A “What I Eat in a Day” TikTok That’s Actually Worth Watching

Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other decidedly unserious news. See last week’s about a guy using a hot dog as a straw here.

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who spends a lot of time online, but our internet diary this week leaned toward the distressing. We’d heard of people stealing dishware from restaurants, yet one woman’s documentation of her collection of stolen goods took it to a level we didn’t know existed. We saw Fiber One cereal being used in a way that we wish we’d never seen. Thankfully, it wasn’t all tragedy. There’s cake and music and ironic margarita towers to gawk at too.

My weekend as a 28-year-old in Chicago

The best thing about this video is that it took me a minute to realize it’s a parody. After all, eating four or five meals on a Friday—and stopping for a couple of margarita towers, naturally—feels pretty standard for an East Villains–style day-in-the-life TikTok. But beyond the endless stream of restaurants, dishes, and cocktail spots the poster rattles off—I think I counted 10 on Saturday alone—the funniest part is the spot-on cadence. In so many TikToks like this one, the speaker sounds gobsmacked that they actually had fun at any of the activities they planned for themselves. It hints at how joyless social media makes things that should be joyful, like a full busy weekend with friends. Sending my best to Lizzie, Deblin, Priscilla, Lindsay Ellis, Jake, Beck, Jordan, and the rest of the gang—may your life “actually be kind of dope.” 4.1/5 distressing at first...but then swapped to a 4.1/5 delicious when I realized the video was making fun of its genre. Have another margarita tower. —Nico Avalle, digital operations associate

Woman’s restaurant haul video

I’ve been covering restaurants in some form for more than 10 years, so I’ve known for a long time that customers have absolutely no problem taking dishes, glasses, cutlery, and more from businesses. What I had never witnessed was someone with the sheer audacity of this woman, whose stash of stolen dishware is simply astonishing. There are so many condiment dishes, and so many huge pieces, like a whole pitcher. Mostly, I couldn’t believe how long the video was, and how many pieces of mediocre chain restaurant dishware she’d managed to take. Part of me is jealous—not of her collection, which is, ahem, not to my taste. I’m a bit envious of someone who seems to have so little care for the standards of common decency. To me, this is a human with no anxiety, no shame, no fear, and, apparently, unlimited cabinet space. The other part of me is, of course, horrified. Ma’am…you might have a problem. 4.3/5 distressing —Serena Dai, editorial director

Anti-Inflation cuisine guy

Maybe it’s the tight framing of the photo, or its disturbingly wan color palette, but my reaction upon seeing this Twitter-viral high-fiber tuna concoction was one of horror. For context: Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis, with the best of intentions, shared to the Twitter-sphere his hack for a low-cost, inflation-friendly meal heavy on protein and fiber. Said meal is a mixture of canned tuna (without draining the water), relish, spicy mustard, and Fiber One bran cereal. It looks exactly like what you’re picturing, yet somehow worse.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a thrifty meal, and I could sing the praises of canned tuna for days. Really, I can appreciate someone who unabashedly posts a photo of ugly food. But I think Steven’s conception of a “high-protein, high-fiber, high-yum” meal could use a little workshopping to make it more…palatable. You can actually eat a meal at a low cost, with high fiber and high protein, that’s better than this (like senior food editor Christina Chaey’s savory oats with poached eggs). What about toast rather than Fiber One as a vehicle for tuna salad? Might I suggest brown rice? Maybe we could even get beans in the mix! There’s hope for this. 3.1/5 distressing. —Li Goldstein, digital production assistant

Theremin cake

I’ve long been a fan of Bronwen Wyatt’s flower-strewn, frosting-squiggled cakes. (May I recommend her autumnal apple-hazelnut rye cake as a post–Labor Day baking project?) I’ve also long been a fan of gonzo instruments—glass harmonicas, theremins—that sound like the past’s vision of the future and may or may not make practitioners go insane. Never did I think these twin passions would intertwine, until Wyatt went and baked a theremin cake, coaxing spectral tones from a domed buttercream confection. (Somewhat surprisingly, she is not the first to do so.) Extra points for the cinematic touches and dramatic lighting at the end, which make me feel like I’m watching an Ed Wood movie about aliens who take the form of cake. 4.6/5 delicious. —MacKenzie Chung Fegan, senior commerce editor