Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, November 18, 2019

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SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

Beware the brunch-industrial complex

KAAVYA RAMACHANDHRAN | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT KAAVYAR@UMICH.EDU

T

his school year marks 
the dawn of a new 
era with the potential 
to 
redefine 
the 
future 
of 
brunch. 
Every 
current 
college 
student 
who enrolled right 
after 
graduating 
high 
school 
was 
likely 
born 
after 
1996, 
meaning 
members of Gen Z 
— 
not 
millennials 
— dominate college 
campuses. 
We 
now have an opportunity to 
evaluate millennial fads and 
redefine our own stereotypes. 
First 
on 
the 
list: 
bougie 
brunches.
I know this is controversial; 
lots of people like brunch! But 
part of that is because we are 
so used to looking up to the 
millennials among us and 
revering the culture they have 
created. Even though they 
are now gone from campus, I 
worry our generation seems to 
have caught the brunch fever. 
When I voice my anti-brunch 
sentiments, my friends tell 
me I should retire from the 
hot takes industry, that I am 
hating on good things and 
that I am just no fun.
But I am by no means the 
first person to make this claim 
— many fun people have made 
it before. During the peak of 
anti-millennial hatred in the 
mid-2010’s, 
headlines 
like 
“Brunch is for Jerks,” “Why 
brunch is stupid” and “The 
Complete Guide to Hating 
Brunch” peppered the news. 
However, 
vehement 
anti-
brunch 
sentiments 
have 
receded from the headlines. 
As the first wave of Gen Zers 
graduate college and join 
the traditional brunch-going 
demographic — young, urban 
professionals — we need to 
reignite 
the 
anti-brunch 
fervor. 
The first reason to be wary 
of brunch is that it is a made-
up genre of food. The food 
we consume at brunch is 
either breakfast food (eggs, 
potatoes, 
pancakes, 
etc.) 
or lunch food (sandwiches, 
salads, grain bowls, etc.). 
The brunch food category is 
fully fabricated, likely by the 

restaurant industry to allow 
us to justify spending money 
on food at any time of the day.
However, 
restaurants 
have 
more 
incentive 
than just getting 
people 
to 
eat 
more. They make 
a killing because 
they 
can 
serve 
breakfast 
food 
on lunch prices. 
The 
materials 
used 
to 
make 
breakfast 
food 
— eggs, potatoes and flour 
— are cheap, yet restaurants 
can get away with charging 
ludicrous prices for them. 
There 
is 
even 
an 
advice 
column recommending that 
struggling restaurants that 
need to increase profits start 
serving brunch. Unless your 
pancakes are infused with 
saffron or truffle mushrooms, 
there is no reason to be 
paying $17 for your mid-

morning meal. And eating 
brunch instead of breakfast 
and lunch will not decrease 
the amount of food you eat 
over the course of the day, so 
it is not actually a cost saving 
mechanism, it just changes 
the schedule. 
Part of my frustration is 
not with brunch but more 
with 
brunch 
culture. 
We 
should not wait in excessively 
long lines to pay exorbitant 
prices for foods that can 
easily be made inexpensively 
at home, and brunch is the 
most prolific manifestation 
of this phenomenon. We used 
to eat brunch in diners. But 
brunch has departed from its 
humble beginnings into an 
increasingly elitist enterprise. 
Across the country, diners 
have declined, especially in 

cities; in New York City, 60 
percent of diners have closed 
over the last 25 years. Instead 
of diners, brunch has become 
fancy. It now often serves 
as an indicator of higher 
socioeconomic 
status, 
and 
the research backs this up. 
The 
geographic 
locations 
where the number of brunch 
restaurants 
are 
expanding 
positively 
correlate 
with 
that population’s disposable 
income 
and 
free 
time, 
demonstrating 
a 
humble 
concept has been co-opted by 
the wealthy. 
Perhaps 
brunch’s 
only 
redeeming quality is that 
it 
liberates 
us 
from 
the 
restrictive confines of what 
we should eat and when. As a 
concept, brunch allows us to 
justify consuming breakfast 
food at any time of the day. 
Similarly, since brunch can be 
consumed any time between 
9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., it 
allows us to chip away at meal 
time constructs that restrict 
when it is socially acceptable 
to have a big meal. 
However, though attractive 
on the surface, brunch subtly 
reinforces those restrictions. 
Instead of creating more meal 
classifications, 
we 
should 
get rid of social constructs 
like 
mealtimes 
and 
fake 
designations about what food 
we should eat when. Why can’t 
I have quinoa for breakfast, 
cereal for dinner and a full 
meal at any time of the day? 
These social constructs are 
not scientifically based and 
are connected to legacies of 
colonial racism.
What 
we 
need 
is 
a 
revitalization of the home-
cooked 
mid-morning 
food 
hangout. When we wake up 
lazily and want to debrief the 
night with friends, instead of 
waiting in line for mediocre, 
overpriced 
breakfast 
food 
where the lighting is always 
a little too bright, we should 
slumber over to a comforting 
living room and make our 
own eggs and waffles. 
Except shameless plug for 
Frank’s: Everyone should get 
their “Famous French Toast.”

