Emily Mariko is a household name by now. Her salmon rice bowl was a revolutionary discovery for the TikTok community, but her fame did not stop there. Religiously binge-watching her videos has become a daily occurrence for me and millions of other people. The whole TikTok community is completely enthralled with her lifestyle. She somehow has her life together with perfectly prepped ingredients and always has just enough food in her fridge for it to be empty right when she expects it to. Her videos always seem so put together and have a minimalistic aesthetic that we all wish to achieve when we are cooking. So, Emily, is this how your video went viral?
Products and recipes seem to go viral on TikTok out of thin air. Whenever a recipe goes viral, good luck finding the ingredients for it.
Earlier this year, the spotlight recipe was the feta pasta. Everyone went crazy over this simple dish. I mean what’s not to like? It’s just feta, tomatoes and pasta, which sounds perfect to me. Sales for these ingredients soared when the video gained popularity. It appeared that feta was sold out everywhere. When the video started to go viral, hundreds of millions of videos were made by users showing how they copied the feta pasta and what their opinion was. Some videos were even of people showing different ways of upgrading the pasta by using different cheeses or even different toppings.
This pasta-making approach blew the internet away. Soon, people were trying to make other dishes in a similar manner from mac and cheese to spinach and artichoke dip. This phenomenon took over the For You Page for months. Once the copycat recipes started to roll in, other people wanted to make their version in hopes that it would also go viral.
Gigi Hadid popularized vodka pasta on her Instagram story back in 2020. And although this trend did not start on TikTok, it was a common occurrence to see someone making the “Gigi Hadid pasta” on the app. Once Hadid put the recipe on Instagram, it was up to the users of TikTok to show how they made it and review it.
Users also tried to copy Carbone’s spicy rigatoni pasta recipe. It seemed like this sauce had everyone in a chokehold. It was what everyone craved even if they had never tried it. Just by looking at it, you could tell that it was creamy and delicious and that you had to immediately make it. Once the videos continued to roll in, it was a viral sensation.
Let’s take a second to remember the start of 2020. Tiger King, whipped coffee and, oh yeah, the pandemic. Let’s try to forget that last part. But, anyways, back to the whipped coffee. Whipped coffee was all the craze when the pandemic hit. Quarantined millennials and Gen Zers were without their normal Starbucks and needed to get creative. And thus, whipped coffee was born. I mean come on. The ingredients could not be simpler for someone who is quarantined. All you needed was instant coffee, hot water and sugar. This recipe went viral for its simplicity but also its innovative approach to normal, homemade coffee.
Another drink that went viral through TikTok was chlorophyll water. Chlorophyll drops had people hoping it was the holy grail for basically any ailment. It claimed to help acne. However, there is not much research to support this claim. I think that chlorophyll water made us just feel like we had our lives together. It seemed like a simple addition to the daily routine to make us feel more like “that girl” that we see all over Pinterest drinking her green juice on the way to yoga. Although there are not many studies on chlorophyll, it cannot hurt to incorporate it into your routine. So, if you feel like channeling your inner “that girl,” add a few drops to your water bottle before a workout.
TikTok food trends seem to happen when a new recipe, food product or way of preparing food stumbles across the For You Page and is different from the norm. These are just some of the current and past food trends from TikTok and will not be the last.