Meet the cucumber influencer

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There are many reasons why you and I are not on TikTok, the principal one being that we are not teenagers. However, my gift to you this bank holiday Monday is to tell you the other reason: cucumbers.
Because of TikTok, cucumbers have gone viral. Because of TikTok, there is a cucumber shortage in Iceland and, seeing as their volcanic ash once spread over here, why not their cucumber shortage as well? Finally, m’lud, I put it to you that on TikTok 23 million people who don’t know better have watched a 23-year-old bloke in Ontario make a cucumber salad. It contains seafood sticks and mayonnaise and some sort of Japanese sprinkle and looks like something the cat brought up.
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The bloke’s name is Logan Moffitt and in his bio on the video-sharing site he implores us to “join the cucumber community”. Moffitt has 5.5 million followers, and more than 4 million of them have watched him make another cucumber salad, this time with wasabi and soy sauce. He shakes it like a cocktail, eats it with his mouth open and spits it out. The fates have clearly marked him out for greatness. It perhaps tells us all we need to know about his broader culinary skills, beyond cucumbers, that he invariably adds MSG to his food, and who knows? Maybe that’s a thing in Canada, although I seriously doubt it.
Even The New York Times has turned its gaze to the worrying cucumber situation, quoting one frustrated shopper in Reykjavik. “Cucumbers are one of the things we never run out of in Iceland,” said Daniel Sigthorsson, 30, which is reassuring, Daniel, so thank you. He was keen to make a cucumber salad of his own but frustrated in his efforts to buy the star ingredient in not one, not two, but three different shops. It is, he confessed, “weird”.
This is not the first time TikTok has sparked a food shortage. Five years ago there was the great run on feta of 2019, when a baked pasta dish using the cheese also went viral. Forty-four million people helped to make cottage cheese ice-cream a global sensation in 2023, while 111 million watched a video about a mustard and cottage cheese diet and 223 million have watched someone make Big Mac tacos. I know from my own TikTok-free existence that half a billion people gazed slack-jawed at a video of strawberries covered in melted chocolate, because many of them are to be found buying them near where I work, in Borough Market.
So there you are. Sign up for TikTok. Join the cucumber community. Don’t all rush.