We’re just college students, right? We love food, sure, but did you know we’re single-handedly changing the entire food industry?
Nope, that’s not just dramatic BS. It’s for reals.
We wanted more transparency in our food, we wanted to see where our food came from and what it was, we wanted to support smaller companies rather than massive food corporations.
The result? The market share of the top 25 US food and beverage companies dropped $18 million in the last 5 years.
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We’re different from the college students of the past. Yes, we still eat crappy chain pizza at 2 am when we’re drunk. Yes, we still buy boxed mac ‘n cheese because sometimes you need that quick, cheesy goodness. But we also drink fresh-pressed juice, cold brew and kombucha; we shop at farmers’ markets and buy organic and local.
You may call that basic, betchy, bougie, whatever you want, but it’s the truth.
And you can see the power we have — we asked for organic, the industry responded. We asked for less processing, the industry responded. We asked for gluten free, the industry responded.
Demand drives supply; we demanded, and they had no choice but to supply.
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If you don’t believe me, look at how Chipotle announced they were going GMO-free, how McDonald’s added a kale salad to their menu (hello, gross), and how Chick-fil-A then followed suit.
And so now we see the movement towards sustainability, towards actually caring about our food and where it comes from. It goes beyond our kale obsession and it should go beyond that kale obsession.
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As millennials, we should be aware of what we’re putting into our bodies. No, it’s not being snobby about our food. It’s understanding the whole process of farm to table and taking into account all the people in between. It’s seeing that there are problems at every stage and it’s trying to minimize all those stages.
We should be caring about fast food, but not the kind you get from McDonald’s, the kind that still has dirt on it and is still slightly warm from the sun.
We have changed the food industry, we are changing the food industry, we will continue to change the food industry.
We’re the generation of the future, and we have the power to impact the future. Our future. So let’s do just that.
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