I’m a Millennial foodie. I love food, food culture, buying new, foreign ingredients and making items like kombucha from scratch.
I subscribe to the magazine Bon Appétit, a magazine that celebrates all the joys of food, dining and cooking.
In their recent culture centered issue, the magazine that once captured all of my love and devotion betrayed me by poking fun at our generation and its obsession with food. I can take a good joke but I’m tired of hearing and reading the same spoof on food-loving Millennials again and again.
Bon Appétit devoted an entire issue of their magazine to current food culture, including a page detailing the highly generic “Anatomy of a Food-Obsessed Millennial.” What looks like an innocent and playful jab at a generation’s food mania turns into an unoriginal, hypocritical review of what the average Millennial foodie spends their grocery money on.
The anatomy chart features a Millennial woman dressed in a floral jumpsuit, holding a tote bag featuring the Serial podcast monogram that is full of the spoils from a trip to the market.
All around this generic female Millennial are examples of her favorite foods items and food habits. For example, one detail states, “Check out her Instagram for #AvocadoToastTuesdays; last week’s had 200 likes”.
Avocado toast — a recent food trend of Millennials — has recently been subject to undue and frankly ridiculous scrutiny. Avocado toast has also been reported on by Bon Appétit January 2015.
Another highly hypocritical point of criticism aimed at this fictional Millennial female is the example that states, “She spent three hours and $45 tracking down cardamom pods and corn flour to make corn cookies — more than it would have cost to buy a dozen at Milk Bar.”
Honestly, if this all-encompassing food-obsessed Millennial woman was trying to find ingredients for a corn cookie recipe, she probably got the recipe from Bon Appétit or a similar source.
I don’t understand why any of this is funny anymore, or why critiques of the fascination Millennials have with food are as ubiquitous as Millennials themselves. Making fun of avocado-loving, kombucha-making, vegan Millennials isn’t enough of a critique.
It doesn’t matter Millennials are obsessed with food production and culture. Millennials are spending 14 times as much money on food as the average middle class family and their spending their money on food that’s produced in ways less harmful to the environment.
Overall, Millennials are spending $96 billion a year on food.
I don’t care if the baby boomer generation thinks we’re food-obsessed and spend too much money on food and dining out. I enjoy the increased interest in global cuisines and the focus on sustainable farming practices from people my age. There’s nothing wrong with eating consciously or pretentiously.
Food is not just food anymore due to all sorts of gene modifications, pesticides and farming practices. People can criticize Millennials and our fascination with food all they want. I’ll be over here enjoying my farm-raised meat and heirloom vegetables.
rcm2@indiana.edu
@RachelCMiller1
