There was a time when the food of TikTok would cost you an entire paycheck to recreate — everyone with a chef's knife seemed to be grilling wagyu. FoodTok skewed toward the aspirational. But not anymore.
You see, Donald Trump got elected president and imposed punishing tariffs, which led to the market tanking and looming threats of prices skyrocketing. And, recently, FoodTok has adjusted to that worrisome economic reality. It seems everyone's posting budget-friendly — or even recession-themed — recipes and food hacks. Scroll through your FYP and you'll notice a distinct shift. Wagyu is out; stretching a bag of rice is in.
Sensing that folks were struggling, Kiki Rough decided she'd post a series on "recession cooking" — meals that aren't necessarily gourmet but keep to a budget and fill a stomach. She wasn't really a cooking creator, per se, but rather someone who'd had hard times and learned to cook through them. In just a couple a months of sharing what she called her "Recession Cooking Series," she went from 60K followers to 250K. Her video explaining the series racked up 4 million views.
"It just resonated with so many people beyond me, which hurts and it's sad," Rough told Mashable in an interview. "I read the comments, and I want so badly to help everyone, and that hurts. ... What inspired the series is just knowing that I had survival knowledge and that with all the shifts in the economy and the people around me being affected, more people were going to need [that knowledge]."
Look around, and you're bound to see other creators who've turned their attention to making budget-focused meals. Popular creator Justine Doiron did a whole series on creating low-waste, cheap meals by emptying her pantry. Creator zielzebub plays an "old poor" person teaching a "new poor" person how to eat for cheap in a number of his posts. Dean Bosko is using the tagline "eating like a medieval peasant until all my credit cards are paid off" to share — you guessed it — budget-friendly meals that rely on cheap staples. These all began in the last couple of months and are quite popular. And some of them are big shifts for their creators: Zielzebub, for instance, didn't really even post about food until his "old poor" hacks started taking off. Now it's pretty much his entire account, with some videos garnering more than a million views. You're likely to see more of the same from other creators.
The data backs this move up: According to TikTok, the hashtag #budgetmeals saw 64.3K posts — a 20 percent jump — from March 16 through April 15.
Rough, who is 28 and lives in the Chicagoland area, actually began posting about recession meals after losing her job in January. She's now balancing three gigs while filming her recipes after work, sometimes late into the night. Rough hopes that one day these posts will make her enough money to slow down that schedule, but for now the response from folks online keeps her going.
"I have one follower, God bless her, her mom is very old and she's her caretaker," Rough said. "And for some reason, I keep hitting the nail on the head and making the stuff her mom wants to eat — so that feels so gratifying."
That gets at the heart of the uptick in budget cooking. Creators want to post videos that get a response. So if budget meals are taking off online, then you're bound to see people hop on that trend. It feels like yet another online recession indicator. But there are also lots of people posting cheap meals because they simply have the knowledge and want to share it. Or because they see people worrying about their finances and want to help.
A creator like @DollarTreeDinners has been doing that for quite some time — with much success — but now, her ideas are inspiring action from others. She started creating shelf-stable recipes using canned goods all wrapped up in a Ziploc bag. The idea was to either have a simple meal in your pantry or have a meal to gift to a local food pantry. That inspired creator @yourbarefootneighbor to raise money to give away hundreds of those meals.
Not to sound like a contestant on Chopped or a Food Network travel show, but food really is about community. Things are scary out there, and sharing cheap, tasty ways for people to fill their stomachs might literally be a lifesaver for them. It's why, in part, Rough ends her videos with, "Please remember to eat, and also I love you."
"The year that I learned how to cook like this was hands down — hands down — the worst year of my life," Rough said. "And in a way, it's like, 'Oh, well, I had to go through that so I can help everyone now.'"
