This week we're going under the surface - literally. Last time we talked about creators who get right up to the camera; this time it's about a creator who gets right into the why behind the food. Few people are doing "food as medicine" content better right now, so let's get into who she is and why it's landing, then the usual from the world of food creators.

Who's Laura?

From 250k followers at the start of the year to 409k today, she's already added 3x as many followers so far in 2026 as she did in the whole of 2025. She's having a moment.

Laura, known to 408,000-plus followers as @_holist_ ("Holist | Food as Medicine Recipes"), is a naturopath and former nurse who burned out in the healthcare system before pivoting into naturopathy and food-as-medicine work. She's not a chef by trade - she's a practitioner who happens to make genuinely craveable food, and that combination is exactly why the account is taking off.

When we flagged her Red Wine, Burn Onion & Slow cooked beef in our last edition she was sitting at 367k off the back of a "burnout month" series; she's already comfortably past 408k so the growth isn't stopping.

The engine behind the growth is her monthly themed deep-dives - Brain Fog Month is the current one, following on from Burnout Month before it. Rather than one-off recipes, she takes a single health topic and builds weeks of content around it, so followers stay invested across the whole arc rather than just one video.

On the specifics:

• The hook is indulgent, not preachy. A gooey wild blueberry double-choc brownie or a brothy kimchi rice scramble opens the video, nothing that screams "diet content."
• Science does the retention. Once she's got you, she breaks down what each ingredient is actually doing: magnesium, polyphenols, choline, anthocyanins, like a mini nutrition lecture wrapped in a recipe.
• Credentialed authority. She's a qualified naturopath, not just an enthusiast, which gives the claims a different kind of weight.
• Anti-perfectionism framing. Her message is permission, not restriction. Brain-supportive food, she says, doesn't have to look like green smoothies to count.
• A real funnel, not just reach. Comment-to-DM prompts ("comment BRAIN FOG," "comment EBOOK") convert viewers into her Recipe Club and ebook ("Eat Your Medicine, The Women's Edition"), turning views into an owned audience.
• Consistent hit rate. This isn't a one-video fluke. Many of her burnout month videos hit multiple millions in views and her recent Brain Fog Month reels are pulling in great numbers too.

That's the whole thing: plenty of "healthy food" content feels like homework. Laura's makes the science feel like a bonus you get for eating something you already wanted to eat!

See it for yourself - a few of hers:

Getting to the root of it, then, is the whole game - the science is the substance, but the craveable food is what earns the audience. Right, what else is worth your attention this week?

Viral posts you might have missed

In case you missed them, here are a couple worth a second look. Rice cakes had a moment this week: @lindsay.keosayian topped hers with chocolate, yoghurt, berries and a honey drizzle, called it her "guilty pleasure," and the post pulled 37.5m views off a 1.3m following, nearly 29 times her audience. That's the kind of number that doesn't come from an algorithm being kind; it comes from a genuinely easy, genuinely craveable idea landing at the right moment.

Also worth a look: @jose.elcook's "I put a whole bag of lemons up my bread" hit 9.7m views off 3.2m followers, the kind of hook that makes you click before your brain catches up. And @cedriklorenzen's ASMR Black Forest donut, all cherries and dark chocolate and slow-motion plating, kept doing what his account reliably does: 10.4m views off 5.8m followers, a steady, well-earned multiple rather than a fluke.

Biggest gains

Let's get it. Who's on the gain train. Below are the creators with the biggest absolute recent growth from the past 30 days:

Ones to watch

Might not be up in the millions yet, but here's the accounts having a moment as they fly towards 100k and break the barrier:

Outside the numbers, some creators are just worth spotlighting on craft alone, the ones we like to call the Foodie's Foodie: real technique, real recipes, and the kind of account other creators and recipe developers actually follow. If you're not already, you should be. This time, it's @nourish_atelier.

Nina Olsson

@nourish_atelier

Before she was cooking, Nina Olsson was art directing, building a career in publishing that trained her eye for composition, color and story. She brought all of that into Nourish Atelier when she founded it in 2008, which is why her plates read like editorial spreads rather than recipe cards. These days she splits her time between a recipe column for Jan Magazine NL and her next pop-up. 115k on Instagram, and a grid elegant enough to make you rethink what vegetarian food can look like.

Follow on Instagram

So that's it for this issue. Be sure to subscribe and check back in for more. We've got some great content coming up!

Adina.

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