Latest viral trends, "Girls Dinner"; has taken over the internet, opening up an intriguing and hilarious dialogue about the meals women sometimes cook for themselves. The shared videos have since been viewed more than a billion times. Created by designer Olivia Maher, Girls' Diner features plates of inconsistent food (never a recipe), meaning social media is now promoting the idea of hard cuts. A mix of summer food. And the infallibility of a plate of random nonsense.
Hula Hoop alongside Scotch Quorn egg and pickle with a lightly steaming hot chocolate garnish. Whole, raw carrots compliment a deep bowl of carbonara. Often the meal is intense, wonderfully young: pasta, oil and a handful of grated cheddar.
The girls lunch is the antipasti par excellence, not from Tuscany but from Tesco. So when did the closely related upbeat trend morph into another area promoting restrictive eating habits and the ever pernicious “ideal skinny” movement?
A Slippery Slope
As with most things on social media, it's unclear exactly when the girl dinner craze was adopted by diet culture, but there are a few notable instances that gave us the shudders.
On TikTok, the creator shared a video of a sundae and described the post as "girly dinner." The comments section applauded her. Another video showed a plate with just two hard-boiled eggs, a sliced strawberry, and a single piece of cheese; a meal that a small child can eat, not a grown woman.
While these "meals" (one of which was literally ice water) may not represent each person's broader diet, they do raise the larger question: why do we celebrate malnutrition? Women who continue to strengthen food culture and convey deeply unhealthy body ideals?
“The spread of diet culture is largely influenced by media, social norms, and industries that benefit from body image insecurity, such as weight loss, fitness, and the beauty industry. It's an enduring ideal because it capitalizes on the human desire for acceptance and perfection and often sets unrealistic body standards," says Dr. Sophie Mort, Clinical Psychologist and Mental Health Specialist at Headspace.
“One of the things that makes these ideals so difficult is that most of us are exposed to them from a young age, which means they're woven into our belief systems, which can mean we don't logically agree with them are.” With food culture, many people find that they easily transcend food culture and food ideals when it comes to other people, but not when it comes to food, they act alone and love in all dimensions, but when they engage with theirs employ your own body, then fight.They feel ashamed and want to influence food culture when they catch themselves looking a certain way.
Despite the ingrained cold of 039; In the age of heroin chic and size zero, quick or unhealthy weight loss should never be normalized or celebrated. And what these videos don't explain is that malnutrition, extreme dieting, or over-restriction can have lifelong consequences.
Risk of malnutrition
The importance of malnutrition depends on lifestyle, level of physical activity, occupation and age. Current NHS guidelines suggest adult women should consume around 2,000 calories (8,400 kilojoules) per day. This can be combined into three meals, each about 670 calories, or broken down into smaller meals and snacks.Eating less — meaning consuming fewer calories than your body needs to function — goes beyond feeling hungry and can lead to serious health problems.
“Crash dieting or severe calorie restriction for a long time can slow your metabolism down. As a result, you burn less energy and can make losing weight more difficult. You're also more likely to start shedding muscle mass than body fat," says nutritionist Jenna Hope.
"Furthermore, if you follow an overly restrictive or radical diet, your risk of nutrient deficiencies increases significantly."Malnutrition can affect hormonal function, skin and hair health, and the cardiovascular and immune systems in women, leading to slower recovery, poor sleep, and poor mental well-being. It can also affect how your normal menstrual cycle works.
"Also, eating this way can create a bad relationship with food, which can lead to binge eating cycles and lead to weight gain after stopping a restrictive diet or crash diet."
Videos citing it suggest that a bowl of ice cream should be the "girls' meal" 039; (Joking or not), they only serve to spread the idea that women should always actively strive for a smaller, leaner body, and that with that comes personal happiness and social acceptance. Gloria, the heroine of America Ferrera, rightly suspected this mindset in Greta Gerwig's Barbie: "You have to be skinny, but not too skinny."And you can never say you want to be skinny. You have to say you want to be healthy, but you also have to be slim. The pressure to conform to a Lean ideal is overwhelming.
How to break away from the food culture
Dr. Mort has some tips for rethinking our approach to food and self-esteem. Unsurprisingly, most of his advice is aimed at raising awareness of the content we surf and browse throughout the day.
1. Choose the media you use
In 2022, research showed that adults in the UK spend an average of four hours and 14 minutes a day on their phones. We spent two of those hours on social media. Becoming aware of the type and amount of content we consume can help change our self-image and create a stronger buffer against dieting culture.
"This can mean unfollowing social media accounts that promote harmful ideals and subscribing to accounts that promote body positivity and health on all dimensions," she says. "In addition, knowledge of the reality and diversity of the human body and the dangers of food culture can serve as a buffer against such content. It is also important to develop critical thinking skills to analyze and challenge such narratives.
When it comes to the types of content or creators you keep after screening, Dr. Mort to look at people promoting or raising awareness of food culture. "Following them can mean staying up to date on the anti-diet culture, which will help you change your ideals over time.""
2. Becoming Familiar with Media
“Research also shows that being able to recognize airbrushed images and how media manipulate images and present specific themes and ideas helps people of all ages understand the impact of images and to tone down the ideals presented to us. said dr mort.
3. Take it easy
“Don't assume that you'll change your mind overnight. A head/heart shift means that we often learn something logically and believe it intellectually before believing it deeply.So don't worry if you continue to suffer even after changing your beliefs. It will take time, but you will make it," assures Dr. mort.
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