TikTok’s influence on food: How online trends blow up

You’ve likely heard of Dubai chocolate. For a moment in 2025, the treat was everywhere, images of it filling social media feeds and demand for it ratcheting up to such a level that it caused a global pistachio shortage. This would likely not have happened without TikTok. Dubai chocolate’s popularity originated as a TikTok social media trend, and once it had, little could stop it from spilling out into the real world. Dubai chocolate was not the first food to be made popular by the platform, and it won’t be the last. TikTok trends exert an outsize influence on food and beverage, especially among younger consumers. The app has been instrumental to the success behind popular food brands as well, from ice cream brand Little Moons to Japanese chain Itsu. Its influence is so significant that researchers are exploring just how the app influences dietary preferences and the uptake of viral trends . How much influence does the wildly popular platform have in food? The TikTok algorithm is able to fine-tune user experience, creating a highly personalised stream of recommended content. TikTok is, in particular, a source of developing food trends, with many now-ubiquitous trends originally stemming from the platform. The social media platform’s famous viral food trends are often spurred on by presentation and aesthetics: hence, Dubai chocolate, with its mesmerising bright green knafeh and crunchy texture. Such presentation is more likely to evoke strong emotions, and positive content is more likely to go viral than the inverse. Because it’s a social media platform and is thus communal, TikTok naturally builds trends. Users want to participate in these trends, and this mass participation helps them to grow. Hashtags carry these trends into the stratosphere, linking users back to other posts in a growing wave. Creators themselves can be, in part, responsible for this. Younger TikTok users in particular often see content creators on the platform as more “authentic” and “relatable”, and even more as peers, than other figures in the media. They may form a (usually one-sided) emotional bond with them. This in turn shapes the uptake of trends. Whatever the reason that they take off, the power of TikTok trends is undeniable. Many companies will increase sales of specific ingredients due to the sheer demand such a trend creates. Several well-known trends have originated from the platform. One major trend was cottage cheese , which led to a boom in the dairy product. Users gravitated towards it because of its high protein content and versatility. The freeze-dried candy market has been driven by TikTok too, to the point where the market was predicted to double in the space of less than a decade. More unusual trends have come from the social media platform as well. For example, the popularity of butter boards – cutting boards slathered with butter and other foods – stemmed from TikTok. And of course, as previously mentioned, the Dubai chocolate trend would be nothing without TikTok. TikTok is a force to be reckoned with in food. Food trends originating there can move markets. With calls to boycott the platform since its US ownership changed hands, will this influence last?

TikTok’s influence on food: How online trends blow up

The social media platform can drive food trends to the point where they move markets

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