trends, overlooking the possibility that trends may discontinue. Ironically gloomy extrapolations can actually in themselves prevent their own prophecy from materializing when they foster enough motivation to counteract the projected tendencies.
When I wrote the piece Generation Z - Forecasts and Formula in May of 2011 I predicted that the children of tomorrow are not automatically going to be plagued by higher obesity rates than the childhood generation or today and yesteryears. The reason is because with increasing attention to the problem, unhealthy foods and lifestyle patterns are on track to go the same way cigarettes did. Maybe even in spite of the powerful lobbyists and stakeholders who may lose from such a shift.
A former co-worker sent me this link a few days ago.
A few years back when we did futures research and trend watching for a nutritional company, breast vs. bottle was a big issue. The trend is certainly a return to more natural forms of child rearing where breast-feeding (or providing breast milk in BPA free bottles at the very least) is the quintessential deed for parents.
Even the latter option is viewed with some skepticism by the most devoted “lactivists”. Since breastfeeding often is viewed as more than just nutrition, a bottle served in a nursery is pitiful regardless of the contents of that bottle. Breastfeeding in this sense is about establishing a self-reinforcing symbiotic cycle of oxytocin generation. A mother-baby cocoon manifested by the wrappings of fair-traded, ethnic patterned, organic cotton slings where no commercial, genetically modified and climate threatening products can intrude. And yes, it’s also about identity and image.
In the future will we go to the doctor as much as we do now? Will pregnant women of the New Silents still have to schedule visits with ultrasound technicians to see their growing fetus? Maybe not. The latest fad in smart phone apps seems to be within...
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