How girl dinner walked so savoury girl could eat
Anais Loeppky, Staff Writer
What started three years ago as a comedic TikTok trend quickly took on a narrative of its own—one that’s still relevant today.
Girl dinner—a joke about small snack plates featuring uncommon combinations like cheese, bread, Kraft Dinner, and popcorn—anything with maximum appeal and minimal effort—grabbed audiences’ attention through its humour and realism.
More recently, the savoury girl trend is taking over the same corner of TikTok. The glasses of wine and plates of cheese have been traded for avocado toast, rice bowls, and meals that actually fill you up.
Between the two, questions have been raised about whether the trends are indicators of the cost of living, burnout, and the quiet normalisation of eating disorder culture.
Zooming in on girl dinner
While most people saw the trend as harmless and humorous, others pointed out how closely it mirrored eating disorder culture. Women began questioning whether girl dinner unintentionally romanticised meals that lacked proper nourishment.
For many, however, girl dinner was less about aesthetics and more about exhaustion and the realities of modern grocery prices. After a day of work or school, the idea of preparing a proper meal felt overwhelming.
As rising food costs and living alone made traditional dinners feel impractical, dinner for one became a validating way to eat without the pressure of making a ‘real’ meal.
But while the trend itself was new, thousands of women admitted they had been eating like this for years. What felt like a joke on TikTok was, for many, an accurate representation of how dinner looked at the end of a long day.
“It was honestly just so validating. It was good to know I’m not the only one who occasionally calls an assortment of snacks a meal,” says Sydnie Smith, an MRU student.
For students in particular, the trend resonated. Balancing classes, work, and social lives often leaves little to no time or energy for cooking, and grocery bills can make full meals feel like a luxury rather than a routine.
“If I’m making a steak or something like that, it’s for a special occasion. If I ate a nice meal every day, it would cost my entire paycheque at this point,” says Abby Wilson, an MRU student and server.
Not everyone viewed girl dinner as harmless, however. Some viewers and health professionals criticised the trend for how closely it resembled restrictive eating habits, arguing that it glamorised eating disorder behaviours.
“There is some potential to trigger disordered eating if your girl dinner doesn’t have adequate amounts of calories and variety,” says Toby Amidor from The Food Network.
But for many women, the trend was never about eating less—it was simply eating in a way that was affordable and manageable.
Introducing ‘savoury girl’
As conversations around girl dinners grew, so did discussions about how women approached these low-effort meals.
The rise of the savoury girl trend marked a noticeable shift. Pioneered by Holly Barnes on her TikTok account @savourygirll, people began posting simple yet filling meals: eggs on toast, rice bowls, noodles, soups, and anything that could be made quickly while still feeling substantial.
The tone of the videos changed as well. Where girl dinner leaned into humour and chaos, savoury girl content focuses on nourishment—messages that are less aboutmaking do and more about making something nutritious. The videos almost have an educational undertone, with creators sharing favourite recipes and inspiration for a more balanced diet.
For many students and young adults living alone, cooking elaborate dinners simply isn’t realistic. Despite Barnes’ recent inclusion of high-class delicacies like caviar, the original savoury girl meals rely on affordable staples like eggs, bread, rice, and canned goods.
Underneath both trends is a reset of traditional expectations around dinner. For generations, dinner has been framed as a cooked, complete meal—often prepared by the woman of the household in a nuclear family. These trends suggest that many women are stepping away from that pressure entirely.
“I think both savoury girl dinner and girl dinner are great in their own ways, sometimes after a long day, managing to make any type of meal is anaccomplishment in itself,” says Wilson.
In many ways, savoury girl feels like a response to the criticism of girl dinner. It keeps the low effort and practicality but removes the sense of restriction. It’s still about convenience, but now with the intention of actually being fed.
