An iced berry bowl with coconut water. That is essentially what the Lizzo approved Nature’s Cereal is. For someone who has lived on the coastline drinking fresh coconut water every morning, I tried to understand the hype behind it. The Nature’s Cereal is undoubtedly healthy. But is it really the perfect breakfast? Not just for the body but for the mind as well?
Yes, the berries and pomegranate seeds are loaded with healthy nutrients such as potassium, vitamin C and fibre. It is also low on the glycemic index and will prevent you from becoming hungry soon after eating while the electrolytes from the coconut water will give you the energy you need. BUT by itself, it is not the perfect balanced meal. it lacks the key macronutrients of fats and protein.
And do we really need a trend to motivate us to eat fruits and vegetables and keep healthy?
If you have followed any healthy living bloggers in the past, you likely remember that their entire content strategy was to publish several blog posts a day, chronicling exactly what they ate and how they exercised that day. Then, Instagram’s inception in 2010, led to people posting photos of their daily eats. And media outlets have long published celebrity food diaries, giving fans an inside look at their favourite stars’ eating habits.
Today’s what I eat in a day posts showcase more than just-food. TikTok and Instagram Reels are video platforms, so users often start their daily eats videos with full-length clips of their bodies. I believe that the message this sends is unequivocally, “if you eat like me, you can look like me.”
This is so problematic, because the vast majority of the time, the videos are being done by thin, able-bodied, younger white women—women with an immense amount of body privilege. The videos then end up promoting a specific type of body that’s unattainable to the vast majority of people. It is fundamentally misleading because weight and body shape are mostly determined by genetics, not food or exercise.
Even for people who have a relatively healthy relationship with food—which, let’s be honest, is NOT most people—these videos are not helpful at all. What someone else eats should have nothing to do with what YOU eat.
Whilst TikTok is not revolutionary in its promotion of diet culture, it is simply packaging and promoting a perpetual cycle that dominates mainstream society in a new way. TBH, it’s impossible to control what other people put out there on social media. But, it is possible to control the content that you see, at least to some extent.