On TikTok, the boy kibble promises a lean body with a simple bowl of rice and ground meat endlessly. Behind this monotonous plate lies a worrying vision of boys’ health and masculinity.
On TikTok, a new plate is circulating: a bowl of white rice, ground meat, sometimes an egg, almost never vegetables. Dubbed boy kibble TikTok, this preparation of croquettes for boys promises to reduce body fat with minimal cooking. The male version of the 2023 girl dinner turns the meal into simple fuel. But behind this hyperprotein porridge, there is more than just a harmless food trend.
Boy kibble: a hyperprotein porridge that has become a symbol of performance
The boy kibble involves cooking rice, ground beef, and sometimes an egg together, then storing the preparation. “The idea is to prepare a large amount of food, somewhat like a porridge, that contains all the necessary nutrients for the week,” explains Patrick Kong to the New York Times. “Then, we eat it throughout the week.” He claims to have lost 9 kg, with his video surpassing 364,000 likes and 25,000 comments.
Content creator Christian Miles, a member of the International Federation of Bodybuilding, presents himself as the initiator of the concept and promises a muscular body with little effort. The trend is still limited to a few hundred videos, but it already appeals to very young boys, sometimes teenagers, who reduce their meals to this hyperprotein and low-fiber, vitamin, and variety blend.
An unbalanced dish and a nutrition discourse imbued with virility
American dietitian Destini Moody sees this appetizing dish as a misleading example of “healthy”: “Just because the food is simple, boring, and bland doesn’t mean it’s healthy,” she summarizes to Parents.com. “There is no superior virtue in eating like this every night. Suffering does not mean being better, it simply means ignoring what is good for oneself, and that is not a quality to seek in a content creator.” Pediatrician Madison Szar mentions a lack of fatty acids, vitamins, calcium, iron, or vitamin D and warns: “Furthermore, the lack of fiber exposes children to the risk of constipation and does not promote a healthy gut microbiome.”
For researcher Emily Contois, a specialist in food media, the use of the word boy aims to “diminish what could be perceived as consumption behaviors related to toxic masculinity” and reflects a “return to more traditional and conventional male authority.” She links the boy kibble to a conservative instrumentalization of nutrition and the rise of a masculinist ideology focused on performance.
