Cooking-free Gen Z predicted to overturn food shopping by 2050

Horticulture growers are wrapping their brains around producing fruit and vegetables for future consumers micro-dosing on food and never cooking. Over the next 25 years Generation’s Z’s 16-year-olds will be the main shoppers and the way they have grown up will reshape food eating and buying habits. Relying on digital influencers for food nutrition advice, dining during screen time and documenting every bowl of ramen is set to have a bearing on their food selection. Experts gave growers a glimpse of future consumer changes at Horticulture NZ’s conference attended by 800 people in Wellington this week. Food and beverage analyst Nicola O’Rourke said food consumption would look completely different because of digital influences and the desire for health, longevity and nutritionally rich food. “We are about to embark on the biggest generational shift in food from where it is today.’’ As adults, Gen Z would have no attachment to the land, let alone an orchard. Rather, they would want to know what was in their food, what it did and whether the science stacked up. A generation growing up with ultra-processed food had no boundaries between natural and manufactured food as long as it was clean, functional and honest. To them fibre comes from beverages and protein from snack bars and smoothies. Generation Z’s 16-year-olds would be 40 by 2050 and make up 25% of the world’s population. They would have surpassed Gen X as the highest spending generation, becoming one of the dominant economic food forces shaping food systems and choices worldwide, she said. “But the scary thing is their values around food are forming today, right now — clean ingredients, planetary health, personalised wellness. All of these things will define the entire food system of that era.’’ Food experiences were based on platforms such as Tik Tok and Snapchat, outside of shopping aisles and orchards. “Many of them have never and will never cook. Three meals a day simply doesn’t exist. Many of them are micro-dosing food according to their moods and desires. Today, scarily, the influencer is often the nutritionalist for this generation.’’ They would have eaten alone, in bedrooms and in front of screens, more than any previous generation, and taken weekly appetite suppressants where food was optional. “The medicine cabinet and the pantry are quietly emerging into one.’’ Today about 25% of US adults and more than 60 million adults globally are regularly on some form of appetite suppressant. More than a third of children are having supplements for dietary needs, while 44% of adults are on smart devices tracking their health. Ms O’Rourke said longevity and quality of life would be at the front of food choices with benefits clinically backed. She said this was an opportunity for New Zealand growers and farmers to capitalise on clean and nutrient-rich food demand as one of the world’s quality food producers. AI platforms and tools used already to serve up food choices spelt the end of shoppers reading food labels in shopping aisles. Australia’s The Fruit Nerd content creator Thanh Truong said social media was no longer just a platform to sell food products as it was also the licence to operate and have control of the producer story. Corporates had a smaller profile on social media than individuals because of public distrust, he said. “The way we get around that as industries and farming businesses is to show up and show our faces.’’ Starting off as a national fruit buyer for Coles supermarkets, he has become an author and his educational content on fruit and vegetables has attracted 150 million views on social platforms. He said consumers seeking transparency wanted to hear that from a person, including social media content responding to an environmental or food issue. “Our immediate response is to stay quiet, people will forget about it in two or three weeks and wait for the media cycle to continue. That simply does not work in 2026 because if the only content or footage consumers see is negative that’s the public opinion they get.’’ He said Chilean cherry growers found out the cost of being silent when a US$3 billion ($NZ5.2b) a year industry in exports to China fell rapidly after a viral video showed black spots on cherries in 2024. The next year they responded with a food safety campaign from picking the fruit to it arriving in China. Planetary Accounting Network founder Kate Meyer said consumers seeking hard evidence expected environmental sustainability in the future. “How do we know? Because many of those future consumers are already here today. This year’s surveys are showing more than 50% of New Zealanders will reject products on environmental grounds and 75% will change products.’’ She has developed a Planetary Accounting framework with environmental labels — similar to nutritional facts for food — which disclose a product’s impact in an easy way for consumers to understand. Horticulture NZ paid for flights and accommodation to the conference.

Cooking-free Gen Z predicted to overturn food shopping by 2050

New life among the vines for old library

Heavy snow, severe gales on way for parts of South Is

Beds angled in ED corridors at Christchurch Hospital; plans to pitch tents amid winter surge

Inside Japan's shopping mall disaster

Toasting a hospitality icon