A few weeks ago, Kim Severson at the New York Times wrote about the flagging cereal industry. The article cited a recent study by market research firm Mintel, which found that 40 percent of millennials believe cereal takes too much work to clean up.
Of course, the apocalyptic laziness of millennials would bring the end of sugary breakfast food we all know and love. My generation is so coddled and beyond saving that we've already given up cooking, and now we are collectively killing the cereal industry, robbing the rest of you of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
From there the resulting clickbait practically wrote itself: " Millennials Think Eating Cereal Is Way Too Difficult." "Millennials literally too lazy to eat cereal." "Millennials are too lazy to pour cereal into a bowl, then clean up after themselves." " Millennials don't like cereal because they hate doing dishes." And by far the best: "If young adults are not even up to the job of cleaning a cereal bowl, is it any wonder they want Bernie Sanders as President?" On top of all our other sins, we now admit that even a cursory rinse is a herculean effort.
Set aside the New York Times' odd fixation with anything that so much as rhymes with "millennial." Breakfast remains the most-skipped meal of the day, with half of Americans not consistently eating breakfast, and 12 percent rarely eating breakfast at all. But even though cereal sales have been dipping consistently since the early 2000s, we're still looking at a $10 billion a year industry.
But that's a single point in the Times' story. And besides, it's just one study, and only one of the statistics mentioned in that study. So does it really point to millennials being lazy? "I don't think it's that millennials are lazy," says Amanda Topper, senior food analyst at Mintel. (That would be the company behind the study that started all this.)
She continues: "Consumers are increasingly pressed for time, so for breakfast specifically we're not necessarily sitting down at the breakfast table each day, so when it comes to finding products that are going to satisfy those needs, we need convenient, portable food." She cites the popularity of McDonald's all-day breakfast, or on-the-go sandwiches, or cereal bars as conveniences that are doing just fine "It all ties back to being too busy to have a sit-down breakfast at home, and that's impacting product development across the board," she adds.
Most of the millennial-bashing stories that came out in the wake of the Times' article completely ignore that Topper also says that millennial nostalgia is a major factor in cereal sales—they're just more likely to eat it as a snack than as breakfast. At 82 percent, millennials are more likely than any other age group to say that cereal makes a great snack.
The big issue here isn't that millennials aren't eating cereal, or that they think it's too much work. They aren't eating it for breakfast and they think it takes too much time for breakfast. On top of that, Topper points out that millennials are more concerned than other groups with getting sufficient protein and fiber in the morning, and they aren't likely to see cereal satisfying that need. Millennials are also the most likely age group to say that cereal just gives them a sugar rush in place of actual energy.
And another study written by Topper last year on millennial shopping habits found that they're more health-focused than older generations. "It's definitely a trend across the board in the way that millennials shop for and consume food," she says. "In general, we know that millennials are less likely to buy processed food than older generations, and even more of them are bypassing the center of the store where all of the processed foods are, including cereal."
As everyone who knows their cereal history can tell you, the Baby Boomers were actually the ones who first got hooked on sugary cereal as kids. The industry found a huge boon when the Greatest Generation decided to market to them using cartoon tigers and cereals that were 50 percent sugar by weight—like Sugar Smacks. So instead of blaming the generation that lost its sweet tooth, maybe the onus belongs on the people who first thought that marshmallows for breakfast was a good idea.