The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Opinion
6 — Wednesday, July 13, 2022

BRANDON COWIT
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

VANESSA KIEFER
Editor in Chief

Breakfast should be dinner, here’s why

T

he 
treasured 
anomaly 
of 
breakfast 
for 
dinner 
has served as the perfect 
occasional 
treat 
for 
American 
families: fluffy stacks of pancakes 
topped with maple syrup and butter, 
an eclectic fruit salad, crispy bacon 
fresh from the sputtering pan and 
eggs just the way you like them, but at 
night. Breakfast for dinner just works, 
concluding the day by satisfying both 
the sweet and savory while allowing 
for rest and relaxation to digest the 
meal afterwards. Now, imagine a 
world where breakfast could always 
be dinner. 
While this proposal may seem 
slightly radical, rearranging the 
meals to place breakfast last would 
not only make more sense logically, 
but would also create a distinct 
tradition that the United States could 
claim as its own — free of colonialist 
roots or problematic pasts. Lunch 
would replace breakfast as the first 
meal of the day, dinner would replace 
lunch, and breakfast would replace 
dinner. But let’s break it down first. 
Lunch in the morning may seem 
counterintuitive, but when placed in 
conjunction with science, it makes 
total sense. Have you ever woken 
up craving something sweet, like a 
big stack of pancakes? The chances 
are low. In reality, our bodies 
crave salty foods after we wake 
up because we sometimes become 
dehydrated during the night’s sleep, 
and our depleted sodium levels — 
an electrolyte that helps to balance 
fluid levels — must be replenished 
for proper hydration. By encouraging 
the intake of sodium, our body is 
encouraging us to refill both our 
sodium supply and our hydration 
levels. Thus, it makes much more 
sense to eat foods traditionally 
associated with lunch for breakfast, 
because it generally consists of 
foods with higher levels of sodium 
content. By doing this, we would 

satisfy our natural craving for salt 
while re-saturating our body with 
the proper sodium content it needs to 
function. 
Moreover, 
the 
claim 
that 
traditional breakfast is the most 
important meal of the day and 
associated 
with 
better 
health 
outcomes hasn’t withstood scrutiny. 
In fact, the primary study upon 
which this claim is based was found 
to be littered with researcher bias, 
the improper use of casual language 
to describe results and misleading 
citations. The study also lacked a 
control group. Essentially, the maxim 
“breakfast is the most important 
meal of the day” with supposed 
health benefits is more correlation 
than causation, a misconception 
that has now been adopted as truth 
by the general public. If we shed 
these untruths, then we can begin to 
properly rearrange the meals to best 
suit our interests.
With lunch as the first meal of the 
day, traditional dinner, or the biggest 
meal of the day for Americans, should 
take the place during conventional 
lunchtime. This is because dietitians 
have actually found that eating the 
biggest meal toward nighttime makes 
it much more difficult to metabolize 
food because our bodies’ “normal, 
natural 
rhythm” 
is 
disrupted. 
Meanwhile, other parts of the world 
like Africa, Southeast Asia and some 
parts of Europe and Latin America 
typically consume heavier meals 
toward the middle of the day to 
refuel from their labor, allowing 
their big lunch to burn off for the rest 
of the day. Patrick Okolo III, chief 
of gastroenterology for Rochester 
Regional Health, explains that “in 
many cultures, people eat heaviest 
in the afternoon, and that translates 
to generally better health” because it 
more closely aligns with our bodies’ 
natural rhythms. Thus, eating dinner 
at lunchtime would benefit our 
digestive systems and our overall 
health. 
What’s more, making traditional 
dinner a lunchtime phenomenon 

would 
create 
other 
expansive 
benefits. In a dinner-as-lunch world, 
you could get dressed up to eat with 
your loved ones when the sun is still 
brightly shining, making for much 
better 
aesthetics 
for 
mealtime. 
Because the rest of the day still 
remains, people could either return 
to work or school fully fueled for the 
leftover day’s work, or return home 
for a nap during the hottest time of 
day, frequently referred to as a siesta. 
These siestas have considerable health 
benefits, including but not limited to 
reducing sleep debt and “boost(ing) 
your 
cognitive 
performance 
for 
up to a few hours after your nap.” 
Essentially, this midday dinner could 
aid the efficiency of workers while 
also creating other numerous health 
benefits. 
With lunch replacing traditional 
breakfast, and with dinner replacing 
traditional lunch, breakfast would 
therefore 
replace 
traditional 
dinner. While I have previously 
dreaded breakfast — a gluttonous, 
carbohydrate-heavy meal that would 
sit disagreeably in my stomach, 
digesting at a glacial pace — eating 
breakfast for dinner would restore 
the magic surrounding the meal. 
Breakfast for dinner would, for one, 
essentially render dessert obsolete 
because of breakfast’s sweet contents, 
satisfying our sweet tooth while 
preventing us from consuming extra 
carbs or sugar afterward. Moreover, 
the malaise or drowsiness typically 
experienced after a sugary and 
carbohydrate-heavy meal could be 
assuaged by the sleep that’s soon to 
follow the meal. Breakfast for dinner 
allows for the flexibility of quick 
and easy meals, like a bowl of your 
favorite cereal, or elaborate meals 
that take more time to make, like a 
full-on breakfast feast. On top of all 
these benefits, breakfast ingredients 
are typically more affordable than 
dinner, allowing for the large portions 
of food that dinner often requires to 
be made without breaking the bank.

