I’ve got an insatiable appetite, but ‘mukbangs’ – in which content creators overeat junk food – are bad taste, and dangerous
The clock starts and I grab the first burger. The patties are thick and meaty and my bites are huge. It hurts so badly as this barely chewed chunk of food moves down my pipes. Three minutes before I get my first burger completely put away. Burger two and things get harder.
I can’t eat quickly. My jaw is locking at the size of the bite, and I’m feeling humiliated. It takes me seven minutes and forty-three seconds to eat. It’s clear I’m not going to get the third burger in. I leave with a scratchy oesophagus and broken ego, knowing that I could never make it as a Mukbang star.
“Mukbang,” which originated in South Korea and translates to “eating shows,” involves content creators posting videos, sometimes more than an hour long, of themselves eating mostly junk food. In some instances, they take on exorbitant amounts.
So what’s the appeal – both for the person doing it and the millions watching? There are currently six million videos on TikTok with the Mukbang hashtag. It’s video after video of foodie influencers, some with millions of followers, biting into various-textured food on camera, the mic catching the sounds of their noisy slurps and crunches. Some of the combinations are unexpected and even unappetising – but many people say they can’t look away.
It started in 2009. Mukbangers in South Korea called “broadcasting jockeys” would make scheduled nightly shows where they ate their main meal enthusiastically to camera via live stream. This phenomenon took off, with Mukbang stars making shedloads of money from fans paying them large “tips” to watch them eat.
There are viewers who find Mukbang erotic, so many creators have switched from mainstream social media to OnlyFans. As with most things on social media, people start to outdo each other, with volumes of food becoming dangerously large. The viral appeal switched from people loving the calming nature of it to wanting to be shocked and grossed out.
The consequences are real. In July 2024, Pan Xiating, a famous Mukbang creator, died during a 10-hour live stream after consuming more than 10kg of food. An autopsy revealed her stomach was severely distended and filled with undigested food, leading to a stomach rupture.
Dongz Apatan from the Philippines, a 38-year-old creator, suffered a severe haemorrhagic stroke shortly after broadcasting himself eating mega-volumes of fried chicken and rice. In March, Efecan Kultur, a 24-year-old creator from Turkey, died from severe obesity-related complications after being hospitalised for three months, bedridden and completely immobilised.
I’ve had a morbid fascination with eating challenges since I first saw the pie-eating contest in the early 80s film Stand By Me, where they reminisced about a chubby kid, Young Master David Hogan or “Lard Arse,” taking part in a pie-eating contest amidst much fattist humiliation. Face down in fruit pies, the contestants chow down at speed to devour blueberry pie after blueberry pie. As one of the most gratuitous acts of public revenge, “Lard Arse” pukes his guts up all over his bullying counterparts to set off a puking frenzy – “a barfarama”. America had introduced me to some of its weird customs and I thought it was brilliant viewing.
There is enough Mukbang out there – the world certainly doesn’t need me (Photo: YouTube)
As a teenager who never slept, late-night TV offered me so much comfort. Channel 4 in the 90s was seriously weird. These late nights introduced me to Japanese endurance challenges, where participants endured extreme physical and psychological strain. It was the first place I saw people swallowing whole hotdogs in buns for laughs.
Then in the late 2000s, “dude food” landed with Man vs. Food, where host Adam Richman entered extreme eating challenges while travelling around America. Standouts included a 30,000-calorie feast, where he had to eat a 72oz steak with a monstrous prawn cocktail, baked potato, salad and roll within an hour; and a whopping 26lb, 50-inch pizza (a large one is normally 18 inches) loaded with toppings. After almost five years, Richman stepped down from the show amid health rumours.
I’ve often wondered how I would fare at these challenges.
Some of my job can feel like one – I’ve done two tasting menus in a day, eaten terrible food for work, and once had 34 oysters for this column. My appetite is pretty insatiable and I’m fiercely competitive, but eating at speed and simply for volume in limited time? That’s another thing entirely.
London’s not famous for eating competitions in the same way America is, but the Red Dog Saloon is doing a burger-eating competition: as many as you can in 10 minutes, for a cash prize of up to £5,000.
On the way to the restaurant, my friend and I guess how many I’ll get to in 10 minutes. He guesses six, I guess five. We speak of technique – separating the burger into bits or squashing it – but the restaurant says the people who succeed just wolf it down. Five picture-perfect cheeseburgers appear. You already know the rest.
The next day, I try Mukbang — ie eating with maximum sound effects on camera. I make the Korean dish budae jjigae or “army stew,” a fusion recipe left from the American soldiers during the Korean War. It’s two packs of noodles in a spicy broth, with lots of processed meat toppings like Spam, frankfurters, and lots of cheese. Thankfully this is about the sound, technique and volume as opposed to timing and I think I’m going to do well.
The technique shown on social media involves eating such a big bite that you don’t have any space in your mouth. The noodles are piping hot, both in temperature and in searing spice heat, and I want to spit them out again, but they are well and truly wedged into my gob. I feel like I am going to choke but I manage to get them down.
Next bite, I eat a cheese mochi, which is really fun — perfect ASMR crunch and slurpy cheese pull. Then I try to see if I can slurp up a whole hotdog. I can’t, and have to spit it out.
The whole thing is a disaster and not enjoyable. It gets boring very quickly – having to be so considered in how you are eating and making sure you get all the right moves. I hit full to the point of defeated about a third of the way through, feeling gross.
As Mukbangs grow in popularity, dietitians are expressing concern about the potential impact of this trend on its audience’s eating habits. The more extreme videos could encourage some viewers to overeat, avoid certain foods or fail to eat the various nutrients their bodies need.
A person with a restrictive eating disorder could use the videos to fulfil the sense of eating without consuming any food.
At a time of children starving in a genocide in Gaza, climate change affecting crops at a petrifying level, and laughable import costs from across the pond – eating challenges seem in incredibly bad taste.
There is enough Mukbang out there – the world certainly doesn’t need me, and I’m very embarrassed about the idea of posting it, especially in the current climate.
My fee for this column went to the charity Choose Love and the work they are doing in Gaza.