WIEIAD: This Is Me
What I Eat In a Day (WIEIAD) trend is really catching on. In fact, it has been for a while. It’s difficult to say where it all began – after all, preoccupations with dieting and self-care are as ancient as antiquity itself. But if we think about blog posts, YouTube videos, or TikTok shorts sharing the ins and outs of peoples’ daily alimentation, we’ll find that this practice has really started to gain momentum in the early 2020s. Today, WIEIAD is not just about food. It’s about the self.
A WIEIAD portrait: Bella Hadid with a plate of pasta. Learning what others eat is like attempting to solve a mystery with barely any clues. Image available via Vocal Media. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
WIEIAD stands for What I Eat In a Day. And it’s really accelerated since 2020. The 2020-2023 period is suspiciously close to (in fact, coincidental with) the COVID pandemic, when private life was public too, because it was all the kind of life one had. It’s also consistent with the rise and expansion of the mindful eating movement. Mindful eating is a complex and varied set of practices aimed at building a sustainable relationship with food and body image (USU Extension). As psychology professor Katy Tapper explains in Nutrition Bulletin, mindful eating involves decentring of negative thoughts, awareness of the present moment, and acceptance of one’s body and its experiences.
Of course, not all WIEIAD expressions adhere to this description. Some videos are more restrictive, misrepresentative, and ‘overambitious’ than others. McMaster University is cautious about the usefulness of non-transparent and self-promoting footage of privileged bodies. The institution points out that if a WIEIAD video includes body checking (and most of them usually do), it’s not really mindful at all. Still, the viral diet diaries generally abide by the listen-to-your-body and no one-size-fits-all approaches. What’s really interesting about the WIEIAD phenomenon is that besides feeding on inexplicable public curiosity, it also sparks a new kind of autobiography genre.
We are what we eat, and we are especially what we don’t eat. Dietary preferences and restrictions seem to demarcate our social nests of relatability. Maybe even acceptability. Whether the choices are made in the interest of intolerances, or in the interest of ethics, the WIEIAD culture is a culture of confession and justification. Does this remind you of any other cultural phenomenon?
Sex. That’s right. In his Technologies of the Self, the French thinker Michel Foucault discussed how sexual taboos are connected with having to tell the truth about oneself. Prodding at the tension between penalty and desire, Foucault studied how we as Westerners have been compelled to decipher ourselves in regard to what’s prohibited. Under the sign of Christianity, each person had to ‘know themselves’ – analyse and acknowledge their sins, recognise their impulses. What’s more, each person had to disclose these things in prayer, confession, or even in conversation with others. Each person had to testify publicly and privately to their failings. Being a self meant coming clean about oneself, rubbing out the stain of human error and at once condemning oneself to judgment.
At present, by contrast, our society strives towards embracement. Not self-punishment and not refusal of the self; but self-care and acceptance of the self. This is particularly the case with mindfulness and all its issuing franchise. Yet, the element of confession and judgment is still there, including the WIEIAD tradition. I confess to you what I eat in a day, and I submit myself to your judgement, if you dare judge me. And if you do judge me, just go away, says Lidia Mera in her WIEAID video. Literally, then, a WIEIAD author puts themselves ‘out there’, challenging disapproval and defying denigration in one fell scoop. This is what I eat; this is who I am; this is me.
So what happens when every ‘me’ starts following someone else’s WIEIAD routine? In a way, it’s like saying “if this is what makes that person’s ‘me’, then it can also make my own ‘me’; then we’ll identify with one another as a community of ‘me’s and we’ll still all be ourselves”. In other words, increasing one’s protein, keeping a global culinary outlook, upcycling, and doing all other things that are on top of the 2025 nutrition trend list (Good Housekeeping) enables one to put oneself ‘out there’ without forfeiting the ties with one’s environment. And since personalised nutrition is also a trend in itself, WIEIAD offers a kind of belonging that doesn’t contradict the value of uniqueness.
Assuredly, food is a complicated thing. Nutrition is a complex process. And, alas! Writing doesn’t do full justice to everything that food and nutrition entail. But at least we can enjoy looking at these aspects of our life in turns, savouring every theory with an equal measure of gusto and care.
