#FoodTok: Mastering the Art of Cooking in Three Minutes

Jaega Wise and her co-presenters start the New Year having a go on TikTok after #FoodTok raked in billions of views in 2021. What, if anything, can be learned from the app, which dishes up creator-made videos in three-minute-long bursts? The presenters are joined by TikTok Chef Poppy O'Toole, who posts as PoppyCooks to her two million followers.

From turning ordinary cooks into stars, to setting off trends for kitchen gadgets, viral recipes, and #WhatIeatinaday getting millions of views, people using TikTok are going mad for gastronomy.

However unlike other social media sites where picture-perfect images of food are shared, TikTok takes viewers into ordinary kitchens, and seems to celebrate (mostly) the creation of lavish looking dishes with seemingly very little skill or effort.

Food on TikTok has also become tied in with the ASMR genre (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) where creators deliberately emphasise the sounds and textures involved in cooking.

So could TikTok be the inspiration for a new generation of cooks? And can the more mature cook learn anything new? Or is the so-called Wild West of the web’s version of cookery too unwieldy to properly inform? Will the hype around influencers and their inevitable marketing tie-ins put an end to any ‘authenticity’ on there? And is the site doing enough to protect those with eating disorders?

Presented by Jaega Wise
Produced in Bristol by Natalie Donovan