As you know I applied for the Cook the Farm program in Sicily for 2018.  I read an interesting article this morning in the Wall Street Journal regarding cooking and the current attitudes towards it.  It actually didn’t surprise me, but it is still sad that so many people have lost touch with actually cooking their food.  This is one of the reasons I want to attend the Cook the Farm program.  I think that more people need to learn to appreciate their food and where it comes from.

Just a few facts from the article:

The trend is true across age groups, but is strongest among millennials, the nation’s largest demographic group. About 42% of millennials’ monthly food budget is spent on food prepared outside the home, more than any other generation, according to a survey of 1,500 U.S. consumers last year by Acosta. Millennials spent an average of $202 a month on food prepared outside the home last year, up from an average of $159 in 2015.

Baby boomers, who don’t often cook for large households, are also turning to prepared foods. Joan Shuman, a 68-year-old retired federal government employee in Eatontown, N.J., said she frequently buys prepared salads from Wegmans Food Markets Inc. to go along with her dinner.

The rise of dual-income and single-parent households too busy to cook has also fueled the trend. In today’s on-the-go culture in which people feel so pressed for time they rarely leave their desks for lunch anymore, consumers are increasingly grabbing small bites. “What we’ve uncovered is round-the-clock snacking,” Taco Bell Chief Executive Brian Niccol said in a recent interview.