About

How to Eat is a side-by-side image macro series in which the memer presents a dish they do not like on the left and a photo of a person pushing a paper plate into a garbage can on the right. The images are captioned with a variation on the phrasal template "how to eat X," indicating that the only way to eat the dish is to throw it in the trash.

Origin

On December 24th, 2020, Twitter ^[1] @blackexcellent_ tweeted the earliest known example of the meme. They wrote, "A quick reminder of how to eat your rum cake on Christmas Day". Underneath the caption, they included a photograph of a rum cake and the image of the man pushing the plate into the trash. The post received more than 775 likes and 700 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Spread

Within minutes of the initial post, people began to post variations on Twitter. On the morning of December 24th, 2020, for example, Twitter^[2] user @NattyDaCapo tweeted, "How to eat ox tail." The tweet received more than 4,900 retweets and 3,200 likes in less than one week (shown below, left).

Days later, on December 27th, the format began going viral on Twitter with a tweet^[3] by user @ikponmwosa46, who posted "how to olives." The tweet received more than 100,000 likes and 34,000 retweets in less than three days (shown below, center).

From there, other versions of the meme began appearing, including one featuring a man enjoying several plates of the food presented. On December 29th, Twitter^[4] user @isejayde tweeted "How to eat chicken fettuccine," which featured a photo of a man with three plates of food, indicating that the meme's author enjoys the food. The tweet received more than 144,000 likes and 33,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Not available.

External References