TikTok’s latest diet trend: ‘10-Day Egg Diet,’ but is it safe?
TikTok’s obsession with food and nutrition can sometimes be inspirational – the platform is filled with creative recipes and options for healthy eating. However, it can also lead to some pretty bizarre diet trends that can be downright risky at times.
Some famous recent TikTok diet trends include salad water, the salmon rice bowl, and the Green Goddess Salad.
Now a new trend is gaining traction on the site — the 10-Day Egg Diet — and has some nutrition experts worried it’s encouraging people to take a very restrictive approach to weight loss.
The trend is promoting a diet of eating eggs three meals a day — and little else. The diet allowed green tea, apples and oatmeal along.
Videos that have garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views show TikTokers attempting the 10-day challenge and claiming it is their attempt to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.
One user showed off one of her daily meals on the diet and noted that she ate three hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, three for lunch, and a bowl of oatmeal with boiled water for dinner. The video, which has more than 20,000 likes, claims it is her plan to “lose 10kg in 10 days”.
The 10-Day Egg Diet, which is a version of the traditional “boiled egg diet” that predates TikTok, may still be too restrictive, experts argue.
Like most crash diets, it doesn’t create a sustainable approach to long-term weight loss. It also limits the amount of fiber and nutrients from dark leafy greens and whole grains that are important for health.
Healthline gave the diet a 1.33 out of 5, noting that “while the boiled egg diet encourages eating healthy food groups and may promote short-term weight loss, it is overly restrictive and unsustainable. Any weight you lose can be regained once you return to your typical eating habits.”
The 10-Day Egg Diet is also one of several trends that experts have identified as potentially harmful to young people when it comes to common body image issues.
A study published in PLUS ONE Last year, it emerged that the majority of nutrition-related posts on TikTok “presented a weight-normative view of health, with less than 3% coded as weight-inclusive,” and that not much of the site’s nutrition content is disseminated by experts.
Researchers also found that nutritional content on TikTok “may contribute to disordered eating behaviors and physical dissatisfaction among young people, who are the predominant users of TikTok.”
Even some TikTokers who have followed the trend admit that there are some nasty side effects from eating mostly eggs – including some stomach irritation and nausea.
“I think the last nine days of eating essentials caught up with me today and I’ve been nauseous all day,” said one user on her last day of the diet.
In other words, if you’re looking to lean on TikTok for nutrition advice, use good judgment and careful discretion: there’s a much wider range of healthy recipes to choose from.