Antibacterial Generation

When I was growing up the only allergies you ever heard of were the small handful of kids who had hayfever and had to get “shots” and whispered stories about that one in a million kid who could actually die if a bee stung them. The first time I ever met someone who had food allergies, I thought they were pulling my leg. Now, find me one kid who doesn’t have some sort of debillitating food allergy.

My friend Alec and I were talking about this just the other day. I know there are a lot of people who really want to blame it on the McPoison they make us eat, man! Not that fast/processed foods are good for you by any means, but I don’t buy that all these weird and unprecedented allergies are entirely caused by the food we eat today: I grew up on foods they’re not even allowed to sell anymore. I grew up when brown bread didn’t even exist. If anyone was going to have a reaction to artificial flavours and preservatives, it would have been me and my fellow GenXers – even more so than the boomers who preceeded us. What makes us different from Generation Y is that we managed to sneak in just before the age of antibacterial cleaners and scented swiffer dusters. We grew up swimming in what was, by today’s standards, an unscented ocean of bacterial filth that would put today’s febreeze-obsessed soccer moms into permanent hysterical catatonia.

This has always been anecdotal knowledge: people who caught an undue obsession with cleanliness ( or rather, imagined uncleanliness) from their parents always seem to be sick, or suffering from crippling allergies. A bit like the first generation of vegans were always sallow and ill, before Westerners actually figured out how to eat meat-free properly. Now there’s a new theory that the absence of a beneficial parasitic worm is the reason we’re developing all these bizarre allergies and sensitivities. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first of many simbiotic lifeforms we find we’ve eradicated in our odd, crazed quest for a “germ-free” existence.