Chelsea Hudson
From low-rise jeans to “detox teas” promising a flatter stomach, the ghosts of 2000s diet culture are haunting us again; this time, they’re dressed up as self-care. Even Kate Moss has since distanced herself from her notorious 2009 mantra, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” But while the words may have faded, the mindset never really left. In 2025, it has simply found new platforms and prettier packaging.
One of the clearest examples of this is the rise of “What I Eat in a Day” (WIEIAD) videos. Framed as meal inspiration, they are often guilty of quietly promoting restriction and showcasing barely-there diets. Sometimes just a coffee and a protein bar are passed off as a full day of eating. Many of these videos are curated for aesthetics rather than honesty, leaving viewers to compare their own diets without realising it. Even realistic versions attract disbelief, with comments claiming it would take a week to eat what was, in reality, just three meals. The same mindset has resurfaced through the rise of the so-called “almond daughter” a rebrand of its “almond mum” predecessor. It has become an online archetype that romanticises control and minimisation under the guise of self-care. It’s hard to say how much awareness individual creators have that they’re perpetuating such a harmful trend; nevertheless, there needs to be greater awareness of how easily disordered eating is promoted and how deeply normalised it has become.
The innocent-looking posts we scroll past everyday are shaping serious societal issues, whether we choose to see it or not. The evidence is undeniable: fifty studies across 17 countries have identified a link between social media usage and body image concerns, disordered eating, and poor mental health – largely driven by social comparison, internalisation of thin and fit ideals and self-objectification. In other words, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle of comparison and dissatisfaction, one that platforms proudly profit from.
The truth is diet culture is a black hole. No matter how much you give it, it always wants more. There’s no finish line, no moment where it finally says “enough.” You lose weight, and it tells you to lose more. You eat “clean” and it tells you to cut something else out. It’s a system built on dissatisfaction, convincing you that control equals worth. But control doesn’t bring peace. It only feeds the obsession.
And this doesn’t stop at what we eat, it extends to how we measure it. Trends like WIEIADs subtly shape our relationship with food, but another part of diet culture has become just as pervasive: our obsession with numbers. Why must every recipe video, post, or blog now be about calories? Comments often ask for the calorie content, or creators plaster the numbers on the screen as if it’s the most important part of the meal. The same goes for food packaging: calories front and centre, as if that’s all that matters.
But food isn’t meant to be reduced to numbers—we’re human beings, not calculators. A meal shouldn’t be counted, organised, or summed up just to decide whether it’s “acceptable” to eat. Yes, there are legal requirements to list energy on packaging, and for some people with specific health needs that information is necessary, but the way calorie counting has taken over everyday life. That’s not healthy. It’s just one example of how diet culture reinvents itself. What used to be called “weight loss” is now “wellness.” “Restriction” is renamed “discipline,” and when we start to see through one version, another takes its place, shiny and appealing, but carrying the same obsession with control and thinness.
The only way to end this cycle is to stop feeding it – to stop treating food as a moral test and start seeing it for what it is: nourishment, connection, and joy. Diet culture thrives when we feel unworthy, but it loses power the moment we stop trying to earn our right to eat. The ghosts of diet culture may keep returning, but we don’t have to keep inviting them in.
