Few things are as painless to prepare as cereal. The food has thrived over the decades, at least in part, because of this very quality: Its convenience.

And yet, for today’s youth, it seems cereal isn’t easy enough.

On Monday, the New York Times published a story about the breakfast favourite, and the most disconcerting part was this:

“Almost 40 per cent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.”

The industry, the piece explained, is struggling — sales have tumbled by almost 30 per cent over the past 15 years, and the future remains uncertain.

The reasons are largely what one would expect: Many people are eating breakfast away from the home, choosing breakfast sandwiches and yogurt instead of more traditional morning staples. Many others, meanwhile, don’t eat breakfast at all.

But there is another thing happening, which should scare cereal makers: A large contingent of millennials isn’t interested in breakfast cereal because eating it means using a bowl, and bowls don’t clean themselves (or get tossed in the garbage). Bowls, kids these days groan, have to be cleaned.

Cereal isn’t the only food suffering from a trend toward laziness. Coffee has suffered a similar fate. Despite talk of a third wave of coffee, which values quality above all else, and basks in artisanal rather than effortless methods of preparation, convenience is still coveted above all else.

“Convenience is the one thing that’s really changing trends these days,” Howard Telford, an industry analyst at market research firm Euromonitor, said last year.

Ground coffee isn’t just outpacing whole bean coffee — it’s increasing its lead, each and every year. The rise of coffee pods, which come preground and produce a cup of brown caffeinated water with the push of a button, is further evidence of the desire for convenience.

The popularity of delivery, meanwhile, speaks to the same tendency toward convenience. Roughly 15 per cent of U.S. restaurant meals are delivered today, according to data from Technomic. Among millennials the percentage is higher: more like 20 per cent.

The reason why convenience is increasingly important isn’t merely because people are lazy — many actually need it.

Families are working more than ever. The less time there is to prepare food or sit down at restaurants, the more convenience hovers over decisions about food.

But there is something different about the backlash against cereal bowls, something more foundational that seems to speak to a greater truth about American households today.

A 2014 U.S. survey, conducted by Braun Research, found that 82 per cent of parents said they were asked to do chores as children. But when they were asked if they required their children to do chores, only 28 per cent of them said yes.

Is a generational shift in how families raise their kids turning even the most mundane of responsibilities, like doing the dishes, into unthinkable nuisances?

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Ultimately, cereal makers will settle on a strategy for reversing the industry’s downward trend. Among the likeliest routes are embracing the fact that many people are eating the food at times other than breakfast, often as a snack, channelling the food’s nostalgic quality, which helped buoy the industry for years, and shifting to portable containers, which nearly half of millennials prefer, according to Mintel.

No matter the result, America’s youth might have to reckon with the consequences of an age in which it’s no longer worth eating a food when it means having to clean a plate. Maybe Soylent is the future after all.