The mustard and cottage cheese diet
There’s a tangy, new viral diet fad in town, and it begs the question, “Can you die from too much mustard?” Not from eating it, necessarily, just from watching other people eat it.
Tiffany Magee’s TikTok is filled with her eating her favorite lunch over and over in a spellbinding sequence: chicken sausage, raw and pickled vegetables, fruit, cottage cheese and a metric ton of mustard, adding up to over 100 million views. And she claims she’s lost 80 pounds — and counting — since eating this meal every day.
If you haven’t had the bright-yellow pleasure, here’s one of her trademark crunchy-munchy lunches, featuring hearts of palm:
There’s nothing terribly wrong with that plate nutritionally, as long as the rest of the day’s meals fill in some nutritional gaps, and food jags are normal. But, though it’s no surprise there’s a lot of mustard in the mustard diet, I don’t think you’re prepared for how much there is.
There is
So.
Much.
Mustard.
I muster my courage to watch several in a row. My eyes water. My teeth cringe. It looks to be up to a 1/4 cup of the pungent, turmeric-spiked and salty style of the condiment. Along with things like cottage cheese, pickled vegetables and sausage, that’s a day’s worth of sodium in a single meal, and enough vinegar to make a salad buffet blush.
Despite that, this is one of the most viral diet trends ever. There are hundreds of response videos: same school bus-hued mustard, same chicken-apple sausage, same raw vegetables.
It’s wonderful that so many people are trying new things for their takes on the trend, and some really like it. TikTok user Lyndee LeBourgeois thoughtfully chews a carrot and says, “I think I need more mustard.”
There’s a strong contingent of haters, though. Popular food and lifestyle YouTuber Farnum gave it a 2 out of 5, and his wife had a core meltdown, ultimately spitting it out.
“We’ve been waiting days and days and days to try this,” says user @kobanks8, disapprovingly, “and…
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