Are millennials obsessed with food? Millennial author Eve Turow Paul certainly thinks so.

“We are the first young generation ever to spend our discretionary income on food,” she says. “And it makes no practical sense—none—that we should be spending our money on something ephemeral when we can’t afford to get married, we can’t afford to buy houses, we can’t afford even just to pay rent.”

Curious, Turow Paul, a writer and millennial brand advisor, spent nearly four years interviewing leaders in the food world to figure out why the young people who make up the millennial generation (defined by some as having been born between 1982 and 2004) spend so much mental energy looking at photographs of other people’s lunch.

This past July, she self-published