The Worst Food Trends We Ever Saw On TikTok

Since debuting as Musical.ly in 2014, TikTok has managed to amass more than 700 million monthly active users worldwide — and it's safe to say that it's shed the stigma of being an app mostly populated by bored people doing viral dance challenges. And during 2020 and some of 2021, otherwise stagnant-feeling (and kind of terrifying) years, food TikTok gave millions a sense of joy and comfort. The app even convinced Gordon Ramsay to reprise his Hell's Kitchen role just to roast terrible at-home chefs.

Among those cooks are likely the creators of some of TikTok's most enduring viral trends of 2020. It all seemingly started during lockdown, when the nation searched for creature comforts like Dalgona coffee (a delicious, whipped instant coffee that felt like the decadence we truly deserved at a time when entering your local Starbucks felt like a risk). Then, the population shifted to using up all their rotting bananas in banana bread — but from there, it spiraled untethered.

But the worst viral trends we ever saw on TikTok weren't innovations born out of necessity. They were so-called hacks that solved problems that didn't actually exist; deceptively simple recipes that were never quite right; and problematic pairings that made us question our sanity and our taste buds. Is anyone out there actually eating this stuff?

Most of us know Flamin' Hot Cheetos by two things: their distinctive color (which is so artificially vibrant, it's almost glowing) and the fact that once you open the bag, you're probably going to eat the whole thing even though it has the potential to make your stomach bleed (lest we forget Lil' Xan's saga). The snack has reached cult status, eliciting pop-up restaurants across the country and a clothing collaboration with fast-fashion brand Forever 21. Then, TikTok had to ruin it.

While Cheetos-based recipes aren't inherently bad (and dare we say actually good in the case of the other viral TikTok recipe, Flamin' Hot mozzarella sticks), the Mac 'N Hot Cheetos that racked up millions of views in February 2021 took things way too far. The issue was the method: The red dust has a certain allure when clinging to your fingertips like a cheese-based adhesive that stains everything it touches, but that's completely lost when it's bubbling over like a toxic neon sludge. Watching the puffs dissolve into water as if they were a heartburn-inducing Alka-Seltzer was so unsettling that it puts us off the snack entirely.

In short: nothing about this looked edible. It was so unholy that one commenter, @murphology563, had to ask: "Who are these sick people?" It was even worse when you considered the fact that there's already perfectly edible boxed Cheetos Mac 'N Cheese that doesn't require whatever the heck was going on here.

In April, we had what will (probably) be referred to in the history books as the great yeastless spring of 2020, where so many people were stuck inside making sourdough bread that it single-handedly led to a nationwide yeast shortage. Sourdough walked (or rather rose) so TikTok pasta could run. Cue: the Feta-less February of 2021.

According to Refinery29, the TikTok pasta (known also as baked feta pasta, though like Cher, it requires no other name) became such a phenomenon that it led to a mass — and in some regards, global — shortage of feta cheese. Though Finnish grocery stores saw their cheese sections gutted in 2019 when the recipe was first posted by food blogger Jenni Häyrinen, it didn't go global until resurfacing on TikTok in 2021, racking up more than 600 million views, according to The Wall Street Journal. By now, just about everyone on the internet has contemplated making the TikTok pasta, but few have achieved the desired results.

The problem with the pasta is that it's pitched as a gourmet alternative to a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese, but it hinges on using specific, high-quality ingredients at exactly the right proportions (which, coincidentally, aren't specified). As The WSJ notes, it has a tendency to dissolve into an admittedly delicious puddle, but a puddle nonetheless. By March of 2021, we reached a culinary culture point where this once-novel dish became a meme. In other words: It's time to let it go.

Being bored in the house and in the house bored during the first half of 2020 spawned some culinary innovations — particularly in the realm of cereal, a breakfast option often glimmering with notes of childhood comfort. There we sat, many of us having returned to our childhood homes to quarantine away from overcrowded cities, faced with an unfamiliar solitude.

