From Cucumber Salad to Dubai Chocolate — How TikTok Shapes Food Choices

Culinary TikTok is awash with grocery hauls, restaurant reviews, and mukbangs, where content creators gorge on obscene amounts of food. Now, new research highlights just how influential the platform is when it comes to young people’s food choices.

"The most surprising finding for me was not simply that friends and other people we know watch and use this kind of TikTok content, but that the content itself can be so persuasive, engaging, and motivating that it can prompt a young person to introduce new items into their diet, try something new, or even visit a recommended place to eat, based solely on a review they watched on TikTok,” says corresponding author Artur Strzelecki, PhD, of the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland.

The paper, published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies, found that the platform’s entertainment value and content creators’ appeal are key reasons.

Measuring TikTok's Influence

Strzelecki and co-author Oliwia Mizielka, also of the University of Economics in Katowice, analyzed the results of an online survey completed by 406 TikTok users.

To the uninitiated, TikTok is a social media platform based around the creation, sharing, and discovery of short-form videos. Users’ experiences are determined by an elusive algorithm that produces a never-ending stream of videos based on user data, such as likes, views, and accounts followed.

Respondents were asked to rate statements on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), each linked to one of eight dimensions. This included “perceived usefulness,” aka how helpful TikTok is as a source of culinary inspiration, recipe accumulation, and learning, measured by statements such as “Cooking videos on TikTok help me make better dietary decisions.”

Other dimensions included “entertainment content” (“Culinary content on TikTok is attractive and engaging.”), “virality” (“I follow culinary recipes that have gone viral among TikTok users.”), “influencer’s review of dining places” (“Restaurant and dining recommendations on TikTok influence my decisions about where to eat.”), “social influence” (“I often talk with friends about food or recipes from TikTok.”), “subjective bond” or trust in influencers (“Trust in a creator makes me more willing to try the dishes they recommend.”), “attitude” (“TikTok inspires me to experiment in the kitchen.”) and “food behaviors” (“I sometimes change my eating habits under the influence of TikTok content.”)

How TikTok Influences What We Eat

The results reveal TikTok’s a popular source of culinary inspiration — about 73 percent of respondents followed culinary creators, about 55 percent have visited a restaurant after watching a review, and 97 percent have followed a TikTok recipe.

Perceived usefulness, entertainment content, virality, and influencers’ reviews influenced attitude. Meanwhile, social influence, subjective bond, and attitude impacted food behaviors. Entertainment was rated the most influential factor, suggesting “the greatest responsibility for shaping opinion lies in TikTok’s algorithmic content delivery,” the study authors wrote. Subjective bond came second, highlighting the role of content creators.

The authors note a near-even split between male and female users, though the group was overwhelmingly young, with almost half under 25 years old. Participants also tended to be heavy users — almost 45 percent spent at least 2 hours a day on the platform — so it may not reflect all who use the app.

Results may also be prone to response bias, whereby participants’ answers are influenced by other factors. Still, it shows just how influential social media is when it comes to shaping how many of us live our lives, from how we access our news to how we connect to how we eat.

Understanding How Content Can Influence Behavior

When it comes to engaging with TikTok, Strzelecki says, “It comes down to finding a balance between what video content suggests and how willing we are to change our eating habits. It also requires reflecting on the potential impact those changes may have on our health, well-being, and body.”

There is a lot of emotion-driven content that can influence feelings and behavior, but also a lot of valuable material, such as videos explaining how to prepare food well — “That is the positive side of TikTok that I would recommend focusing on,” Strzelecki says.

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