How Lovina Zook left the Amish and found an online audience

The Amish are what are known as "plain people" … religious Christians who value tradition over change. They dress modestly, and most don't use technology like cars, computers or phones.

Meet Lovina Hershberger Zook, the unlikely 23-year-old social media creator who has amassed some six million followers with her recipes and stories about the Amish.

She comes from one of the most conservative subgroups in the Amish, and grew up speaking a dialect of German known as "Pennsylvania Dutch." She's no longer Amish – she left the faith five years ago. But she maintains many of their traditions at home. She made her dress, and prefers to wear it around the house.

Online, she's known for cooking Amish dishes – simple, practical fare that ranges from the super-traditional to the unconventional, like a coffee soup made with hot milk, instant coffee, sugar, and saltine crackers. Her favorite way to eat it is with cottage cheese and meat.

Sometimes it's what's in a name that matters most. She made us an Amish cheeseburger – that's two pieces of homemade bread slathered with butter and layered with cheese, grilled in a cast-iron pan until golden-brown and gooey. (What the non-Amish call a grilled cheese.)

"I've only had an Amish cheeseburger; I have never had a grilled cheese!" Zook laughed.

And that's the thing: She doesn't always know what she doesn't know – what traditions and what words are ones the "English" (as the Amish call the non-Amish) might not know.

Zook had never used a phone before, and didn't know what a computer was. "Like, I knew people worked on their computers. But I didn't know what a laptop was," she said. "And then I bought a laptop, like, a couple years after I left the Amish. Apparently it's a laptop computer. And now I just call it a computer … Why is it called a computer? That's a weird word. Computer. I don't know why, sometimes I say words and I'm like, 'Why is it called that?'" she laughed.

So, when Zook was growing up Amish, if someone had said to her, You're going to be a social media star, what would that have meant? "Nothing," Zook laughed. "Because I didn't know what social media was. I would've been scared, because I would go, 'What is social media?'"

Zook got her start online talking not just about food, but about the culture she left. Her most-watched video is a tutorial on how Amish women do their hair. It has more than 50 million views on TikTok.

Asked what it was it like growing up Amish, Zook replied, "We just live our life. We're like, 'Ooh, I know there's people who live different lives. I know there's people with electricity. But that's wrong. And so, I'll just, like, stay Amish and I'll live an Amish life.'"

And that meant more than just no electricity. It meant no makeup, no dancing. The list of prohibitions was long. "I didn't smoke; was not allowed for women," she said. "No drinking; that's not allowed for anybody. And no cursing. Absolutely not. You can't even say, 'Oh, my gosh.' That's considered a bad word."

Gosh?!? "You can say, 'Darn it!' or something like that. Like, 'Cheese and crackers!'" Zook said.

And any transgressions came with serious consequences.