Dinosaur Time on TikTok Is A Lifestyle Trend That Can Benefit the Entire Family

TikTok is home to all sorts of trends, some weird, some useless, and others created purely for entertainment. But then there’s a category we’re calling "must-have," where you just have to incorporate it into your life.

Much like the anxiety dance trend that's fun, freeing, and oddly uniting, the "dinosaur time" TikTok trend does something good for the body. Here’s what it is, why you might want to try it, and how it caught the attention of Land Before Time (hopefully not too far before your time) writer Stu Krieger. Yes, the 1988 classic with Ducky, Littlefoot, Cera, and Petrie.

The "dinosaur time" TikTok trend, believed to have been started by TikToker @sahmthingsup, is essentially a tactic to get more greens into your diet. Let’s face it, incorporating veggies into daily meals can be tough, especially for those who focus more on taste than health benefits. But with this method, you might just be able to pull it off in just a few minutes.

Here's how @sahmthingsup does it: she grabs a portion of veggies, like fresh spinach, and shoves a handful into her mouth — no dressing, no fancy displays to make it more appetizing. The focus isn’t on taste, but simply on getting those greens down as quickly as possible (without choking, of course).

In a March 2025 TikTok, @sahmthingsup addressed questions about her "dinosaur time" method, one of which was why it’s called that. While she thought it was obvious, if you consider how herbivore dinosaurs like Triceratops and Brachiosaurus ate plants, you can easily piece together how she came up with the name for her veggie-eating method.

She also clarified that "dinosaur time" isn’t a meal replacement, rather, she does it before lunch "so I don’t have to pretend to like the taste or go through the process of hiding more greens/veggies into my preferred meal. I find salads laborious to make and cumbersome to eat."

And the good news is, you're not limited to fresh spinach. @sahmthingsup also says you can swap it out for romaine or spring mix. If you're not a fan of salads, try beans. However, beans are drier to swallow, so you might need to add a bit of water into the mix.

While she says you can add dressing, it seems a bit tedious and messy when the goal is to just quickly get your greens in. Honestly, if you’re going to add dressing, it might just make sense to sit down with a salad bowl.

During her Q&A TikTok, @sahmthingsup was asked if she pretends to be a specific dinosaur when doing "dinosaur time." She jokingly responded that she likes to pretend to be a "hungry dinosaur" because we imagine it makes scarfing down those leaves a little easier. But she also shared, "I like to channel Spike after he hatches out of his egg in Land Before Time."

With her video already racking up 341,000 likes and over 121,000 shares, we weren’t surprised to see Land Before Time writer Stu Krieger’s name in the comments, as in, he dropped a comment! "Land Before Time writer Stu Krieger here! This might be the best channeling of Spike I’ve ever seen," he wrote. That alone was pretty exciting to see, but more importantly, now we have a new way to get down our greens without sacrificing too much time or effort!