Cottage Cheese: Is it a nutritional need or hyperfixation?

If you have the same “For You Page” as me, then you would be familiar with health influencers glorifying cottage cheese by adding it into everything (and I mean everything) they eat. I don’t know about you, but as a huge cottage cheese fan, I’m tired of people acting like cottage cheese is some sort of miracle food that can magically transform every dish into a high protein, guilt-free health hack. I’m not saying that cottage cheese is terrible because it is absolutely a great way to add protein into your diet, however influencers are pushing the idea so aggressively that it’s starting to feel less like a suggestion and more like a requirement.

My main issue with it isn’t the cottage cheese itself, but the mindset behind it. When we are too busy being caught up with the numbers, whether it's the amount of protein in food or how many calories it has, we forget to actually enjoy what we are eating. While it’s true that cottage cheese is not only extremely good for your probiotic intake and gut heath, there’s no such thing as a miracle food. In fact, the Nutrition Services manager and the co-chair on the Eating Disorder Assessment (EAT) team, Lisa Macdonald states that they “have lots of students coming to [them] that have included or excluded foods based on whatever the trends are on Tik Tok…they’ll start reporting I’m eating cottage cheese this, and cottage cheese that,’ and I’ll stop. And I’m like, ‘What’s happening on Tik Tok with cottage cheese” (Social media and campus culture fuel eating disorders among students 7). This shows the impact that social media promoting one specific food has on shaping the diets of their impressionable audience. By glamorizing eating a majority of cottage cheese in their daily diet, they are unknowingly developing eating disorders. For people who actually want to consume cottage cheese in every meal, be my guest, but turning it into a miracle solution enforces an unhealthy relationship with food. Not everything you eat needs to be high protein or low calorie to be valid. Any food can be guilt free if you eat it without worrying about the numbers.

Food should be more than just the numbers on the back of the box, it should be something that you can eat without thinking twice about the fats or amount of sodium in it. If that satisfying food for you is cottage cheese, great! If it isn’t, that;s okay, because at some point, it stops becoming a personal choice and turns into a habit that social media pressures you to do.