Recently, it's struck me as increasingly worth probing the cultural inclination to think about "struggle meals" as a stopgap measure for the youthful. The term — which began as a hashtag in 2017 and was further popularized by chef Frankie Calenza in his show of the same name — is even defined by Urban Dictionary as "a cheap meal [or] snack bought at the store, usually eaten by broke college students."
I mean, it's a familiar enough narrative: generations of young adults have certainly sustained themselves through school on a steady diet of Top Ramen, crappy beer, handfuls of dry cereal and the occasional slice of cold pizza lifted from a grease-soaked cardboard box in a desolate faculty lounge. Or, as comedian John Mulaney succinctly put it in his 2018 "Kid Gorgeous" special, he spent $120,000 on college just to live "like a god**n Ninja Turtle."
