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Single-serve success

Single-serve success

Zoë Hill ’22 July 05, 2024

Sometimes you want an easy dinner with just a few ingredients, and sometimes you want to try to make Doritos from scratch; it’s called balance.

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From dorm room to cookbook, Jenna Hunter serves up success.

Doctoral student Jenna Hunter now calls that balance a job. What began as a pandemic project, Hunter started sharing quick, healthy recipes on TikTok. Her first — a fruit taco recipe — debuted on her account, @thehealthyhophead, in early 2021. A few recipes later, she started going viral.

“One day I felt silly and I wanted to make Doritos from scratch to kind of give myself a challenge,” Hunter said. “Plus, I was craving Doritos.”

Soon after, her content captured over a million views with from-scratch snack foods, low-energy desserts and one-pot meals. Hunter really found her niche when she began posting videos for “hotties who work” and “hotties who live alone.”

“It’s one simple meal that has the perfect balance of protein, carbs and fats,” Hunter said. “For me, as a dietitian, that's the perfect single-serving meal.”

She uses that formula to curate the recipes her audience loves, and ones that are deeply reminiscent of her undergraduate years. Trying to make healthy but delicious meals in a college dorm or apartment is no easy task, she said. That’s why she posts ideas that can be done in a single dish or small appliance like a rice cooker.

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Compact Cooking by Jenna Hunter

She’s now taking that idea offline with her new cookbook, Compact Cooking. After blowing up on both Tik Tok and Instagram, a publisher reached out to make one of Hunter’s life-long dreams come true.

“I've always wanted to come out with a cookbook at some point in the future,” Hunter said. “I put it on my Pinterest dream board to accomplish later.”

Her social media skills and her nutrition education mix together to combine in her research, too. Hunter is investigating the impacts of social media campaigns on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Recognizing not everyone has access to or nutrition information or even the physical space to make meals is baked into the core of her work.

“I have just tried to create a space that's a little bit more inclusive for people on social media,” Hunter said.

She’s living out her doctoral lessons on inclusivity and advocacy, one recipe and one hottie at a time.

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