Soy Nguyen: Exploring Food, Culture, and Mental Health on TikTok

Soy Nguyen, also known as @foodwithsoy on TikTok, empowers her audience by exploring the intersectionality between food, culture, and mental health. She embraces diverse food from different cultures, recommends her favorite dining spots, and shares educational content about her Vietnamese-American identity through her mom's recipes.

Being part of the API community has been an empowering experience for Soy Nguyen. Growing up in Florida without many API friends, she faced internalized racism and a desire to fit in by rejecting her Vietnamese heritage. However, with time, self-kindness, and understanding, she began embracing the API community and realized the importance of being a representation for others who lacked it during their own upbringing. This is why her content highlights the diverse facets of API cultures, including her own Vietnamese American experience.

The TikTok community has inspired Soy Nguyen to find her purpose. She is grateful for the community and space she has cultivated on TikTok, which she believes is a platform that prioritizes community engagement. Through her videos, she has received feedback from people who regained their appetite after watching her content, small businesses that saw increased sales due to her recommendations, and individuals who felt seen and appreciated through her embrace of their culture. She finds inspiration in everyone on the platform and the stories she has encountered.

Soy Nguyen's favorite TikTok video is one where she had just arrived from a trip, her eyes puffy, but she felt hungry and wanted to share her raw thoughts and emotions. This video, along with her 'eat with me series,' allows her to eat while sharing vulnerable life lessons about self-love, social anxiety, friendships, breakups, and more. In API cultures, mental health is often viewed as a weakness, but Soy Nguyen believes that with emotional capacity, awareness, and understanding, caring for one's mental health is a beautiful thing. She aims to showcase this perspective.

Soy Nguyen's dream opportunity is to have her own TV show.

When asked about her favorite restaurant, Soy Nguyen finds it difficult to choose just one because she connects with food in various ways and constantly explores new culinary experiences. However, she has recently been impressed by Merkato, an Ethiopian restaurant in the Little Ethiopia neighborhood of LA. Despite initially having a negative experience with Ethiopian food, she decided to give it a second chance based on strong recommendations. The service, ambiance, and, of course, the food at Merkato left a lasting impression on her, making it a standout dining experience.

For someone starting a TikTok account and wanting to mix heartfelt content with food, Soy Nguyen advises focusing on the universality of food. Food can serve as a vehicle for making connections, cultural education, and sharing recipes. By creating authentic and purposeful content, one should not worry about followers or views. If there is a genuine purpose behind the content, people will be drawn to it for the food and stay for the stories.