laziness trend? No! #Millennials #Foodies

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Millennials—those born between the early 1980s and 2000s—don’t eat cereal?  Millennial bashing is nothing new. Time magazine, for example, ran a cover story in 2013 entitled, “The me, me, me generation: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Of the 80 million Millennials, more than half call themselves “foodies.” From Instagramming every meal (#avocadotoast) to spending upwards of 25 percent of their paychecks in restaurants, most in this age group are undeniably fixated on sourcing, cooking and enjoying food.

Author Eve Turow has a name for her food-obsessed cohorts: “Generation Yum.” In her book “A Taste of Generation Yum, How the Millennial Generation’s Love for Organic Fare, Celebrity Chefs and Microbrews Will Make or Break the Future of Food,” she digs deep into the reasons why her generation is intrigued by all aspects of food. “I really think it comes down to technology,” Turow writes. “In a land of over-stimulation, over-consumption, we are, in many ways, a malnourished generation.”

Immersing themselves in the sensual pleasures of gardening, cooking from scratch, and taking photos of food is a backlash against technology, an antidote to living in a virtual world.

Despite living through one of the worst periods of unemployment and student loan debt in American history, Generation Yummers, Turow explains, make it a priority to spend their hard-earned bucks on organic kale, homebrewing equipment, single origin coffee, and truffle cheese. They’re just not spending money on industrially produced boxed cereal. Cereal companies: You should be very, very nervous.

By 2017, Millennials will comprise more than one-fourth of the U.S. population, and are projected to have more spending power than any other generation.  Milllennials are not just spending money on food, they are Tweeting and hashtagging their way to make impactful contributions to the Food Movement.  Any Millennial foodie worth his or her organic salt knows the difference between cage-free and pastured eggs, grass fed and commodity beef, and is well-versed in the topics of food waste, fair wages for food workers, school lunches, community hunger, and how to sign up for a local CSA.