Students to Watch: Emily and Sophie Martin (AKA the Tasty.Twinsss)

Students to Watch: Emily and Sophie Martin (AKA the Tasty.Twinsss)

Emily and Sophie Martin are two third year students at Otago. However, most people know them best as popular food Instagrammers Tasty.Twinsss. In their first year of Uni, Emily and Sophie created an Instagram account to share their love of food and places to eat around Dunedin. Now with 7,000 followers, the twins have started to explore areas of health and wellness, mainly through creating and sharing their healthy recipes online.

For Emily and Sophie, food has always been a big part of their lives. “We’ve always loved food,” said Emily. “Aside from being great cooks, our family has always been into food and when we would go away we always had to know where the best places for food were.”

The inspiration for creating their Instagram account came while the twins were in a residential hall in first year. “The hall food was pretty gross at times. We were there for two years, and it got better in second year but it’s still pretty monotonous. We snuck a blender in our room to make smoothies and raw slices for some variety.”

As their Instagram started to gain more popularity, the ideas and messages the twins posted about began to change. “It definitely grew from just being about food and cafes [and] creating our own slices and stuff, but it’s more than that now. It’s more about making sure people have someone to follow that isn’t too intense,” said Emily. For Sophie, it’s about making sure people enjoy what they eat. “Everyone has different ideas of being healthy, and we’re trying to show how we personally eat. But just because we do this doesn’t mean everyone else has to. You can feel okay with eating normal things without the guilt and eat what you want and enjoy it.”

Emily and Sophie post a variety of content. As they love sweet treats, a lot of their recipes include how to make raw slices and healthy desserts. Being students, they also emphasise the importance of having a balanced diet while studying. The twins have started to post their weekly food budget, which Sophie hopes can show others that shopping healthy doesn’t have to be too expensive. Emily believes, “There’re definitely misconceptions about student diets; everyone expects you just to eat two-minute noodles. I think it’s hopefully changing and people are trying to be more creative and make things more balanced”.

For both Emily and Sophie, food is only one major key to health and wellness. Exercise plays an important role in the twins’ daily lives. Both Sophie and Emily are currently training to be instructors at Les Mills, with Sophie teaching BodyAttack and Emily teaching BodyBalance. For Emily, balancing the right amount of exercise and healthy eating is fundamental. “Balance is such a key theme for us. Just being able to exercise and eat healthy, but also exercising for your brain and mentality and not being so strict on yourself.”

Being twins makes the process of running the account together difficult at times. “It’s hard as we’re always being compared to each other not only on Instagram but in our regular lives,” said Sophia. Emily agreed, “It’s important to remind myself that we’re separate people”.

As Emily and Sophie finish their degrees in Psychology and Food Science respectively, the future of the Tasty Twins is still unclear. Sophie said, “It’s going to be difficult since we don’t know what we’ll be doing next year, and we don’t know where we’ll be. But no matter what we’ll still keep posting”. For now, they both want to try and make their message clear.

“Live your life with balance. Exercise for the right reasons, so both mentally and not just physically. Eat in a way that makes you happy and don’t cut out foods for the sake of it. Enjoy what you eat.”

You can follow Emily and Sophie on Instagram: @tasty.twinsss

This article first appeared in Issue 6, 2019.
Posted 11:36pm Thursday 28th March 2019 by Henessey Griffiths.