I lay in my bed under a pile of blankets. “So now you have meals ready for the whole week,” a chipper voice blared at me from my phone. I was watching a TikTok influencer go through her detailed meal prep routine. She had suggested that it was accessible for people with little time on their hands, but I was doubtful that I would even be able to find most of the ingredients that she had used at the Target on State Street. I sighed and leaned back on my pillows. For the past few days, I had heated up microwave meals and it was looking like I was going to have to dig through my freezer for the fifth night in a row in hopes that there would be something I could salvage. I technically had some pasta in my pantry and the ingredients to make a simple tomato sauce, but I had taken an exam that day and I was drained of energy. I watched the time tick past and when it was late enough that boiling water and pasta sauce was no longer feasible, I got out of bed to heat up a microwave meal. By lying in my bed for as long as possible, I was hoping to assuage the guilt of failing to use the somewhat fresh produce I had purchased a week ago. When I had bought tomatoes, onions, garlic and other ingredients, I had high hopes that I would be able to make home-cooked meals; but, as usual, as the week passed I ultimately ended up making something in the microwave and calling it a night. Now, the produce I had bought sat untouched in my fridge — a few days away from spoiling.
When I had decided to move off campus for my sophomore year, my friends and I were thrilled at the prospect of being able to cook for ourselves. I had grown tired of the dining hall meals, especially since I am dairy-free and a pescatarian. Oftentimes, the only dining hall station with viable dinner options was 24 Carrots. While I didn’t dislike the food, the meals were often composed of the same primary ingredients: quinoa, spinach, potatoes. I missed the variety of the dinners that I had eaten at home.
In speaking with rising Public Health junior Bhaavna Yalavarthi, I learned that she was more apprehensive than I had been about cooking meals for herself for the first time.
“It takes a lot of time and not having a lot of experience cooking it was a little scary,” she said. However, she was certainly excited to no longer depend on dorm food for every meal.
Dining hall food, although a convenient option, can cease to be appealing after a while. So, when I moved into my new apartment off campus, I fully expected that I would enjoy experimenting with new ingredients and trying new recipes every night.
However, after only about a month in the apartment, when schoolwork and club commitments began to pick up, I found myself resorting to the microwave. I didn’t have the time to chop a clove of garlic or boil a pot of water. I felt especially guilty about choosing to heat up meals in the microwave because growing up, I had family dinners every night. My mom or dad would cook a meal, often with high-quality ingredients and seasoning, and while eating these home-cooked meals, we would discuss our days. Now, when I use the microwave, not only am I reminded of my choice to forgo fresh ingredients, but I feel a stab of longing for family dinners. When I lived in the dorms, I would go down to the dining hall with a group of friends and we would eat together. Living off-campus, however, my roommates and I were all on different schedules. Since the dining hall was not an option — no one had a meal plan — everyone would resort to eating at their own times. Dinner had lost the communal feel that I had long associated with it. I didn’t want to spend an hour alone in the kitchen preparing a meal that I would ultimately eat alone at our small counter. Slowly, I began to find myself spending as little time in the kitchen as possible in order to avoid feeling guilt and sadness about cooking and what it had once meant to me.
These negative feelings in the kitchen were exacerbated by social media. My TikTok For You page was filled with cooking videos, and my Instagram feed was flooded with pictures of tables laden with elaborate spreads. Many of the TikTok videos were specifically targeted at people seemingly in my situation — those with little time and energy on their hands. According to these influencers, it was still possible to enjoy fresh meals even if you only had 20 minutes. These videos caused me an immense amount of stress because they continually broadcast the message that eating microwave meals was something to be avoided, and even looked down upon.
I decided that I would try to make more of an effort and saved TikTok after TikTok of meals that looked good and seemed potentially easy enough to make. However, the Target on State Street was the closest place on campus that had fresh produce. I didn’t have a car so regularly going to grocery stores off campus was not an option. Yet, most of the times when I would make the trip with the help of a car-owning friend, the produce would either be completely gone or picked over. The produce was also oftentimes more expensive than I anticipated, soI would cut out certain ingredients from recipes in order to be more cost-efficient. Without all, or some, of the ingredients that I needed, I allowed myself to give up on my plans to recreate a certain TikTok meal. Many of the TikToks that I watched often featured influencers using high-tech equipment like air fryers and Nutribullet blenders. These and other high-tech kitchen appliances allowed them to chop, mince and dice a variety of different ingredients perfectly in minimal time. I was relegated to using dull knives and a cutting board that slipped around every time I tried to chop on it. Cutting a single onion would take me the same amount of time it took these content creators to prep all of their 10 different ingredients. The many TikTok videos marketing easy and accessible cooking plans for college students did not in fact seem accessible to me.
