This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
In a now-deleted viral TikTok, a food creator accused an unnamed popular food magazine—which users speculated was Delish—of using her recipe without crediting her, despite many differences between the recipes. The video sparked a conversation about whether the recipe in question was copied, creators “rebranding” cultural dishes as their own, companies using creators’ ideas, and why recipes can’t be copyrighted.
The viral video, which was viewed at least 100,000 times before being deleted Tuesday, was posted earlier in the week by food TikToker Monica D’Agostino (@saltandsagenutrition), who has 55,000 followers. In the video, the TikToker says she believes one of her recipes may have been stolen by a major food magazine.
“I know in the food space there’s a lot of different variations of recipes. People can kind of, like, tweak them and make them their own and create their own recipes based on other people’s recipes, but when something like this happens, it really bothers me,” D’Agostino said in the video.
The TikToker then claimed she originally came up with an idea for a turkey feta meatball recipe around 2018 when she only had 400 followers on Instagram. She said she finally posted it on TikTok a few months ago, and it went viral. Her recipe video for turkey feta meatballs posted in July currently has over 1.6 million views.
