TikTok, a social media app dedicated to short-form videos, has emerged as a major firer of food trends — from mushroom coffee and pancake cereal to cloud bread and feta pasta. But another trend, the #whatieatinaday trend, is dominating TikTok, which is nearing 9 billion 1 .
Even though #whatieatinaday posts may be 2 to serve as healthy inspiration for others, there's a growing feeling that these video diaries of daily eats will likely do more harm than good — especially among young girls or people with a history of disordered eating.
The 3 message these posts send is that if you eat like them, then you can eventually look like them. Yet what someone else eats in a day doesn't mean it's right for you, since these "4 " videos are not a completely accurate representation of what someone typically eats.
Often the overly stylized (程式化) meals do not 5 a nutritionally adequate diet. The posts are 6 the illusion (幻想) of an ideal day of eating, along with an ideal body size.
Younger audiences, especially girls and young women, internalize the message that they must eat like these creators to achieve and maintain not only health, but also social 7 . The biggest harm with this trend is that it normalizes disordered or 8 eating behaviors. This could prevent someone struggling with an eating disorder from 9 support or treatment.
Even if the #whatieatinaday posts are displaying a 10 day of eating, the subtext message of "eat like me, and you will look like me" is harmful because people will not necessarily achieve the same body size as the 11 even if they copied their day of eating bite for bite.
12 , what might be a healthy, adequate day of satisfying meals for one person may be inadequate and unsatisfying to another. Even worse, someone looking at these posts may conclude that they need to be eating half as much to 13 .
People making these videos are overwhelmingly thin, young, able-bodied and white. There is a complete lack of body 14 . And this encourages harmful comparisons to unrealistic body standards that are 15 to the vast majority of people. Therefore, those of us from marginalized communities are once again unable to see positive representations of our varying bodies, foods and cultural representation in these harmful posts."
