Is ‘girl dinner’ healthy — or an eating disorder? Experts weigh in

“Girl dinner” is the latest food trend, with the hashtag #girldinner gaining a whopping 1.3 billion views on TikTok.

Girls everywhere are showing off what they pulled together from their fridges and pantries to have as a low-effort dinner.

Maybe you put a plate together of some leftover slices of deli meat, fruits, cheese and crackers rather than making a full-out meal.

It takes just a few minutes and you use practically no energy: That is a girl dinner.

Self-proclaimed “girl dinner” creator Olivia Maher said in a May TikTok that “in medieval times peasants had to eat nothing but bread and cheese,” arguing that the scraps are actually what she would consider her “ideal meal.”

Many have branded the trend as “disturbing” — but there might be more nutritional value to this snack-like dinner than one might think.

Kind of like a charcuterie board for one, “girl dinner” can be a healthy option if there’s enough variety.

WebMD Medical Team Member Dr. Neha Pathak told The Post that “a ‘girl dinner’ gives you the chance to take back the joy, focus on you, and be mindful of what your body needs without having to worry about anyone else.

“Whenever I prescribe healthy-balanced meals made up mostly of fruits and veggies, I know that for a lot of people that’s overwhelming and too much work. “

Pathak — who is dual board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine — stressed the importance of making sure your plate has a filling and healthy portion size with enough protein, vegetables and carbohydrates.

“You just want to be sure you’re making the meal about a healthy, joyful YOU, and NOT making the meal all about disease-causing, unhealthy processed foods,” Pathak shared. “Pretty is the point … you want your plate to be colorful and beautiful.

“As a married, lifestyle medicine physician mom with three daughters, there’s actually nothing I look forward to more than a night that’s just a ‘girl dinner,’” Pathak said, adding that she’s all for taking an additional step and adding “girl lunches” and “girl breakfasts” into the mix.

Olivia Amitrano, the “OG wellness influencer,” told The Post that the “girl dinner” trend can actually be “one of the most balanced ways” to prepare a meal for a person’s gut microbiome — which is integral to digestion and generating nutrients — and to enrich gut diversity.

The founder of wellness brand Organic Olivia shared that gut diversity is not about the number of good “bugs” within our gut microbiome, but rather the richness and diversity of the bacteria.

So rather than dosing our bodies with a bunch of probiotics, achieving gut diversity should be done through eating diverse sources of fiber and plants.

In fact, a 2019 report from the environmental watchdog World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found that 75% of the food we consume comes from just 12 plant sources and five animal sources

“We’re grabbing the same food staples from the grocery stores over and over again and we get stuck in these ruts of meals that we hyper-fixate on, and we eat the same thing every day because it’s easy or we have it prepped or we have the same Sweetgreen order,” Amitrano explained, noting how important it is to continue to expand the palate to a range of plants and fibers.

Amitrano said that her “perfect ‘girl dinner’” would be protein-forward, centering around cottage cheese as a dip/sauce/base for a hefty serving of protein, adding some cut-up veggies for color on the plate, as well as a source of carbs such as a piece of toast with hummus or avocado to get healthy fat in the mix.

“I’m putting together all these little leftover fun things that are in my fridge, and I actually end up making a far more diverse meal than I would have if I just had my usual chicken salad that I make every single night of the week,” she said.

She believes that “girl dinner” gives a huge opportunity for people to try unusual, fibrous plants and foods that one wouldn’t normally consider as a side dish — pickles and other fermented items, for example.

Amitrano also expressed that these types of meals with higher levels of gut diversity could have health benefits for women with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) or subjects with Type 2 diabetes.

“You want to get as many different plants and odd foods into your diet per week as possible, and ‘girl dinner’ is a great way to do that,” Amitrano said.

But “girl dinner” doesn’t have to be all healthy foods — there’s still room for treats.

“As long as you’re centering your plate around a protein source and including healthy fats and fibers, then you can add other fun stuff to your plate, like chips or pretzels or a glass of wine, whatever else you want to put in there that’s fun, as long as you have the base of protein and fiber first,” Amitrano added.

However, the trend comes amid lots of criticism that TikTok promotes “toxic” diet culture and “glorifies” weight loss, as well as the alarming rise of adolescent eating disorders since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amitrano noted that when people think of “girl dinner,” it’s typically because we’re really exhausted and don’t have the mental space or capacity to even put together a dip or cut up vegetables for sustenance.

“Sometimes ‘girl dinners’ on TikTok can look a little sad — it’s just too little food,” she said. “I think that there is a risk there that we might not be meeting our caloric needs. Just eating enough is so important when you’re having ‘girl dinner.’

“You want to make sure you’re looking at it as an opportunity for abundance and having fun with what’s left on your fridge and putting a lot on your plate and seeing what you gravitate towards, and not limiting yourself or judging yourself,” Amitrano continued. “Don’t look at it as a diet trend or a way to eat less, but look at it as a way to have more fun with your food and not pigeonhole yourself into that same meal rut that we get stuck in.”

Whether or not one should be worried by the increase of the trend is a concern of context and pattern.

Chase Bannister, MDIV, MSW, LCSW, CEDS, told The Post that it’s unreasonable to look at one single restrictive meal and be concerned about disordered eating

However, if it becomes a pattern and turns into a regular eating habit that doesn’t meet the individual’s nutritional needs, “that’s a red flag moment.”

“It’s no crime to have fun with food. That said, this trend raises some important questions, both clinically and culturally,” Bannister said.

One big concern to Bannister is what could happen when people “overlook the thinly-veiled misogyny of these words,” he said.

“What makes food ‘girl food’?  And, perhaps bluntly, when surveying the landscape of images, why are there so many salads and so few cheeseburgers? I do wonder what the perfectly-sized, perfectly-presented ‘girl’ of the ‘girl dinner’ is supposed to look like. And what are the slow, creeping costs of the performative social media enterprise upon bodies and minds?” he questioned.

“As a clinician, these questions concern me greatly, but these questions escape the bounds of the therapy session. As people, we need to call attention to potentially risky behaviors, to the commercialization of bodies, and to the problem of conflating our encounters with food, body, weight, size, and appearance with our human value.

“We owe ourselves — and each other — better than that.”

But Bannister, the founder of Veritas Collaborative eating disorders treatment centers and senior vice president for community engagement at Accanto Health, added that it’s absolutely possible to have these non-traditional meals without bordering on disordered eating.

“We find ways to nourish our bodies while leading busy lives, traveling or in myriad social situations, and few of us have endlessly stocked pantries to craft a perfectly balanced meal every moment our body needs energy or gives us hunger cues,” he said. “Getting creative with the foods we have available to us is part of being human.”