QUIN ZAPOLI
Editorial Page Editor

Saving the environment one 
trip at a time

LINDSEY SPENCER
Opinion Columnist

What it’s like being a poor 
student at a wealthy university

LEAH LARSEN
Opinion Columnist

N

ever in my life have I had a 
bigger reality check than 
when I moved from my 
low-income hometown in the Upper 
Peninsula to the ritzy community 
of Ann Arbor. Although I traveled 
extensively around the United States 
as a kid, Iron Mountain was the only 
place I had ever called home up 
until my senior year of high school. 
Even though I saw many places 
while rustically camping with my 
family, I never stayed in those 
places long enough to realize that so 
many people live much differently 
than I did: their beautiful homes, 
luxurious trips, nice food and 
designer products were only a few 
of the things that separated their 
lifestyles from mine. Obviously, I 
knew there were rich people, but I 
did not realize how common it is to 
be wealthier than me and my family.
I have many distinct memories 
from my childhood that — despite 
my perception that they were 

common experiences across the U.S. 
— often make my college friends 
gasp. These memories consist of 
an alarming amount of meth busts, 
unexpected teen pregnancies, violent 
fights and frequent theft. One of my 
good friends from high school once 
told me it was not uncommon for his 
bike to be stolen from his house in 
the early hours of the weekend due 
to his proximity to a bar in the most 
run-down neighborhood in my town. 
The regularity of these crimes made 
me realize the extent to which the 
people in my hometown experience 
income inequality. There seems to be 
no clear correlation between poverty 
and crime but rather between income 
inequality and crime.
While 
income 
inequality 
in 
Michigan is lower than the national 
average, it seems to really shine 
through in this tiny town I call 
home; 
I 
have 
driven 
through 
the neighborhoods littered with 
mansions on Pine Mountain and also 
through the areas where houses are 
very literally falling apart. 

F

or the past week, my dad 
and I have been braving the 
relentless southern heat and 
exploring a local state park. Just a 
mere 15 minutes from our house, it 
feels strange that in the middle of 
such a busy residential area there 
is a refuge for a variety of wildlife 
and fauna, along with about 10 miles 
of hiking trails. We tend to change 
our course each day to keep things 
interesting, but what remains the 
same is how many people have the 
same idea as us. Whether it be 7 a.m. 
or 3 p.m., the crowds always roll in, no 
matter the temperature.
There are almost 7,000 state parks, 
and 423 national parks, located in the 
United States. Both are active tourist 
attractions and vacation destinations 
— just last year, 4.5 million people 
visited Grand Canyon National Park 
in Arizona. Families and individual 
travelers visit national parks from 
across the country and abroad, all with 
the desire to take in the beauty and 
vastness of these federally protected 
areas. As an admirer of the views and 

adventure offered by national parks 
from coast to coast, I hope to check 
each of them off of my bucket list. But, 
for any of us to continue to be able to do 
this, we must take care of them so that 
future generations can experience the 
joys our planet has to offer.
As climate change ravages the 
planet, many politicians, activists 
and average people question how we 
may continue to enjoy the beauties of 
nature while also protecting it from 
further irreversible damage. The 
National Park Service has put together 
a “holistic approach” to tackle the 
various impacts of climate change in 
their parks, with ideas ranging from 
policy advocacy to scenario planning. 
When it comes to individual action, 
it feels as though even the smallest 
efforts make only a minute difference, 
or none at all — steps like using paper 
straws aren’t impactful enough to 
mitigate climate change. Most of the 
work falls to larger corporations, 
starting with taking ownership of the 
ways in which they have contributed 
to global warming, species extinctions 
and the demise of an undisturbed 
environment.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Read more at michigandaily.com

SOPHIA LEHRBAUM
Opinion Columnist

Read more at michigandaily.com

