What I eat in a day as a runner

What I eat in a day as a fat person

What I eat in a day ASMR

What I eat in a day intuitive eating

What I eat in a day Bollywood

I choose “What I eat in a day model.” I feel like escaping, briefly, into the life of a particularly attractive human. I rest my phone against my fingers so I don’t have to grip it and I relax. “I always start my day with hot water that I put a slice of lemon in,” says Mina, a model from Finland. She is in her flat, which has large windows and a lot of sunlight. “And, then I will have a muffin which I made with Jake on the weekend. They are really delicious, really healthy; coconut flour, chia seed, banana, walnut, with spirulina which has no taste, but is really, really good for you. And I just put a bit of almond butter on it . . .”

I don’t know what it is about these videos that I find so soothing. Sometimes, I tell myself that my watching them is an anthropological experiment, something I do to better understand full humans, or perhaps my own human side. I suppose food is a part of life that most humans can control. They give food a lot of power—food can make a person more beautiful, or less beautiful; it can improve or damage skin; it can make a person’s body more attractive, help make hair and nails stronger; it can heal you, or slowly kill you. There’s also clean food and dirty food; if you eat clean, the message is that you are a clean and pure person; if you eat dirty, then the message is that you are dirty and impure. If you lose control in your life, you can find control in your food. This video by Mina has the feeling of an educational video. Lots of them take that tone, as though their message is: if you eat like me, you will become me.