Millennials Are Too Lazy to Eat Cereal for Breakfast

Cooking can be a challenge for some people. You need money, time, and skills in the kitchen to put a meal on the table. Don’t have those three things? You can always go out to eat at a restaurant, order in, or pick up something easy at the grocery store. It’s always nice to have a couple cans of soup, or some cereal around when you don’t have time to make something from scratch.

But apparently, for millennials, the simple act of dumping cereal in a bowl and pouring milk on top has become problematic.

Cereal sales are declining. According to The New York Times, cereal sales have dipped from $13.9 billion in 2000 to about $10 billion last year. As we noted a couple years ago, the decline in cereal sales might be in part due to the trend of carb-free and gluten-free items. But it also has to do with the convenience factor. More people are grabbing hand-held breakfast items like breakfast sandwiches and yogurt instead.

None of this is more obvious than when you look at the millennial demographic. According to The New York Times, millennials think eating cereal for breakfast is just too much work. With yogurt, for example, you don’t have to clean up after yourself if you simply eat it out of an individual tub.

“Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.”

But all is not lost for cereal — or at least not yet. While millennials might not view cereal as a breakfast option as much as the generation before them did, there is still hope to use it as an ingredient in other food trends. Take a quick look on Pinterest and you’ll see various ways of using cereal in cookies, or as a topping for French toast or casseroles. This might not necessarily change the actual sale numbers for now, but it could help cereal stay cool to a younger demographic.

→ Read More: Cereal, a Taste of Nostalgia, Looks for Its Next Chapter via The New York Times