Palmerston North student Lauren Bramley, 22, has become an international internet sensation through her health eating-inspired Facebook page.
Add a pinch of student panache to lashings of international interest and you have yourself a recipe for internet success.
Palmerston North student Lauren Bramley, 22, set up a Facebook page with recipes and tips on how to eat healthily on a budget.
Since starting the page in March she has more than 200,000 “likes” – which is more than MasterChef New Zealand’s Facebook page.
Bramley’s New Year’s resolution was to lose weight and live a more healthy lifestyle, so she started posting pictures of paleo-inspired recipes to her private Facebook page. The paleolithic “paleo” diet is based on the principle anything you catch, kill or grow is good food.
Friends soon asked for more so Bramley created a Facebook page called: “Healthy Eating on a Student Budget”.
Within a week she had more than 1000 likes, at a month it was 100,0000 and yesterday she hit more than 230,000.
She has followers from America, Australia and the United Kingdom, with overseas companies offering to create websites and phone apps for free.
“I never, ever would have imagined it would have got to be something this big, it’s something I thought my friends and family would look at every once in a while and then get a bit bored of it and probably forget it, but it’s just grown day by day.”
Bramley draws inspiration from her mum’s home-cooking and changes the recipes to fit the paleo programme, which means no wheat, grains, dairy, refined sugars and some carbohydrates.
“Even when people see me, they might expect me to be a six-foot-tall personal trainer, but I’m just like anybody else trying to be healthier,” she said.
“I think people want to live a healthier lifestyle, but it is expensive and this seems to have just clicked with them.”
Bramley’s weekly food allowance of $50 for three people – her partner, Matt Hindrup, and her sister, Jessica – covers fresh fruit and vege from markets and some meats.
“I’ve got hardly any money but I’m still making these home-cooked meals . . . I’m not an amazing chef, the recipes are really simple and I shop around – there is a way you can eat this way without all the fancy, pricey ingredients,” she said.
“I live on a budget as a student and I thought if I can do it, I know that everyone else can do it too.”