Good post and you make a very good point that got me thinking.
Back in the day the kids in my family and most of the other kids we knew had some direct connection with some of the food we ate.
Most kids (and adults) today have no connection with their food, other than picking it off a store shelf.
Of course, that's a basic difference between city life versus rural and small town life and more people live in cities today.
It seems that in past generations more people hunted and fished and almost everyone had family gardens where the kids helped.
And families went picking strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, cherries, apples, pears and other fruits.
Or they were purchased in bulk from the farm.
As kids we loved to go berry picking and stuffed ourselves while picking.
We knew that the fruits and berries we helped pick would end up on the table as good stuff to eat all through the winter.
Moms put us to work, boys and girls alike, prepping the produce - husking corn and shelling peas and beans to can.
And many of us learned to can produce by helping our moms as kids.
I'm not saying we were always eager to do the work or that we always did a good job.
But we were motivated to some extent by knowing our work would be paid back by having good things to eat through the year.
I remember as a kid helping mom stack the canned produce on the shelves in the basement and how the sight of those shelves full of canned vegetables
and preserved jams and jellies that we had helped with was comforting and rewarding.
Do you, per chance remember rumbleseats in cars? My grandmother had a real neat Ford coupe wjth a rumbleseat in the back. It looked like a trunk, but when you pulled up on the cover, it exposed the seat back and the seat was underneath. How I loved riding in it! I waved and yelled at everyone we passed!!