Food trends take up most of our TikTok scrolling, with food-fluencers stuffing delicious and mouthwatering concoctions, while healthy and 3-ingredient recipes motivate us to recreate for our own. One of the most popular places where TikTok food trends reign supreme is London.
As these food trends influence kitchens across the country, we have to ask, are these viral recipes affecting our health, or going as far as skewing our routine tests? Let’s talk all about London food trends and your health: Are TikTok recipes hurting your blood test results?
The Allure of TikTok Food Trends
TikTok delivers appealing, visually creative, mouthwatering recipes that have us in, as they say, a chokehold. We’ve got uber-popular trends like cloud, butter board, and pancake cereal, and we all remember the Dalgona coffee from our pandemic days of course.
All of these recipes look super fun and easy to recreate, so easy that they often fit into the 10-second video length. With our attention span receding to a couple of minutes at best, these recipes seem to be right up our alley to emulate and enjoy.
But, as fun, quick, and as easy as they look to create, how healthy are they?
While the pancake cereal is delicious and may be good enough to replace regular cereal, what is the nutritional value of eating mini pancakes submerged in milk, chocolate syrup, and honey (and tons of other toppings) every single morning?
What about the butter boards for instance? It’s filled with high amounts of fats and cholesterol. And the amount of butter used in some of these recipes is absurd, to say the least.
It’s no secret that eating these foods will gradually affect your weight, energy levels, lifestyle, and overall health. And it’s time we do something about it, maybe try those trends once just to see what’s up.
How Diet Influences Blood Test Results
You should know already, that your diet will very much affect the results of your routine tests, whether it’s blood or urine tests. Especially for key blood markers, what you put in your body can significantly affect them.
So, the next time you go in for your routine blood test in London and you’ve made the cloud bread the day before, expect to see some anomalies.
High fats can elevate cholesterol levels, while excessive sugar impacts glucose levels. Let’s look at how the viral dier trends may disrupt the accuracy of your tests,
- Spiking triglyceride levels.
- Creating false impressions of nutrient deficiencies.
- Masking underlying health conditions.
We’re going to look at the short-term and long-term effects of these trendy foods on your blood test.
Short Term-Effects
Some food trends, such as pancake cereal and fruit roll-up ice cream have a lot of sugar, fats, or artificial ingredients. A single high-fat or high-sugar meal before a blood test can temporarily spike glucose or lipid levels. This might lead to inaccurate diagnoses of illnesses such as prediabetes or hyperlipidemia.
Dehydration, often not taken into consideration in flashy TikTok-inspired diets, can concentrate your blood, skewing results for sodium, potassium, and other electrolytes. These give dramatically different results that are only temporary, but enough to cause you semi-permanent stress.
While TikTok trends that show off detox teas or juice cleanses can lower protein levels or deplete you of essential minerals, affecting your blood test results, and diagnosing you falsely of anemia or malnutrition.
Long-Term Effects
Trying viral recipes high in saturated fats or sugar constantly can change and skew your baseline health metrics. Elevated cholesterol, triglycerides, or even liver enzymes become common in the findings.
Foods promoting “health hacks” but lacking essential nutrients might lower your hemoglobin or iron levels, potentially mimicking signs of anemia.
Trying savoury and spicy food trends often isn’t the best idea either. These can elevate inflammatory markers temporarily, while high-protein diets might increase creatinine levels, hinting at a diagnosis of kidney strain.
These persistent effects may mask the real state of your health and lead your medical professional to prescribe you medication you never needed in the first place, further worsening your health.
Tips to Avoid the Impact of TikTok Food Trends on Your Blood Tests
Don’t be bummed out because we told you about how TikTok food trends can affect your routine test results. We’ve got some tips where you can avoid the effects but still enjoy the viral food trends on TikTok, see below,
Try to schedule your meals carefully before a blood test. Don’t eat heavy or fatty meals 8-12 hours prior to fasting tests. Large meals, especially those high in sugar or fats, can artificially raise glucose or cholesterol levels, leading to inaccurate and skewed results.
Sticking to this time frame makes sure your blood sample reflects your true health status without any temporary spikes caused by recent indulgences.
Proper hydration is essential for accurate blood tests, as you may already know. Drinking water helps maintain optimal blood consistency, ensuring that the key markers like electrolytes, creatinine, and hemoglobin are measured correctly.
Dehydration or not drinking enough water can cause these markers to appear elevated or concentrated, which could be misinterpreted as a health issue. To avoid this, drink plenty of water in the hours leading up to your test but avoid overhydration, drinking too much water can also dilute blood components and give you a skewed outcome.
Maintaining a balanced and regular diet in the weeks leading up to a blood test is very important. Sudden dietary changes, such as adopting a high-fat or restrictive regimen, can temporarily alter metrics like cholesterol, glucose, and liver enzymes. And once these metrics change, there’s a good chance you won’t get the right results.
When you eat consistently and avoid extreme diets, you make sure that your results provide an accurate picture of your overall health, reducing the risk of misleading anomalies.
The Role of Social Media in Shaping Food Habits
Social media platforms, particularly TikTok, have become very powerful influencers in our eating habits. We’re living and eating according to what the internet says, and that can backfire at times.
Internet and popular trends make food trends accessible and enticing but you’ll rarely come across a video that highlights their health implications and how they can affect their day-to-day eventually.
It’s important that we understand that the line between inspiration and overindulgence is key to maintaining a healthy balance. With that being said, let’s look a quick glimpse at what the positive influences and negative influences can be of these food trends in London.
Positive Influences
While the internet is filled to the brim of incorrect and unhealthy food trends and recipes, there are positive influences you can find and follow. Many TikTok creators share and promote healthy balanced recipes, encouraging viewers to try healthier ingredients or cooking methods.
These trends can bring forth nutrient-dense options into your diet that you might not have considered otherwise, and give you tips on how to create more easy and quick healthy meals to streamline your day-to-day.
These influencers will also use ingredients mindfully and promote budget-friendly alternatives to expensive healthy meals. The ease and accessibility of these recipes will attract viewers and followers, empowering more folks to make healthy meals that benefit your health and your budget.
Negative Influences
We don’t have to reiterate what the negative influences of TikTok food trends can be, you can tell from the first second. Trends like “deep-fried everything” or extreme diets often gain traction without any nutritional validation, just because the preview or thumbnail looks outrageous and super appealing.
There’s also a toxic trend of overconsumption of food, where you’ll see creators dump a whole 2-liter gallon of chocolate sauce or use 20 sticks of butter for a recipe. Not only are they making incredibly unhealthy recipes but they’re also wasting ingredients and possibly inspiring other viewers to do the same, to achieve the same virality and views.
Following these trends mindlessly without moderation, could lead to poor health outcomes over time, but also drain your budget. Ultimately it comes down to your judgement of what you find negative and positive. However 9 times out 10, you can easily tell one from the other.
How Can I Evaluate Food Trends?
When you catch a new food trend in London or elsewhere, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to evaluate them,
- Does the recipe have a good balance of macronutrients?
- Is this a treat or has the potential to be a staple in my diet?
- Are there credible studies or recommendations supporting the health claims made by the creator about this recipe?
Besides asking yourself these questions, check out the comment section of the video and you’ll probably not only get the answers to the questions above, but also, know if the trend is legitimate enough for you to try out.
Conclusion
And there you have it! London’s food trends, amplified by TikTok, offer some amazing culinary experiences. But as we discussed, they can also pose some serious risks such as skew your blood test results temporarily and affect your health permanently.
Remember to trend responsibly, and do your own research before diving right in and trying them out.
