It’s almost noon, but the line for bagels, scrambled eggs, fresh-squeezed orange juice and other breakfast staples at Alpine Bagels is 20 students deep.
Students could cut their wait time dramatically if they could get up at a time when breakfast is traditionally served, Alpine employees suggested.
“People order breakfast meals all day, but more people come at lunch than at breakfast,” Alpine employee Brittany Spain said.
Breakfast is billed as the most important meal of the day. But after a long night of hitting the books, many Duke students find that they simply cannot rouse themselves in time for the morning meal. Flocking to breakfast spots like Alpine en masse in the afternoon, these students often eat their first meals of the day when they should be having lunch.
Director of Dining Services Jim Wulforst said he does not have any statistics on how traffic at campus eateries varies throughout the day, but he noted that breakfast is “a key part of our overall business.”
Denise Comer, director of the First-Year Writing Program, said she suspects that most of her students skip breakfast, judging by the dark circles under their eyes.
“Anecdotally, Duke students sleep late and get up late,” Comer said. “They’re not up during breakfast.”
Research Associate Nathan Hensley noted that many students enter his class clutching cups of coffee. With such busy schedules, he understands why students do not have time to grab a lot to eat in the morning, if anything at all.
“I can see how breakfast would slip down the list of priorities,” Hensley said.
When time management fails, students find themselves skipping breakfast for any number of reasons.
Senior Ginny Laub said that when faced with a choice between eating breakfast or sleeping in, there is little contest.
“I’d rather sleep,” she said.
For freshmen who must travel to West Campus for class, breakfast can get lost in the shuffle.
“Going from campus to campus [for class] makes it hard to get to the Marketplace,” freshman Evan Schwartz said.
Freshman Julie Wangombe said she usually prioritizes getting to class on time over having a solid meal in the morning. But Student Health Nutritionist Toni Apadula said this strategy could backfire—studies show that students who eat breakfast perform better in the classroom.
The nature of the first-year dining plan may also encourage students to skip out on breakfast. Freshman Caroline Gundersen said the lunch credit students receive if they skip breakfast motivates them to wait later to have their first meal of the day.
English professor Tom Ferraro said things were different when he was a college student. He and his friends went to bed between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. and never had trouble waking up in time for the “best classically American meal.” Ferraro noted that gathering for a meal in the morning created opportunities for him and his peers to have an interaction that was both social and intellectual.
But since his days as a student, Ferraro has observed a demographic shift toward pulling all-nighters and skipping breakfast.
“I’m nostalgic about three set meals,” he said. “I don’t mean to preach, but you need to eat.... We’ve all known this since high school.”
There are some students who agree with Ferraro about the importance of breakfast.
“If I don’t eat, I’m kind of dying,” Schwartz said.
Apadula added that studies show that people who skip breakfast tend to eat more later in the day and consume more calories overall than they would have if they had started their day the right way. Hannah Terry, a master’s student in the Divinity School, said this observation has rung true in her own life.
“If I don’t eat breakfast, I eat junk the rest of the day,” she said.
If they cannot find the time to trek to a campus eatery, some students said they will have a quick snack in their rooms before heading off to class.
Apadula said this is a “useful compromise,” so long as students have a proper breakfast as soon as possible.
“Students should be sure to get something more substantial within a few hours,” she said. “Think of skipping breakfast like asking your car to run on an empty tank of gas—food is your fuel.”
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