To those who can afford it, food has long meant more than just sustenance. But millennials became the first young generation to spend discretionary income on food, even at the risk of not affording rent, according to Eve Turow-Paul.
She explored this in her 2012 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. Much of it stems from a desire to seize control in a world increasingly prone to chaos, she says.
“The reality is life is not easy right now, emotionally,” says Turow-Paul, who also wrote the 2020 book Hungry: Avocado Toast, Instagram Influencers, and Our Search for Connection and Meaning.
“For previous generations, terrible things were happening, but there wasn’t 24-hour news, Instagram, X, and all these platforms,” she says. “The mess of the human experience is more visible to people, and that’s really hard to cope with. With a world that feels increasingly chaotic and unpredictable and out of control, what do you do? You regain a sense of control by understanding your food.”
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