This Is What Millennial Eating Habits Mean For The Organic Food Industry

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The millennial generation gets a lot of flack for, well, pretty much everything. We’re lazy, we’re entitled, we’re overly sensitive and we don’t know a good thing when we see one. But the one thing we do get right is food.

We have access to the important nutritional information our parents did not. They grew up in the era of industrialization, pumping as many food products as possible out of subsidized crops, food science innovations and machinery to match. We, on the other hand, grew up learning from the mistakes engrained in these processes and understanding that if we want to feed our bodies the good stuff, sometimes we have to sidestep convenience, get back to basics and reconnect with our literal roots.

Millennials easily spend the most money on groceries when compared to other generations, and a fair amount of that spending goes toward organic food purchases. This trend makes sense considering that organic brands make a clear effort to appeal to younger consumerss who are just now establishing their food-buying habits and patterns. While many Americans view health as “feeling good inside and out,” that is a mentality that runs deeply throughout the millennial generation in particular, ultimately impacting how they view food and the value of these purchases.

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Interestingly, the biggest growth opportunity for organic brands lies with millennials as they make the decision to become parents. A quarter of millennials currently have children, but it’s estimated that 80 percent of this generation will have kids within the next 15 years. Last year, the importance of buying organic baby foods outranked the importance of buying organic produce in survey data for the first time ever. So, putting two and two together, it’s expected that millennial organic buying habits will stay strong and even increase as they build their own families.

At a time when the future of Whole Foods is in question and we’re uncovering more and more information about the damage nutritionally poor foods are doing to our bodies, it’s a relief to know that, as a collective, we are making truly healthy decisions for ourselves and our future families. Food is at the crux of the “feeling good inside and out” goal, and it seems as though we are really hitting the nail on the head with that one. Go us.