A good rant.
Food culture is more in our faces than it’s ever been. What was once confined to recipe books and the occasional TV show has spread across the digitised world. YouTube chefs are a thing, food blogs are an industry and Instagram foodies multiply by the day, each offering their own version of impossibly seductive food porn, mostly involving avocados. Each of these trends was largely created – and is largely pursued – by the millennial generation, which is generally defined as people aged between 16 and 34.
So why do so many of these people shy away from cooking, despite having an apparent passion for food? According to research by the Co-op group, a quarter of millennials have no interest in cooking, and another 16 per cent view it only as a “means to an end”, rather than something they enjoy. For a generation so obsessed with taking pictures of what’s on their plate, that’s worrying.
I’m a millennial and I love cooking. You may be one yourself, reading this and thinking, “I cook all the time, so do my friends, what are you on about?” Yet I’m frequently staggered by how many of my contemporaries profess they can’t cook. These are intelligent people with challenging careers, yet they claim making a basic meal is beyond them.