YouTube Personality: Grackle *trigger warning*

Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are all great streaming sites, but sometimes they can’t beat the creativity and welcome chaos that comes from scrolling through YouTube videos. You can find almost anything on YouTube, from the classic cat videos to time lapses of decomposing fruit to ASMR present wrapping. There’s also a plethora of personalities on the site, known as YouTubers. They invite us into their lives to spend a few minutes of our day in their creative bubbles. Our featured YouTuber today is a smaller channel from England known as Grackle, aka Grace Booth.

Trigger warning: brief mention of eating disorders (anorexia and binge-purge). Those struggling with restrictive EDs may find this article or these videos triggering.

Grace’s channel is a mix of vlog-style reviews and cooking/baking tutorials. As has a degree in baking, she’s a whiz at whipping up a sourdough loaf or Bakewell tart. A series she often returns to is filming her meals throughout the week to give her viewers a realistic look at her daily diet. It may sound a bit pedestrian, but that’s until you get to know Grace. She makes quality content by baking scrumptious looking cakes, pies, and brownies. But it’s Grace’s warm, bubbly personality that’ll make you hit the subscribe button. She’s genuinely excited to film her videos, explore new things, and interact with her fans. Grace is the wholesome, comforting YouTuber we desperately need right now.

Grace’s channel revolves around food. Whether she’s cooking at home, reviewing quirky restaurant fare, or just indulging in some favorite snacks. She began making sporadic posts to YouTube around six years ago. But it wasn’t until the end of 2016 that she got into the swing of regular uploads. Her content is about eating what you like to eat. And what Grace likes to eat is what anyone in their early 20s enjoys: chips, cookies, burritos, and chocolate. But along with her favorite goodies, Grace makes delicious meals full of vegetables and complex carbohydrates, brimming with protein and fiber to keep her going throughout her day. While there are many things Grace isn’t fond of – custard and coffee are two of the main offenders – she goes out of her way to try new things so she can find more good food to add to her list of likes.

Young adults fumbling about in the chaos of “adulting” are navigating what it means to live independently. Even if they’re still living at home, they are faced with making their own decisions – even what they eat. It’s all too easy to live off junk food and the convenience of home delivery. But since that’s neither necessarily healthy or cost-efficient, it’s not something anyone can keep with for long. Along with bad eating habits, more and more young adults struggle with eating disorders, from anorexia to binging and purging. To some, it may be a strange idea that eating can be a difficult part of someone’s life, but it’s a reality for many people.

Grace’s channel doesn’t delve into eating disorder issues, and she doesn’t claim to be a nutritionist of any sort. What’s refreshing about Grace’s content is her love of food and the way she eats without thinking of how food will make her body look. Instead she’s focusing on how it will make her body feel and function – something in short demand in the face of many social media influencer’s unrealistic food videos.

Her daily vlogs will show her eating moderate portions of peanut butter on toast and vegetable curry with rice with maybe a slice of cake for dessert. Her healthy appetite makes her excited for her meals and eager to put together something delicious that will keep her full until the next time to tuck in. Other videos of hers include learning about food by exploring dishes from different cultures. Like making Christmas dinners from around the world and researching what it meant to eat rationed meals in WWII.

Grace’s videos invoke the best thing YouTube has to offer. That type of content that allows viewers to feel as though they’ve been invited to spend a few minutes with a friend. Grace’s intuitive and unaffected eating, her passion for food and building community through food, and her hilarious and adorable family are also what makes her content so appealing. A bumpy relationship with food is a common struggle – eating right isn’t as easy as it looks. And while Grackle’s channel isn’t by any means a cure, it may serve as a tiny spark of inspiration or just a warm bit of comfort.

Check out a few videos by Grackle below:

Realistic what I eat in a week