Getting all the nutrition you need can be easier said than done, especially when it comes to foods you don’t particularly enjoy.
Keen to simplify the process and potentially boost her health, TikToker Amy Garrett (@sahmthingsup) has become the face of a wellness hack called ‘Dinosaur Time’. Compared with the likes of living exclusively off red meat or brewing alcoholic beverages in the sink, this is a remarkably healthy TikTok trend.
The idea is to boost vegetable intake by ‘acting like a dinosaur’ – in other words, shovel the greens in and munch them down like a triceratops in The Land Before Time.
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Amy simply takes a moment out of her day, just before lunch, to rip open a box of salad greens and shove a fistful of them into her mouth.
By chomping and getting stuck into some good old grinning and bearing it, Amy has found it to be an effective way of getting through the likes of spinach, lettuce, bok choy and more.
She completes the effect in some of her videos with the Jurassic Park theme.
While it started out as a ‘lazy girl hack to get your greens in’, it has since grown into a bona fide TikTok health phenomenon.
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Amy has since been featured on American broadcaster NPR, as well as producing plenty of videos explaining what Dinosaur Time is.
In one FAQ video, she explained it’s all about getting more greens into her diet with the minimum amount of fuss. She says that she engages in Dinosaur Time just before lunch so she needn’t ‘pretend to like the taste’ or otherwise figure out how to incorporate these greens into her meals.
After all, she doesn’t like them, but she feels she needs them. She commits to the bit by forgoing dressings or cheese, ensuring her ‘brain is more focused on getting it down’.
The practice has won many fans on the social media platform. Once person said: "Adulthood is just finding increasingly strange ways of tricking yourself into doing what you're supposed to."
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"My life when I realised I could do this with any food I should be getting more of," said another. "It doesn't always need to be prepare nicely or added to another dish."
As someone who routinely tricks themselves into going for runs by switching to auto-pilot, getting the shoes on, doing the stretches, and getting out the door without leaving room for a resistant inner monologue, Dinosaur Time certainly checks out.
While this may be an effective way to get some greens down, and the dinosaur element may be a useful way to get greens to appeal to kids, some experts have warned against the practice.
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Esther Tambe, a registered dietician based in New York, raised her concerns about it in conversation with BuzzFeed.
She said she is ‘always concerned about TikTok nutrition trends, especially when advice comes from people without proper expertise’, but was supportive of the general idea around encouraging people to eat more greens.
It’s estimated that only 1 in 10 Americans get the federally-recommended daily dose of vegetables, so there’s certainly a lot of ground to be gained in the battle for better public health.
There are some potential downsides to eating more leafy greens however. Esther told BuzzFeed that some medications and react negatively when you eat a lot of vitamin K-rich foods, citing the anticoagulant Warfarin as an example.
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She added that some gastrointestinal illnesses benefit from a reduced fibre intake. Leafy greens are packed with fibre, which can refer to natural matter that our digestive systems can’t break down.
If you cast your mind back to GCSE Biology, you’ll remember that our bodies can’t break down plant cell walls. Fibre is useful for both keeping our digestive systems strong by giving our guts something to push against, but also for doing regular, firm and consistent poos.
Before undertaking any kind of major dietary change, it’s a good idea to consult a professional first. It’s also a good idea to be sceptical of TikTok health trends, as only a scant few come with medically-backed research to support them.
Topics: Health, Diet, Social Media, TikTok
Rachael Davis