Diya Eggleston on authenticity, cultural erasure, and her mom’s biryani
Writer Andy Crump speaks with the influencer about her social media persona, not taking things too seriously, and more
Not everyone can go viral for a recipe from their childhood, but Diya Eggleston managed to with her biryani.
Courtesy of Diya Eggleston
Words by Andy Crump
In May 2025, fitness influencer and personal coach Travis Clarke posted a recipe video audaciously characterizing the featured dish as biryani—broadly speaking, one of India’s most popular dishes, an aroma salvo guaranteed to make your home smell amazing and your tummy feel full. In mid-October 2025, Diya Eggleston, likewise a fitness influencer, but with heavy quotes around the label, posted a reaction video to Clarke’s clip, and showed up his biryani (even heavier quotes required) by making her mother’s recipe.
Eggleston’s viewers ate it up—the video, not the biryani, though the bulk of her audience clearly longed for a bite of the latter. Social media is where people go to throw down and participate in collective jeering; on apps like Instagram, users love a good old fashioned pile-on. But that’s not quite what happened with Eggleston’s video. People latched onto the personal quality. She made not just a biryani, but the biryani of her childhood. And in the comments, her viewers began to open up about matters atypical to her content, like cultural erasure, appropriation and appreciation, as well as that loaded buzzword: authenticity.
The biryani video cuts a sharp contrast with Eggleston’s other material, which hinges on her dry sense of humor and no small amount of absurdism. (See: the yogurt cult video.) In Eggleston's telling, she's playing a role in her videos derived from her time in the corporate world, which she parted ways with in 2018 before certifying in fitness and nutrition in 2020. She started posting social media content soon after. Blended together, these characteristics make up the soul of her recent successes, culminating in the book she’s currently working on, in which she focuses on “cutting through the noise of wellness trends,” in her words. So I reached out to her for a conversation about the direction of her work in the wellness space on social media, and where she sees herself operating within that space, in light of the clip’s reception.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Andy Crump: There's been a lot of response to the biryani video. I'm curious if it’s continued, and what the atmosphere is in the comments. It feels like a new chapter in your work.
Diya Eggleston: I would say it was unintentional in that sense, you know? The criteria for me in picking (recipe videos) is about simple meals. Biryani is fairly complex if you take it in what people call its “authentic” form—the layered, classic one that you find in restaurants. It wouldn't typically be what I pick. So this was perfect, because (Clarke) called his dish a biryani, but it fit the criteria of being simple, and including ingredients people usually have at home. Those types of recipes tend to be the ones people want to make and save.
Biryani is (my mother’s) thing. I grew up with that. She makes dozens of different kinds. She'll spend the entire day when she first comes and visits making huge quantities of them so I can freeze them for months on end, and she has a one-pot version that fits the timeframe (Clarke) used in his video. So I thought, “All right, I’ll use that.”
I didn't expect the response or conversations that came from it. Once people started talking, I realized that this topic was important to me, and important to other people at this level. It struck an emotional chord, and not just with Indians. People from everywhere were talking about this erasure of culture, or appropriation, or dilution.
It’s brought up interesting trains of thought in the days since. Somebody said that appropriation is probably the only way some of these dishes will survive. Many of us (in the diaspora) are outside of our countries of origin, and these dishes evolve over time. It's always been the case, you know? Even old recipes in India weren't written down at first. They were taught, or shared verbally, and then over time they were written down. Now our medium is videos. Maybe we have the opportunity for these dishes to survive more so than before, because we have media to capture them.
AC: It's an extension of oral tradition. Instead of talking to an audience directly, you're putting it on video. That's something I’d never considered.
DE: Yeah! I’d never thought of that. Who cares if a recipe isn’t exactly the same as five generations ago? If you have authentic intentions, doing something with integrity matters more than what the thing is called, in a way.
I think that's what resonated with people with this video. I didn't just share a biryani—I shared my mother’s. It was specific to me and my family, and it was personal, and what people relate to most about culture and authenticity is personal history and stories. These things that are passed down, and they matter.
AC: I love that you called your mom in the video; that's when we know you mean business. That's a huge distinction, and it’s what’s special about that video: You’re sharing your mother with your audience. I'm wondering if you’ve thought about (the video) in those terms as well.
