How Social Media is Changing how we Eat and Drink

This is a collaborative post.

We love food, we love drink and, nowadays, everyone seems to love being absorbed in social media. There’s no doubt that technology has drastically changed the way we go about our everyday lives.  At the beginning of this year, research found that 83% of the UK’s adult population are active on some form of social media. Whether we are using this platform to stay in contact with each other, we are also quite prone to posting snaps of our days in a way to ‘boast’ about our activities, whether this is regarding our latest holiday abroad or most our recent choice of food.

Here, with paper table cloth providers, Inn Supplies, I’m sharing with you how we think social media is indeed changing our eating and drinking habits.

Meal Portions

A study has shown that those that are highly active on social media users are actually eating smaller portions. This could be due to the fact they aren’t willing to part with enough time to eat a large meal. Whether this really is the case or not, it’s rather concerning to think that people are putting their social media addiction ahead of gaining the nutrients needed to function as a human! I also think this could be down to wanting to consume more dished of photo-friendly food in one sitting!

Food Envy

With people taking photos of their meals all over the world, it’s a phenomenon we simply can’t avoid no matter where we are. Recent statistics found that in America, over half the population take pictures of their food, with the food they’ve cooked themselves being the most photographed. As well as this, over one in five US residents have admitted to sharing snaps of the food they’ve received whilst at a party or wedding.

This has often lead to what we now call food envy and I get it all the time! We are all aware of what we want when we see it, and it’s the same when it comes to food and drink. We can see something online and we get cravings to have it ourselves.

Choice of food

This may seem so crazy with so many food choices, but social media has actually been proven to be helping us eat a whole lot healthier. We may just think we are sharing images of our delicious dishes, but we are also sharing recipes, education, tips and a whole lot more to our followers.

Kathy Smart, CEO of Live the Smart Way has been quoted saying “You are more apt to try a recipe or a new food when you see a picture of it and have a friend or person you trust recommend trying it or how to use it.”

So many of the recipes that are being shared are quick and easy to make, which is appealing to the majority in our very time poor lives we live. With adding an image alongside the recipe grabbing our attention as healthy foods are often the most photogenic due to their vibrant, bold colours. I’ve got so many Pinterest boards with recipes I want to try as I like the look of the photo!

Career

With the advances in technology, being a social media influencer is now classified as a job for some, much like myself. It may seem like a crazy concept but it’s becoming more normalised with children in schools wishing to be YouTubers when they grow up, when I wanted to be a vet or a lawyer.

Being a social media influencer isn’t always as easy at it seems though; it looks like eating out a lot, travelling around the world and taking stunning photos is all we do, but there’s a lot of admin, a hell of a lot editing and hours spent writing too.

As more and more of us using social media each day, it’ll be interesting to see how our future diets are affected because of technology.