Before you load up that holiday party menu with turkey, sausage stuffing, ham and other nonvegetable options, perhaps you’d better reconsider your guest list—particularly if a lot of millennials are coming to dinner.

And that’s a good thing.

The Huffington Post reported that millennials are eating more vegetables than their age group ate 10 years ago. According to a new analysis from market research firm NPD Group, consumers under the age of 40 are eating 52 percent more fresh vegetables and 59 percent more frozen vegetables than they were a decade ago.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that boomers, 60 years old and older, are eating 30 percent less fresh vegetables, as well as 4 percent less frozen vegetables, over the same time frame.

So why should employers care?

If they offer—or plan to offer—a wellness program at work, and/or if they’re concerned about obesity as a cause of rising health care premiums, they should review their options to capitalize on millennials’ apparent preference for fresh foods, and look for ways to turn the attention of boomers away from processed foods.

A 2015 study from the University of Minnesota found that focusing on nutrition at work really did have an impact on younger workers’ obesity—or lack thereof.

Among companies that focused on employee nutrition, 17 percent of young workers were obese, whereas at companies that did nothing to address nutrition issues had a 24 percent obesity rate among young workers.

Of course there were other factors involved that were beyond employers’ control, such as whether a fast-food joint was located nearby, whether employees went home for lunch and “soda availability.”

If simply offering better nutrition at work doesn’t work on boomers, another way to approach the matter for that age group could be by wallet: boomers consider their health care benefits the most important of workplace benefits, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Now that they’ve reached the age where they actually use health benefits, they’re more concerned with staying healthy so that they won’t go broke from medical bills in retirement.

Pointing out how much health care could cost them in retirement could go a long way toward getting boomers to emulate their younger colleagues—at least when it comes to diet.

Instant Insights /

Why employers should care whether millennials eat veggies

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