Words: Rachel Currie (she/her)
Stepping foot into one of my preferred West End cafes, I browse the selection of sweet treats on offer. I wonder which baked good will create the most aesthetically pleasing Instagram story. It can be difficult to decide on a pastry that’s not only a culinary adventure, but a visual one too. My eye lingers on a cookie sat unassumingly in the display case, the buzzword ‘brown butter’ immediately piquing my interest. A viral ingredient has to be viral for a reason, right? If what all the influencers say is true, then the flavour-enhancing effect of browning your butter is undoubtedly worth the added 50p compared to a regular chocolate chip cookie. Trending food items are nothing new; in fact, they’ve been around for decades, from the 2010’s sourdough toast to the 1970’s pineapple craze. Today, however, we live in a world where your online self is, arguably, more important than the person you are off-screen. Buying the right ingredients, which can then be shared online, demonstrates that you are cultured, socially competent and, most of all, you stand out. Because if eating miso soup in a dimly lit, fusion-style small plates restaurant can’t increase your social capital, then what can?
Recent TikTook food trends have scaled down further to mere ingredients, filling supermarket shelves after one viral video. The shift from a trending meal to a cheaper ingredient seems to be a response to a decreasing disposable income, with friendly cheap household staples like butter beans seeing a recent rise in popularity. Amidst a growing recession, today’s youth can hardly afford to buy a house, so the rise in ‘little luxuries’ like dinner parties created with versatile ingredients reveals a persevering desire for a lavish lifestyle that is inaccessible today. However, going out for a meal in a classy restaurant and eating overpriced focaccia and oils is also seeing an increase. So, why are we trying to save money on our weekly shop while insisting on going out for dinner three times a month? This clash between frugality and luxury seems to speak to an idealistic desperation for indulgence amidst the financial unknown of the future.
The emphasis on small-scale ingredients could also reflect the hyper specificity of the digital age, where everything is curated to perfection before daring to be posted online. With this in mind, it makes sense that food has to have some kind of visual appeal. The fact that a number of specific ingredients influence consumer choices, as the “lemony garlicky miso gochujang brown butter pasta” meme notes, demonstrates how food has a deeper social meaning than you might think. Having a wide-ranging culinary palate displayed for everyone else to see can help you feel as though you’ve found the secret code for cultural coolness online. Going for a solo date in the newest upcoming restaurant, then (dining alone has increased by 14% in the UK), gives you the chance to cultivate the perfect image, demonstrating how you not only understand popular foods, but you’re ahead of the trend.
However, the ever-changing roster of trending food items and ingredients arguably reflects the impossibility of achieving acceptance online. While you might get one or two viral TikTok moments with your ‘girl dinner’ (consisting largely of charcuterie meats and pickled vegetables), soon enough the trend will move along, leaving you in the dust. Vox writer Rebecca Jennings notes that, ‘An it-food must be a little controversial: not everyone enjoys the lumpiness of cottage cheese […] or the brininess of an olive. You should feel a little special for being able to recognise its merit’. It is exactly this philosophy that signals every trending food’s downfall: once a ‘niche’ ingredient is globally recognised, and every supermarket has gone out of its way to rebrand said item and uptick the price, it has become uncool. Something can only ever stay in vogue for so long; the unlimited nature of TikTok and Instagram, which give you a new post as fast as you can scroll through them, means that no trend can ever last. 30 minutes ago you might have been looking into the gut health benefits of pickles, but now you’re worrying about whether you get enough fibre from your Weetabix and if you should instead be buying more lentils. Trendy food can be a means of achieving social capital, but ultimately it will always slip from your grasp.
Now more than ever, food sits at the heart of how we define ourselves. What we eat seems to be synonymous with who we are, at least in the online world. This has its positives. Certain ingredients are trending for a reason, and social media can be an effective tool for sharing and promoting delicious new meals and underrated restaurants. Letting ourselves try overpriced trends amidst financial chaos isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but eating what you want and not concerning yourself with the social implications of that should always come first. I didn’t go for the brown butter cookie in the end, instead opting for the messier, less Instagrammable sausage roll. With flaky pastry all over my face and t-shirt, I enjoyed every second of my little luxury.
