What is girl dinner? The TikTok food trend low key adopted by women everywhere

When I first saw a TikTok titled “girl dinner” I was alarmed. Usually, commentary about women’s eating habits encourages us to make restrictions, survive with less, and neglect our desires— but girl dinner is actually about having exactly what you want. Hallelujah.

Now with over 38.7million views on TikTok, girl dinner essentially denotes when we create ourselves a silly little snack plate smorgasbord meal, rather than cooking anything even nearly resembling one singular dish: It’s pickles, it’s strawberries, it’s charcuterie. It’s delicious.

Ok, so where did the concept for girl dinner actually come from?

“I cannot find the TikTok right now but a girl just came on here and said how in medieval times peasants had to eat nothing but bread and cheese and how awful that was. And she was like, ‘that’s my ideal meal’,” the original creator of girl dinner, Olivia Maher, said in the video which sparked the snack plate revolution of 2023.

“This is my dinner,” Olivia said, panning round to a punnet of grapes, a few hunks of bread, butter and cheese. “I call this girl dinner, or medieval dinner.” She then created a jingle (“girl diiiii-neeeeaaaah”) thousands more women have used to share their third non-meal of the day.

Why do all women love these silly little girl dinner meals?

Since the girl dinner trend blew up, experts have hopped on TikTok to explain exactly why we’re obsessed with what’re essentially picky bits for tea:

“Most of the time when we’re planning or creating meals we’re thinking about what is the nutritional quality of this,” said nutritionist Kathrine Kofoed. “‘Do I have protein, carbs, healthy fats, do I have veggies, do I have some fruit, how is this being cooked.’

“We’re very rarely thinking about our five different sense of taste and making sure that all of our satiety needs are being satisfied in meals” she said. “I’m talking flavour, texture. I’m talking combination of flavours. I’m talking, what are you craving or what are you desiring as far as flavours and mouthfeel goes at this moment?

“It’s a really great way to have satisfy all of those needs and feel satiety and nourished after eating, which by the way is a huge predictor for not overeating later,” Katherine explained.

So, there you have it— we’re satisfied and excited by girl dinner because we’re finally getting exactly what we want. It no longer has to be meat and potatoes for every sodding meal.

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