In an age of constant posting and so-called relatable content, it is no surprise that What I Eat In a Day (WIEIAD) videos are insanely popular on social media. These posts, revealing everything the creator ate in the span of a day, are often accompanied by pictures of the food, along with nutritional and caloric intake.

However, with the ever-present push for specific body types by Western beauty standards, it is no surprise that these posts can be mentally hurtful.

In exploring the WIEIAD hashtag on TikTok, my feed was immediately flooded with content that promotes unhealthy eating habits, often complete with a shot of the poster’s flat stomach at the beginning of the video. In these posts, the content creators provide the number of calories that accompanies each meal, often rounding out the day at a number that is far lower than the 2000 calories recommended for an adult.

Considering the fundamentally competitive nature of eating disorders and the easily impressionable minds of teenagers who frequent apps such as TikTok, it is no surprise that such posts can often have extremely damaging or triggering effects on the viewer.

Despite this, and the caution that needs to be applied when discussing the topic of eating on the Internet, I find that What I Eat In A Day videos can also be beneficial, particularly those where creators post their meals as part of eating disorder recovery, encouraging their audience to do the same. These videos provide a realistic approach to recovery, particularly when paired with honest conversations about how difficult recovery can be, and remind the audience that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ food day.

Furthermore, as simple lifestyle videos, when accompanied by no information other than images of the meals themselves, WIEIAD videos can serve as meal inspiration or cooking aspirations, which is particularly helpful when showing easily accessible meal prep, especially when curated by and for university students.

To name WIEIAD videos as outright helpful or harmful is to disregard the nuances that come with the topic of food on social media, and thus it is important to recognize that the way food is portrayed is entirely up to the creator and the relationship they have with it.

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