Solomon Medintz can be reached 

at smedintz@umich.edu.

We need to 
reignite the anti-
brunch fervor

SAMANTHA SZUHAJ | COLUMN

T

here is a sense of wonder 
that accompanies the 
changing of seasons for 
me. Having grown 
up 
in 
northern 
California, 
where 
it is eternally 65 
degrees and slightly 
overcast, 
fall 
in 
Michigan 
was 
cinematic the first 
time I experienced 
it, and it still takes 
me 
aback 
when 
I 
walk 
through 
campus. Seeing the 
bright hues of trees dotting 
the sides of the streets and 
highways around Ann Arbor 
brings me nothing but joy 
and warmth. There is an 
inherent sense of festivity 
that accompanies the season 
and an authenticity that the 
West Coast landscape of my 
upbringing lacks.
The 
autumn 
of 
my 
freshman year also brought 
the realization that I was 
far from home. Despite the 
whirlwind of commotion that 
constituted the beginning 
of my first year, I distinctly 
remember the first cold day. 
I had come to school with 
a single sweater and coat, 
blissfully unaware as to how 
quickly the relief from the 
summer heat quickly became 
the frigid nature of fall and 
winter. 
I 
remember 
my 
awe quickly morphing into 
homesickness, a longing for 
warmth and a familiar face 
in the sea of undergraduate 
students. 
I know I am not alone in 
this feeling — I still find 
myself feeling this way. 
As my third year in Ann 
Arbor 
continues 
on, 
my 
perspective 
has 
slightly 
shifted. Fall is still this 
magical 
time 
in 
which 
nature really is in its prime. 
The leaves still carpet the 
grass and sidewalks, people 

come and go in costumes 
and venture to cider mills on 
the weekends. But now, fall 
is not something 
that 
makes 
me 
long 
for 
home 
(except for maybe 
the 
California 
weather), but just 
a 
reminder 
of 
how I am living a 
new 
experience, 
independent 
of 
what I had been 
accustomed to for 
so long. With the 
comings and goings of the 
seasons every year, personal 
change 
has 
followed. 
Friends, activities, academic 
interests, 
experiences, 
the type of music I like at 
the time or a new snack 
food obsession — time has 
brought these changes, big 
and small, over time.

Three years ago, I stood 
in the rain, lost on my 
way 
to 
class, 
terrified 
of how to make my way 
as a student here at the 
University 
of 
Michigan, 
knowing little about what 
I wanted to do and having 
few familiar faces. I called 
my 
mom, 
overwhelmed 
with this sense of panicked 
uncertainty. 
I 
explained 
what was happening, and 
after 
patiently 
listening, 
she gave me a single piece of 
advice: Find something that 
reminds you of home. 

Life in its stages brings 
in the new, for the good 
and 
the 
bad. 
Sometimes 
we can predict it, like the 
changing of seasons, and 
other times we cannot, like 
getting caught in the rain on 
a windy fall day. It is what 
we do with that change and 
how we embrace it moving 
forward 
that 
makes 
the 
largest impact on our lives. 
As students, our lives are 
constantly 
bringing 
the 
new 
into 
our 
somewhat 
established 
routines 
and 
livelihoods. My past self 
found this difficult, and at 
times I still find it difficult. 
But the key to how I have 
managed to deal with the 
newness, homesickness and 
distance is to find familiar 
things from home and work 
them into my life wherever 
I find myself — eating food 
that 
reminds 
me 
of 
my 
family’s cooking, watching 
my 
hometown 
sports 
teams play or listening to 
music that I connect to my 
childhood. Carrying a bit of 
the old into the new offers 
a sense of security and 
something I can fall back on. 
After talking to my mom 
on that rainy day, I rushed 
home and got a big bowl of 
vegetable soup, something 
I would always eat on rare 
rainy days as a kid. It was a 
temporary fix, but it offered 
a greater lesson as to the 
importance of incorporating 
the old into the new. So, as 
we all embrace fall and the 
change 
that 
comes 
with 
it, remember to seek out 
the old and comfortable as 
things seem unfamiliar or 
uncertain. 
Carry 
yourself 
through with the familiar, 
as I plan to do — starting 
with a big bowl of soup.

Samantha Szuhaj can be reached 

at szuhajs@umich.edu.

A good day for soup

SAMANTHA
SZUHAJ

Life in its stages 
brings in the new, 
for the good and 
the bad

SOLOMON
MEDINTZ

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