DE: I have, actually, a couple of months ago. A lot of what I talk about now, I’ve actually been talking about for years, but without the layer of commentary, and without this deadpan character. It was just me, as me, talking. I've done that while talking to my mother before while we cooked Indian food in the kitchen together, and shared things like this not that long ago, that at the time got a thousand views.
So I had an “aha” moment in May. We move every three years, and I just couldn't have a desk job anymore. It was unsustainable. I'd always had an interest in food, because my mom is a chef and caterer, so it felt like a natural fit to do something in that space. For years I did the expected thing: Very polished, very polite, performative niceness. I’d always felt the need, in order to be taken seriously, to cultivate a serious personality at work.
In May, I realized that I had been saying the things that I'm saying for a long time, but in order for them to land, I needed to say them a little differently. What came to mind was what I knew from my old career, which was to take it too seriously: “What I’m saying is important, but it's not actually that important.” That’s where the humor is, where it's not that deep, but I'm going to make it seem as if it is, and it connected with people. It’s in direct opposition to what you see of people in wellness—the whole “brightly lit, always smiling” thing. When I'm pretending I'm in a cult or getting serious about yogurt, people listen.
AC: That video slays me.
DE: It’s a tool for me to basically talk about whatever I like, because I can hook (viewers) with this character, and then they're in a space where they're willing to listen. The biryani thing is interesting. It's a new topic I could explore because I know the character helps people pay attention.
When you work in an office, at some point you may have a female boss, and they're generally not liked. To be honest, when I worked in that world, I didn't really care. I was good at my job. That's all that mattered. So I knew that this character would be a little controversial. A lot of people see the humor in it. They know I'm exaggerating, they know it's a character, and they love it. You also have people who think that’s completely who I am and don't see the humor at all, and think I’m a b*tch, you know? [Laughs.]
You were asking if cultural erasure might be an area I want to focus on, and it is. I think I'm maybe not the perfect person to carry that torch, in the sense that I'm not an expert. My sister is a PhD in culture and anthropology specific to South Asia, and the region we're from in India. She's probably one of the top experts in the world on this topic.
AC: Wow–good for her.
DE: But she’s not even on social media, so…
AC: Also good for her.
DE: Yeah. She’s not remotely interested in being on social media, talking about those kinds of things. But there's a lot of people who are deeply passionate about this topic, who have entire accounts dedicated to it or written books on it. There are chefs from the region, and people who focus on authentic cultural foods. There's a bit of imposter syndrome with me. I was sharing my mom and my family recipe, but that connected with people on deeper levels. I’d love to continue that, but without seeming like I'm an authority on them when I'm not. Is it enough to be just “of” the place to be an authority?
AC: Sure, there are people who dedicate accounts to that work, but if people who care, have knowledge, and have a voice to contribute to that work, doesn’t that help support the broader mission? What you do in the biryani video has value, even if you only make videos like that once every few weeks.
DE: Yeah, I know. I've been thinking about the next one. A lot of people put requests in. Palak paneer, for example, and my mom makes a really good one. That’s my daughter's favorite dish, so it feels like a natural fit. I started looking at videos to see if there’s anything out there that I could react to, because I also do videos that are just me sharing recipes. But those tend to be, again, very simple, two- or three-cheap-ingredient ones that people can do quickly. Everybody's on this whole kick of, “How do I get more fiber, get more protein, eat more whole foods.” Trying to tick all these boxes with items that you might already have in your pantry is my angle for my original recipes. The biryani video doesn't quite fit, not exactly, and I feel like a lot more interesting conversations come of it in the format of a reaction. But I also don't want to get pigeonholed as this person who calls out especially white men. That’s not my thing.
AC: Yeah, though funny enough, the people who need to be called out more often than not are white men.
DE: Yeah, but I don’t want to play into that stereotype. It’s not my goal. I actually don't talk about (Clarke) at all (in the video). I only talk about the food. I want to keep it to being about the food, and preserving these stories and feelings we have that connect to this food, you know? I'm trying to figure out how to continue that conversation, because it's really interesting to see how much people want to talk about it.
Published on January 7, 2026
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.