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Road Testing the Saviours of 2021: TikTok Food Trends In a year that’s thrown Melbourne in and out of lockdown more times than I’d like to think about, I, like many others, have taken comfort in two things: food and TikTok. Without sounding too sad, both have brought me a lot of comfort… and cured a LOT of boredom. I mean, only so many hours of the day can be taken up by walks within my 5km bubble and chaotic Zoom calls with friends. So, in all that time in-between, I’m sure you can imagine my joy when my two old reliables came together, and I landed on food TikTok (FoodTok?). Like every other side of TikTok, FoodTok has its fair share of trends. So, I picked four of the most popular and road-tested them. Pasta chips In true basic-vegetarian-white-girl fashion, I consider both pasta and hot chips to be essential food groups. So the thought of combining the two into one delicious snack had me excited, but I was left unsatisfied, to say the least. Admittedly, my pasta chips may have ended up a little ~overdone~, a fact I'm going to attribute to my inability to accurately predict the appropriate cooking time of anything, and the generous-yet-entirely-appropriate amount of cheese I decided to coat them with. Nevertheless, I felt I got the gist of this, dare I say it, overrated snack. I struggle to believe that even if you took away the crispiness and slightly charred taste of my “chips” that they would live up to their hype. I kept mine simple with olive oil, oregano, garlic powder and cheese (what should be a delicious combination) and it just did not work. I’ll stick to either pasta or chips from now on. 4/10. Nature’s cereal I’m sorry, but TikTok straight-up lied to us about this one. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive Lizzo for having me believe that a bowl of coconut water, fruit and ice could be so refreshingly delicious. Admittedly, I was skeptical. I mean, it’s coconut water, fruit and ice? But I generally try to be a “don’t knock it till you try it” kind of girl so, I gave it a go. There was just nothing good about it. A cold bowl of soggy fruit floating in what I can only assume water would taste like if it expired? I’ll pass. While my beef with nature’s cereal may lie in my apparent hatred for coconut water, I refuse to believe this is a necessary addition to anyone’s diet. Eat your fruit, drink your water and maintain your sanity. 1/10.