When I asked Yalavarthi about social media’s influence on her life and time in the kitchen, she said that because she did not have TikTok, she didn’t feel that she was as impacted by social media expectations. Without the app, she hadn’t felt the same pressure that I had felt to create meals that were magazine worthy. Yalavarthi expressed enthusiasm about the Trader Joe’s frozen meals she would make and didn’t seem concerned if she microwaved more dinners in a week than she cooked. Clearly, the pressure that I felt to produce beautiful meals came as a result of social media, but the memories of my family dinners also haunted me. Knowing that I was missing out on eating with others and enjoying good quality food made it even more difficult to heat up a frozen meal. But the many TikTok videos I watched were specifically damaging because they had eradicated the excitement I had initially had about having access to a kitchen.
The expectations and standards social media presents for college students goes beyond the kitchen. TikTok is filled with videos of students filming “a day in the life of the college student.” Often these videos feature creators waking up around 7 a.m. and include a day jam packed with classes, studying, ordering coffees, exercising and having fun with friends. The comments under these videos, however, reveal that many people — those who these videos claim to be representing — don’t feel any sort of affiliation with this type of schedule. Instead, the comments suggest that often students sleep until noon and might not make it to the gym for days at a time. Other TikToks feature spotless dorm rooms decorated with expensive furniture and bedding. These types of videos never impacted me too much, because when my room had piles of clothes on the floor, or if I didn’t make it to a coffee study session with my friends, I didn’t feel bad about myself. I didn’t compare myself to the creators on TikTok whose rooms never looked like mine — I wasn’t even thinking about them. I didn’t connect to these videos because I had never been overly interested in room decor or packing my schedule with endless activities. I was content to let a few days pass by where all I did was read, and I didn’t mind if clothes piled up in my room as long as I eventually washed them.
Because of the disconnect that I felt watching those types of videos, I didn’t see how cooking and meal prep videos were influencing me. I didn’t realize that in the back of my mind after every microwave meal, I actually was comparing myself to creators who wouldn’t dare to use their own microwaves. My interest in cooking made it harder to block out these videos.
Growing up, I would study in the kitchen. I would risk my laptop being splashed with oil in order to smell sizzling garlic, and I would eagerly watch my mom take muffins out of the oven. When I was in the kitchen, I felt comfortable and safe. Even if I wasn’t the one cooking, it was a space that I loved being in. At college, the kitchen didn’t exist in this way for me anymore. These TikTok videos seemed like something to hold onto, in order to still feel connected to cooking. TikTok offered an online community that was centered around something that I loved and cared about. I wanted to feel like a part of this community, but in order to succeed in this, it also felt like I had to change how I approached cooking. Before actually cooking as a college student, I felt confident that my skills and love of home-cooked meals would be enough to sustain my interest in making dinner for myself every night. However, I did not anticipate the fatigue I would feel at the end of the day, the loneliness I would feel being in the kitchen without my family and the difficulty of finding the ingredients I needed.
My reality as a college student did not seem to be compatible with the endless videos telling me I should still be able to enjoy fresh meals every day. This frustration continued to build until all I wanted to do was avoid the kitchen at all costs.
Eliminating the pressure to always cook meals was a long and hard process. Many nights I still felt defeated after using the microwave and was saddened that cooking no longer seemed to be something that I loved or prioritized. After a whole year of living off campus, I have finally been able to readjust these exceptions. I have deleted TikTok and am no longer flooded with videos that try to convince me to throw out my microwave. I set different goals for myself. I didn’t need to cook every night, but I tried to hold myself to cooking one meal a week for myself. If I was able to do this, I felt better about using the microwave on other nights. I also started to make bigger batches of food and used the microwave to heat up leftovers. While I was not cooking on leftover nights, eating food that I had made helped lessen the guilt of using the microwave.
I now live in a house with some of my closest friends who also value cooking, and we have planned and cooked different meals together. But, even on the days we don’t do this, I do not berate myself if I am unable to make a meal from scratch. I don’t try to rush out of the kitchen as quickly as possible and will stand in front of the microwave happily watching my dinner warm up.
As a college student, I have realized that it is okay to not have rainbow-colored meals every night. It is okay to stock up your pantry with boxed meals. The most important thing, for me, is that I no longer dread being in the kitchen. Because the happiness I have always felt when I am in a kitchen has returned, I am content to warm up a meal in the microwave.
Statement Columnist Olivia Kane can be reached at ohkane@umich.edu