TikTok.Photo: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty
A study published Tuesday in the science journalPLOS Oneanalyzed 1,000 videos on the social media platform across 10 popular food-, fitness- and nutrition-related hashtags, each with over 1 billion views since 2020.
The videos were reviewed to determine key themes, including “the glorification of weight loss, the positioning of food to achieve health and thinness, and the lack of expert voices providing nutrition information.”
“We didn’t see any expert voices in this conversation,” Dr. Lizzy Pope, associate professor in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont and lead author, told theNew York Post. “There are very few doctors or dietitians that were interacting in this content. So it was basically just all people that are taking their personal experience and sharing it with the world which can be valuable. But in nutrition, there’s so much bad information out there, that we have to be so careful.”
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“It was so pervasive,” she told the outlet. “There was a lot of subliminal messaging around what bodies and foods should look like to kind of match up to the thin ideal. So many of the videos talked about trying to achieve a particular body shape that was implied, or just definitely, thin.”
Researchers warn that the weight-normative content on TikTok could possible lead to disordered eating behaviors.
“Helping users discern credible nutrition information, and eliminate triggering content from their social media feeds may be strategies to address the weight-normative social media content that is so prevalent,” the study states.
source: people.com
