You are what you Tweet

Helen Stuart, Food and Drink Editor

While not as Twitter-literate as Ashton Kutcher or Stephen Fry (who have a combined following of 4,800,000 ‘tweeters’ and counting), I consider myself fairly up on the trends of the micro-blogging site, so have noticed ‘twye’ frequently popping up on people’s feeds. Upon investigation, it turns out ‘twye’ is short for ‘Tweet What You Eat’, the latest dieting craze sweeping the globe.

 TWYE is perhaps the world’s first diet fad that includes technology to such a degree. Having signed up for a twitter account, one simply tweets TWYE with details of everything they eat, including how many calories were consumed, and TWYE adds up your daily gluttony for all the world and their most tech-savvy dog to see. It was begrudgingly that I joined the site, but not without interest – perhaps this was the key to losing those stubborn pounds, and not the healthy balanced diet and exercise I had always been led to believe! I say begrudgingly for one simple reason – I have had a lot of contact with eating disorders and so am all too aware of the dangers of a forum where how much you do or don’t eat can be revealed to others.

At first it was certainly an annoyance – and one that seemed unnecessary – couldn’t I simply write down everything I ate on a bit of paper and add it up at the end of the day? Well, simply put, no – TWYE has a function where it can guesstimate the amount of calories in, say, two fish fingers, and so leaves you with more time to play with your ‘DO NO EAT’ list. What’s more, and what is key, no-one else can see your scrap of paper unless you show it to them. TWYE embraces the idea of food-shame – thought you could keep that half-tub of Ben and Jerry’s your dirty little secret? Not unless you’re taking this dieting thing seriously – yep, it all has to go up there. Ay there’s the rub (As dear old Hamlet would say…mmmm…ham….), you start lying to yourself and to other TWYE-ers. Or at least I did. No need for the world at large to know I scoffed an entire meat pizza AND chicken strips after a day of hard studying….No-one need ever know…It’s not like I’m about to go broadcasting this fact in any kind of public forum…Oh…Whoops.

However, I will admit that seeing those calories tot up certainly made me more aware of them – one cup of tea with sugar will do today, instead of the four I had yesterday, which added up to 100 calories and pushed me over my recommended 2000kcal a day. To conclude then, if you’ve got a sensible head on you and are serious about losing weight, there are worse things you could do than start up a TWYE account. However, if you are in any way susceptible to any kind of eating disorder or paranoia about body image, steer well clear – there should be no shame in how much you eat (unless you happen to eat a big, greasy doughy disc of saturated fat of an evening).