Shutterstock/Brent Hofacker Thanksgiving dinners are getting smaller.
- Millennials apparently want smaller turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner, and it's driving down demand for larger birds, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
- Industry experts say this is because millennials want to cut down on waste and be more socially responsible.
- The average US household has shrunk in the past few decades, which makes smaller birds a more suitable choice.
Millennials are apparently bringing more modesty to the dinner table this Thanksgiving.
According to a report from Bloomberg, this generation, which has been deemed more environmentally conscious and socially responsible than its predecessors, is growing tired of massive, 30-pound turkey dinners and is opting for smaller birds at Thanksgiving, in an effort to cut down on waste and avoid animal cruelty.
Inventories of whole hens, which are smaller than males, are down 8.3% from a year ago, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the US Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, inventory of males, the larger bird, are up 6.9%.
"People are starting to understand it's not natural to grow turkeys up to 30 pounds," Ariane Daguin, co-founder and owner of D'Artagnan LLC, a wholesale and e-commerce food company in Union, New Jersey, told Bloomberg. "In general, that means they were penned up with no room to move around, and that's why they're fat like that."
As a result, food sellers are starting to advertise smaller turkeys for this year's Thanksgiving feasts.
HelloFresh, for example, is selling a Thanksgiving meal kit for eight to 10 guests, which contains either a 12- or 14-pound turkey.
According to Bloomberg, this trend is also being driven by there being fewer mouths to feed as the size of US households shrinks.
In 2017, 62% of American households had just one or two people, compared with 41% in 1960, according to data from the US Census Bureau. Moreover, as millennials are waiting longer to get married, the number of single-person homes is also on the rise.
But those that are feeding a family or a group likely want to avoid waste. Around 200 million pounds of turkey are thrown away during Thanksgiving week each year, Bloomberg wrote, citing data from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
This plays into a general trend of millennials wanting to be more socially conscious consumers, swapping fast-fashion shopping for thrift stores and donating more clothing to be resold.
