I'm 23 as well and I think "growing up" with the internet (although I didn't really start using it regularly until high school) has had the biggest effect on how I decide what to feed my animals. Since I've always been interested in animals it's natural that I would start combing the internet for information about our pets once I started hearing things here and there. I wouldn't always find out about things from the internet originally, but I'd always follow up with my own online research whenever I heard something about animal welfare that was new to me.
I'm a science-y person so I've always rolled my eyes at "natural" and "organic" labels, but there is a trend that food with the healthiest ingredients tend to be among those same brands, although not all of those top brands have great ingredients! So I always check ingredient lists and I have several spreadsheets just for my cat's food. I've also talked my parents into a different brand of food for their dogs, and I turned them on to Chewy.com so my mom doesn't have to worry about going to the store and lifting heavy bags of food and she loves it.
I think the article is right about millenials being less likely to be thinking about having kids and buying a house, mostly because they don't have the money for it, so they focus on their animals instead. No matter how much we spend on food, our pets are still going to be cheaper than human children. You don't need to start saving for your cat's college tuition as soon as their born! I used to work with a couple at the humane society who always said because they didn't have children they had all this extra money to spend on their cats, and I remember thinking, wow, that sounds great! Of course plenty of people my age very much want and are planning on having children soon, but I think many of us are embracing the idea that we don't have to have children in the near future or maybe ever.
I'm a science-y person so I've always rolled my eyes at "natural" and "organic" labels, but there is a trend that food with the healthiest ingredients tend to be among those same brands, although not all of those top brands have great ingredients! So I always check ingredient lists and I have several spreadsheets just for my cat's food. I've also talked my parents into a different brand of food for their dogs, and I turned them on to Chewy.com so my mom doesn't have to worry about going to the store and lifting heavy bags of food and she loves it.
I think the article is right about millenials being less likely to be thinking about having kids and buying a house, mostly because they don't have the money for it, so they focus on their animals instead. No matter how much we spend on food, our pets are still going to be cheaper than human children. You don't need to start saving for your cat's college tuition as soon as their born! I used to work with a couple at the humane society who always said because they didn't have children they had all this extra money to spend on their cats, and I remember thinking, wow, that sounds great! Of course plenty of people my age very much want and are planning on having children soon, but I think many of us are embracing the idea that we don't have to have children in the near future or maybe ever.
