'Girl Dinner' trend a distorted view of healthy eating

A new social media trend is promoting dangerous dieting practices and is now facing widespread criticism for encouraging eating disorders. Megan Jane de Paulo saves the day with a delicious, healthy recipe that's super simple to cook.

AT SOME POINT a few months ago, a woman posted a TikTok of her snack dinner and called it “Girl Dinner”, unwittingly triggering a trend of posting snack plates all over social media, creating the Girl Dinner movement.

Snacks for dinner is not new. Sometimes you are just tired or not hungry and have a few nibbles. But until this last northern hemisphere summer, it wasn’t a thing worthy of plastering all over your social media.

Now that it’s a thing, it comes under scrutiny. On the one side, we have the idea that it’s self-care to have Girl Dinner and that it’s fine to just tap out on cooking sometimes, especially during hot weather. It gives you permission as a woman – or rather, “girl” – to be imperfect, to not meet the norms, to not adopt the traditional cooking and nurturing roles.

I didn’t know we needed permission to do that. I do it on occasion. My mother did it. Some nights, even my grandmother just nibbled some cheese and crackers and took some pickles and cocktail onions from the never-emptying jars in the fridge. We didn’t need to give it a name.

Body shaming: Food is not the enemy — food magazines just might be

The wellness industry has infiltrated even food magazines, using food-shaming language while promoting the latest diet trends, which can lead to body shame and eating disorders.

With the positive comes the negative. From plates resembling charcuterie platters for one, it soon evolved to plates with three crackers and a couple of blocks of cheese, to a few chips, to cubes of ice. Girl Dinner became “Thinspo” (thin inspiration) dinner. The wave of these plates went from saying it’s okay that your self-care is feeding yourself something convenient and comforting to displays of disordered eating.

As with social media-related trends in the past focusing on the thigh gap and the printer paper waist measuring, Girl Dinner has taken the place of banned hashtags on TikTok and Instagram such as #thinspo or #thinspiration, and exposing waves of younger people to a distorted view of healthy eating. Despite attempts at eliminating hashtags and deleting accounts promoting disordered eating and dangerous dieting practices, much negative messaging still gets through to the majority younger audience.

Feminism or starvation? Am I tackling gender norms by eating cheese and crackers, or on a dangerous dieting path?

I’m neither. I absolutely do not believe that cooking a meal means you are buying into antiquated social structures. I admit I judge both women and men who tell me proudly that they can’t cook — it should be a gender-neutral life skill to provide nutrition for yourself. It’s self-care to prepare yourself a delicious plate of food, just as much as sometimes resorting to comfort or snacks.

Perhaps, curiously, Girl Dinner has not taken off here in Australia to the same degree and I believe there is a simple reason for this — we are in winter, while this trend has risen and gone into decline up north, during an intensely warm summer.

Nobody in a drafty rented St Kilda apartment is going to be nibbling on a few snacks and proudly posting it all over social media. We need our protective layer of fat against the freezing cold winds that wind their way through the city. And it’s not just the southern cities, there’s evidence that even in Cairns this year people were wearing jumpers and closed shoes.

U.S. site tries to ruin what makes fairy bread great

The U.S. may own our Tim Tams and the Golden Circle pineapple we put on our pizzas, but this recipe for "fancy" fairy bread by food site 'Food52' goes beyond the pale.

We naturally eat less during hot weather; our bodies adjust to avoid heat-generating activities such as digesting food. We don’t need extra energy to keep our bodies warm.

Eating spicy food when it’s hot triggers the cooling processes of the body. That’s why it’s no surprise that the spiciest dishes come from some of the warmest locations.

That’s why this recipe is summer slacker perfection. I call it simply “Dinner”.

Thai red curry salmon

This is a quick cook with not much effort. The flavour pay-off is huge, though.

Unlike many curries which benefit greatly from a long marinade or slow cooking process, this one is pretty much whack ingredients in one pan, cook a bit, done.

If cooking rice sounds like too much, stock up on a couple of packs of microwaveable rice types next time you get groceries. It’s a better option than not eating well or relying on delivery to have them in the pantry.

This recipe doesn’t need exact measurements, you can eyeball and taste it as you go.

I don’t add sugar to mine since I find coconut milk pretty sweet. You can balance it out with lime juice if you like.

Don’t skip on the fish sauce — in this kind of cookery, it takes the place of salt and pepper seasoning.

Leftovers will keep in the fridge for a couple of days in an air-tight container.

Swap out salmon and fish sauce for firm tofu and vegan fish sauce to make this vegan.