What’s the viral Taking Photos of Your Food TikTok trend?

While it’s more well-known for its viral videos and for making obscure and older songs trend anew, TikTok trends occasionally transcend a single medium. The social media app has implemented slideshows — similar to the photo dumps of Instagram — so that users can upload their own photos to the platform. As you might expect, TikTok users are using the feature in various ways but one thing is consistent across social media sites: people love to share photos of their food.

I’m not here to judge — my own TikTok has a bunch of food photo dumps — but TikTok has whole content creators who are dedicated to documenting their favorite meals and sharing them with the masses. This is nothing new and it’s certainly not exclusive to TikTok, but a new trending sound is giving users more reason to proudly share their food photos.

The origin of the Food Photos sound on TikTok

TikTok user @dellara shared a video of herself defending the desire to take photos before you eat, even going as far as comparing the act to “a form of prayer.” Formerly known as @legalbaddie, Dellara is a UCLA law school graduate and has gone viral in the past for her motivational videos and for speaking at Capitol Hill regarding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Dellara’s eloquent (if not a little tongue-in-cheek) way of describing why she takes pictures of her food is resonating with many other food photo-takers on the app; the original video has 540k views.

“You’re taking a moment to appreciate and to admire and to romanticize your food before you eat it. And that’s a beautiful thing! And if someone makes you feel bad for taking photos of your food before you eat, tell them that they are disrespecting your faith and your religion.”

While food photo-taking isn’t exclusive to young girls, young women are probably the most visible group who share food photos on social media. Like many things young women do, this has been heavily criticized in both the media and in their personal lives, and seeing someone who is visibly successful proudly defending the act can be empowering for young girls, as silly as it may sound. At an age where everything is embarrassing (queue the Sky Ferreira song), videos like this can make it feel as though you have permission to partake in social media rituals when you might otherwise fear your peers will make fun of you.

The majority of posts using the sound are slideshows of food with Dellara’s words captioning the photos. As far as TikTok trends go, this one is wholesome and gives users an excuse to share what delicious food they’ve been eating. If food photos somehow irk you, feel free to pass on this trend, but please, don’t yuck someone else’s yum.