One of the most popular types of diet content online is “what I eat in a day.” Content creators record themselves eating what they eat in a day. It may also include meal preparation, grocery shopping, calories consumed, and suggested meal plan ideas. The hashtag #whatieatinaday has 16.1 billion posts on TikTok alone. It’s extremely popular and reveals a lot about our society’s relationship with food.

Types of #whatieatinaday content

Body positivity

This category of influencers eats whatever they want and encourages followers to eat without feeling shame or guilt about what they enjoy. This group pushes against normative content around dieting by using titles like “what I eat in a day as a girl who actually eats enough.”

Diet and weight loss

This group posts content with the underlying message that if you eat like me, you can look like me. It includes restrictive diet content such as one meal a day (OMAD), dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian, and so on. It also includes the clean-eating aesthetic. They describe benefits such as weight loss and increased energy levels, which can lead followers to mimic their diets.

Rage baiters

These creators often start the videos with statements like “what I eat in a day when I’m not hungry,” then proceed to eat their weight in food. Usually junk or fast food. The comments go crazy roasting them, and a good time is had by all as the creator laughs all the way to the bank.

The problems with how we perceive food

Moralizing food

We judge people by what they eat and assign moral value to their choices. People who eat junk food are lazy and lack self-control. They are potentially greedy and certainly careless about their health. Those who eat vegetables, salads and other aesthetically pleasing low-calorie meals are disciplined, responsible, and, overall, more intelligent and health-conscious. It’s why people say, “I was good, I ate a salad” or “It was my cheat day, so I ate a cookie.”

Food becomes a shorthand for judging what kind of person a creator is. Slim women who fit the beauty standard are perceived as aspirational, while bigger creators making the same content are faced with a barrage of criticism about their greed and lack of self-control. The goal, ostensibly, is to make them feel guilty for their indulgence.

Class indicator

What I eat in a day videos reveal how everything in our society is tied to class, including what we eat and how. Clean eating and healthy eating are associated with wealth and class. At the same time, ethnic or traditional food, code-named authentic food, is associated with being low-income. Junk food is also perceived as poor people’s food.

This is made especially clear when creators include the preparation of the food. Where the food is bought, the quantities you purchase, how you prepare it, how it photographs, the cookware and utensils, even the kitchen where it’s made. All of it signals your social position.

Rage baiters almost always eat junk food or traditional foods, while those who are taking it seriously mainly eat healthy, balanced meals in smaller portions – classier. Also, the bigger the creator is, the lower their perceived class status.

Conclusion

We have made eating simultaneously private and public. It’s supposed to be delicious and enjoyable, yet within bounds. We must at all times maintain control over our appetites or risk finding ourselves on the shameful side. What we eat tells people how to judge and treat us. I mean, are we moral? Are we classy? Are we worth any respect, consideration, or kindness? It’s a little concerning that we’ve made eating this performance of identity with so little focus, if any, on the enjoyment of one of life’s little pleasures.

Check out

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