Problematic on TikTok is a weekly column that unpacks the troubling trends that are emerging on the popular platform and runs on Tuesdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
Analysis
Crumbl cookies, a cookie franchise with almost 900 locations nationally, is a mainstay on TikTok. Each cookie is about the size of your hand, and some are topped with frosting. The franchise’s secret to going viral weekly, though, is its rotating menu.
Each Monday, Crumbl announces the six cookies that will be sold over the next seven days. Every location always sells a variation on a chocolate chip cookie and each location bakes a mystery cookie weekly. The surprise and intrigue of Crumbl’s menu make it perfect for food review TikTokers—every Monday, they have a new batch of cookies to try, rate, and post about.
And I’ve fallen prey to Crumbl myself. On weeks where the menu looks particularly delicious, my girlfriend and I get a box and discuss our ratings of the cookies. It’s fun, even though a six pack is almost 25 bucks.
Recently, however, TikTok has found out just how many calories are in each Crumbl cookie: Around 600-800 calories. This came as a surprise to some because on Crumbl’s menu, calories per serving of each cookie are listed and the number shown tends to be less than 200. So, some people really thought that the cookies were all less than 200 calories.
This had led to a lot of people posting about their food guilt around eating Crumbl cookies. In one TikTok covered by the Daily Dot last month, a TikToker says that she ate two Crumbl cookies thinking they were each 190 calories. The accompanying TikTok audio is Wendy Williams saying “clap if you’ve ever been to a fat farm.”
Needless to say, if you eat two Crumbl cookies or even more than two, you don’t need to go on a weight loss retreat. But some TikToks about the calories in Crumbl cookies might make you feel that way: One TikToker posted a video of himself eating a Crumbl cookie and then running long enough to burn off all the calories in it.
Why it matters
Food guilt and feeling the need to earn food via exercise are trademark signs of disordered eating. It’s not the aforementioned TikTokers’ fault that they feel discomfort around eating Crumbl cookies. We live in a society that is overly focused on weight loss and thinness. But posting about food guilt and burning off Crumbl cookies without a discussion of disordered eating and eating disorders only shames viewers into thinking that they should be feeling bad about eating and enjoying Crumbl cookies.
If when you found out how many calories are really in Crumbl cookies you didn’t want to eat them anymore, that’s okay and that’s your choice. But don’t ruin the enjoyment of eating a yummy dessert for everyone else by saying that the cookies are too fatty or caloric.
Let cookies be fun!