At its heart, pancake cereal was a true testament to this feeling — and exercise in patience and isolation, as each tiny drop has to be individually flipped on the pan until uniformly golden brown. It's an indulgent treat loaded with the nostalgia of the sugary cereals of our youth, and just as little nutritional value. It seems like a slam-dunk, but one that only works in theory.

While there's nothing specifically wrong with pancake cereal, there's not a lot right about it either — mainly the fact that it's not actually cereal. It's lacking the namesake crunch of its predecessor French Toast Crunch, which (as noted by Real Simple) causes the mini pancakes to dissolve into soggy mush the moment they hit milk. If that's your thing, by all means, get out the piping bag. You can always skip the milk, but if all else fails, pancake cereal makes for a really cute Instagram post.

It's not hard to get so caught up in the viral cycle of TikTok that eventually, things get so convoluted you don't stop to think: Where am I? This is the only reasonable explanation for "nature's cereal," a viral breakfast trend that racked up nearly half a billion views under its associated hashtag by March of 2021. Even Lizzo admitted she was "addicted" to the treat, which was praised for its healthy benefits, like staving off constipation or providing a massive dose of antioxidants, according to Shape.

Nature's cereal, which Fox News reported was originally created by TikTok user @natures_food in mid-February 2021, is the perfect example of not seeing the forest for the trees. Though it's simple and healthy (it's just pomegranate seeds, blueberries, and strawberries in a bowl filled with coconut water and ice), it already has a name. We liked it back in the '80s when it was called fruit salad (albeit this is a very wet fruit salad).

In essence, nature's cereal is little more than a lazy person's smoothie without the full range of nutritional benefits. It's lacking the protein and healthy fats that would keep your stomach from feeling like it's dissolving itself 30 minutes later, and you'd be better off blending it with some protein powder or nut butter, which, in effect, would make it not "cereal" at all. Nature's cereal may be good for you, but let's not pretend it's anything other than what it is.

There's nothing wrong with a baked sweet potato, but sometimes people take things too far. Cue: Hailey Peters, a hairdresser-slash-health food blogger whose lunch of mustard, a handful of raw veggies, and a cold sweet potato went viral on TikTok. Never mind the fact that she filmed herself munching on raw asparagus, which is incredibly hard to chew. Her cold — as in refrigeration-level cold — baked sweet potato recipe racked up millions of views, forcing her to defend her controversial lunch in a video captioned "don't judge me." 

While some viewers thought the influencer made raw veggies look uniquely appetizing, it made most a little queasy. "She really ate the end of that sweet potato sprouts and all," wrote one commenter, adding a vomiting emoji for effect. "This is the saddest lunch I've ever seen," wrote another, but the origin of the criticism of Peters' now-viral lunch stemmed a lot deeper than the sheer horror of consuming near-frozen sweet potato. 

It seems the "healthy" meal may have actually glorified unhealthy eating habits. According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, dieters should consume about 50% of their daily calories at lunch. Per Women's Health, this translates to roughly 750 calories, and that's the bare minimum for someone on a 1,500-calorie per day diet. A soggy, cold sweet potato and some broccoli just doesn't cut it — and the least you can do is pop that tater in the microwave.

The only thing worse than a food hack that solves a nonexistent problem, is a food hack that makes a very real problem a whole lot worse. When @jeenie.weenie tested out the viral herb-chopping hack with cilantro in June 2020, it looked like an actual decent solution. All you had to do was thread your herb through a cheese grater and pull, destemming the leaves in the process. In reality, it's not anywhere near as graceful as it looks on camera.

When BuzzFeed tried out the so-called "cilantro hack" that same month, they ended up with an uneven mess of leaves still attached to stems. As they noted, it took "about a minute" to thread the stems through the cheese grater and they still had to chop the stems with a knife. Over all, giving your cilantro a quick chop is a lot quicker. Plus, you're not stuck cleaning out the stubborn holes of your box grater, which is unequivocally the worst part of box graters in the first place. All in all, TikTok's cilantro hack is way more mess than it's worth.