Back into the future? Senses of family food among millennials experiencing transition to adult life.

Abstract

There is something seemingly awkward when we intend to study family food and related practices in the daily life of young adults. At a first glance, it seems that we are trying to mix two completely different and opposing worlds. On the one hand, family food remembers something from the past, embedded in tradition and made of manual and time-consuming tasks. Contemporary youth, on the contrary, is associated immediately with the future and technology. This is especially true with Generation Y, the millennials or IGen, a range of different expressions broadly used to designate the individuals born between the 1980s and the beginning of the 21st century. This entry briefly explores senses of family food among millennials in Portugal and is based on the preliminary findings from a small-scale, qualitative study. The ultimate goal of our post is to stimulate a lively and creative reflection among the RC06 ISA members across the world on the relations between family and cooking practices.