Dietary Habits of an Expat Nation: Case of Qatar

We introduce an exhaustive collection of Instagram posts tied to locations in the Gulf nation of Qatar, and explore its potential as a source for the study of the native and expat populations, in particular their dietary and health activity. Obesity has taken an epidemic proportion in such fast-developing countries, and we show that, for example, for Arabic-speakers posting from restaurants strongly correlates with posting from sweets shops. Furthermore, posts in Arabic attract almost three times as much liking and commenting as posts in English. However, we also show that social media has substantial limitations in accurately reflecting the expat population, with languages of India and Nepal -- whose expat populations outnumber the locals -- being drastically under-represented.