Food for Thought: an Exploration of @oatcitizen
Scrolling through Instagram, it is easy to become lost in an endless cycle of diet fads and flashy exercises, which is why the discovery of the Instagram page @oatcitizen often feels like the uncovering of a safe haven.
Run by Portola High rising senior Kelthie Truong, @oatcitizen is, at its core, a visual food blog; the overall feed has a rich, earthy tone, which helps highlight the photos of mouthwatering vegan dishes, like banana bread and apple pie zucchini oats. But when viewers look closer at her captions, they quickly realize Truong is not just focused with sharing new recipes; she is dedicated to presenting her authentic and moving perspectives on mental health.
Truong was in seventh grade when she discovered that mental health was a serious issue and that she was dealing with a form of anxiety herself. From that point onward, Truong became more self-aware of her mental health, capable of recognizing when her habits became unhealthy. Unfortunately, the actual process of coping was more difficult and eventually, the anxiety developed into depression and an eating disorder.
“I was kind of shocked to find out that I had an eating disorder, because I didn't think it was considered one; I thought eating disorders could only be anorexia or bulimia,” Truong said. “My eating disorder is called orthorexia, and it’s an obsession with trying to have a perfect diet, in your standards. And it just becomes really exhausting, because it means that you’re restricting certain foods and you’re cutting it out of your diet; you say ‘it’s dirty’ or ‘it’s bad’ so you can’t eat it. Things in your eyes become either good or bad, black or white.”
After this discovery, Truong began realizing that many of her daily activities revolved around satisfying her orthorexia, from her obsessive need to check nutrition labels to the hours she spent researching ingredients. But by freshman year, Truong became inspired by the wellness-based Instagram accounts she was seeing and decided to pursue her own platform.
“The [@oatcitizen] account started as a coping mechanism for anxiety, because I thought food was the way to handle my anxiety, but it was just another form,” Truong said. “After I found out what I was going through, [after] I put a name to it, I wanted to keep myself accountable so I started the account. It started with simple oatmeal pictures, because I really like oatmeal for some reason, and the captions were just thoughts that I had.”
At the very beginning, @oatcitizen was akin to a journal for Truong; she used this space to document her eating disorder journey. But over time, her account allowed her to connect with other individuals who were just as dedicated to wellness as she was.
“I think social media isn’t inherently toxic; it’s just the community that you choose to involve yourself in because the community that I found after I started my account is full of people who believe that health exists at every size and that you don’t have to have a restrictive relationship with food,” Truong said. “But on the same platform, there’s a lot of weird fitness hacks… It’s weird because it all exists in the same world and they’re all really impactful, so it’s all a matter of when you see it and what time you see it and what place you’re at mentally when you see it.”
Truong hopes @oatcitizen can be a platform that combats negative diet culture beliefs and inspires other individuals, specifically teenagers like herself, to treat health differently. Her captions never preach about certain foods to eat or exercises to complete. Rather, they discuss how recovery is different for each person, the difficulty of battling against negative habits and the value of individual beauty, among many other topics.
“I can’t say that I’ve completely recovered yet, because there are still times where I know I shouldn’t be thinking this way,” Truong said. “And that’s because I’m part of the same group of people who are influenced by skinny Tik-Tok stars everyday, and it’s still a part of me. It’s there. But it’s less about trying to get rid of that side of me, that history, and more of trying to have the recovery voice be bigger than the disorder voice.”
Although @oatcitizen is still a very personal project for Truong, in the future, she is planning to put more focus on the viewers instead of discussing her own life. Her goal is to create a platform that is interactive, allowing for people of all demographics to share their stories in the comments and learn from each other.
“I think it’s really important for people to erase the stigma around mental health, but also contribute to the discussion, because every experience is just as valid,” Truong said. “And I think that’s one of the main things that I’m trying to stress with my posts on @oatcitizen.”