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NOVEMBER 19, 2021
AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006
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ONCE UPON A TIME
KICKIN’ IT
Although rates of cigarette smoking have dropped over the years, from 42% of US adults in 1965 to just 14% today, there are some 34 million Americans who still smoke. That is tragic because despite the progress, smoking is responsible for an estimated 480,000 deaths worldwide every year, about 1 in 5 deaths. It remains the single largest preventable cause of illness and death in the world. On the plus side, millions of people have successfully quit despite the challenges in doing so. It isn’t easy, but it can be done, and is well worth the effort it takes. Cold turkey doesn’t usually work. In other words, you can’t quit smoking in one day. But you can quit for one day. That’s what this week’s Great American Smokeout is all about. Give it a shot, just for one day. It’s a step in the right direction, one that many people are very glad they took in years past. For more information, support, and lots of helpful tools and resources, visit the American Cancer Society’s website at https://www.cancer.org/ +
The scene above — an entire family sharing a meal together — might have been the norm for many of us growing up. It wasn’t just a holiday event, either. It happened five or six or seven nights a week, and in some households the same thing happened at breakfast, and sometimes at lunchtime too. People who study such things say in many families this custom has gone the way of black & white TVs and 8-track tapes. It’s toast. What happened to this age-old tradition? And is it worth trying to bring back? Simply put, mealtimes have changed because the whole world has changed. Decades ago when suppertime was a daily family event, moms were often of the stay-at-home variety. They were busy all day, but they had time to prepare a family meal every night. No one came to the table wearing earbuds; no one brought a phone or a game console to the dinner table and spent their time fixated on it instead of the real live people right
in front of them. Divorce was a comparative rarity back then, meaning that single parents and their sometimes precarious finances were much more unusual than they are now, so second and third jobs were much more uncommon then too. Every family today has to deal with the higher cost of living and the added “necessities” of life now: our parents or grandparents did not pay for television programming, internet access, or telephones, let alone multiple phone lines. The faster pace of life today means that fast food and fast eating are the new normal. Even if a family eats “together,” that might mean everyone grabs something from the kitchen and eats it in front of a TV, computer, or game console, adults in the living room, kids in their bedrooms. Being a society-wide change, is it possible to reverse this trend? Is it even worth the effort? Please see ONCE UPON A TIME page 3
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