TikTok food trends are specific food recipes and food-related fads on the social media platform TikTok. This content amassed popularity in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people cooked and ate at home and more people turned to social media for entertainment. While some TikTok users share their diets and recipes, others expand their brand or image on TikTok through step-by-step videos of easy and popular recipes. Users often refer to food-related content as "FoodTok."
The hashtags #TikTokFood and #FoodTok are used to identify food-related content, and have been viewed 40.2 billion and 9.7 billion times respectively since the app's creation, according to the company. Food trends have had profound societal impacts on their millions of viewers. There has been increased popularity in youth cooking, conversations on body image, use of marketing of food products on social media, and food shortages due to mass trends. Certain TikTok content creators such as Eitan Bernath, Jeron Combs, and Emily Mariko have achieved fame by crafting recipes that have become food trends. They and their colleagues have developed recipes such as the leftover salmon bowl, baked feta cheese pasta, and pesto eggs.
Impact
Body image
TikTok food trends are sometimes seen or used as templates for a healthier, nutritional lifestyle for viewers to follow. However, many of these posts are created by users who lack professional qualifications to promote these ideas. Quite often, these food trends are associated with lifestyle tips, therefore influencing their diet, daily tasks, and personal routine. On the other hand, TikTok food trends can encourage and stimulate body positivity and allow people to promote the importance of self-satisfaction relating to body image if they so desire. These food trends can be an opportunity to express themselves and their personal diet choices, while also not conforming to the ideas created by novice users.
'What I eat in a day' videos have been criticised for causing more harm than good. These videos are meant to give an inside look into influencers eating habits; however, Cara Harbstreet says that the cost, time, and energy it takes to produce this day's worth of food, is often left off-camera. Harbstreet, MS, RD, LD, of Street Smart Nutrition, states that the main issue is that influencers are saying, "If you eat like me, you can look like me." This contributes to an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating and disordered eating behaviors.
Food shortages
TikTok food trends have also caused food shortages of ingredients highlighted in viral videos. For example, the baked feta cheese pasta trend resulted in feta cheese shortages. Saxelby Cheesemongers, a cheese seller based in Rhode Island, was affected by this shortage. Its warehouse in Brooklyn usually sells about two-thousand pounds of cheese per week to their regular customers in the city. However, after the video of feta cheese pasta was released, its distributor stated there was none in stock. Other cheese companies, such as Winnimere, reported similar impacts.
Dangerous trends
According to food safety experts, there are some viral TikTok trends that should be avoided. According to Janilyn Hutchings, instructions given on TikTok for making grilled cheese sandwiches in a toaster risked causing kitchen fires, because toasters are not designed like panini presses.
Increased popularity of youth cooking
The easy-to-follow nature of TikTok food trends, recipes, and tutorial videos has led to an increase in youth interaction with the platform. TikTok has proved itself to be an accessible platform for teaching youth groups about basic cooking skills and nutrition. The short duration of TikTok videos on the has requires more compressed and clear recipes, taking away from the complexity usually associated with cooking. With 92% of U.S. adolescents having access to the Internet on a daily basis, TikTok has become an extremely accessible source of information for them to gain practical information, including cooking skills.
A popular trend for college students was folding a tortilla wrap into four triangular pieces and filling it with at-home ingredients such as vegetables and cold meats. Jeremy Scheck, an undergraduate at Cornell University, began to create TikTok content about his passion for food and his recipes when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. When school transitioned online, Scheck shared trending recipes such as crispy potatoes and fried rice that sparked interest for college students like himself.