The Facebook Effect for your Diet

How your media feed can influence what you eat

Have you ever heard the saying “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future”?  Jim Rohn, motivational speaker famously said, that “we are an average of the five people closest to us”.  Turns out the same may be true when it comes to your social media feed, and the food you eat! 

Think about it, when you scroll through Facebook, how often do you see someone post about a new restaurant, a healthy smoothie or a super fun carnival food find?  We are a people that love to talk about food!  One study published in Appetite, worked with 369 college students to understand more about how their Facebook feed could influence their body weight or food choices related to fruits, vegetables, sugary drinks or high calorie foods.

After a series of surveys over nine months, turns out, students did report eating more of whatever they thought others were eating more of.  So if they thought their social network was eating five servings of fruits and veg a day, students included about one more serving a day.  If they saw more beverages or snack foods, those increased too.  Whether they saw these posts as an endorsement of certain foods or just more socially acceptable remains unclear.   Because social feeds are constantly changing, the team was unable to determine how body weight was affected during this relatively short time period. 

The good news is that by knowing this we can choose to follow certain people, influencers or even brands to nudge ourselves towards better food choices, which is a good thing!

If you’re interested in taking the lead to influence your network towards healthy eating- check out these Instagram worthy recipes:  

• Shaved Spring Vegetables, Spring Greens and Curry Salad
• Strawberry Toast
• Nicoise Salad Jars
• Dole Pineapple Julep Smoothie

Published May 2020