They eat, millions watch: The mukbang story of treats and tricks

“Hey everyone, in today’s video, I am going to eat huge varieties of chicken combo, lots and lots of puri, basmati rice, spicy whole chicken curry and liver curry,” says Ashifa, looking at the camera. Only her face is visible behind the feast she just described to her over 5 lakh followers on YouTube.

Tamil Nadu-based Ashifa, known to her followers as Ashifa ASMR, is one of the most popular YouTubers who make mukbang and ASMR videos. The videos in which she eats copious amounts of food, making all the chomping and slurping sounds have millions of views.

Watching such a mukbang video is content writer Varsha. She is having her simple roti-sabzi, after a hard day’s work, sitting all alone in Mumbai.

“It makes me feel as if I have company,” says Varsha, explaining why she often turns on a mukbang video when she sits down for her meals. “Plus, if I have food that I’m not really enjoying, then I end up eating a bit more because I’m distracted by the better food in the videos,” she adds.

Varsha is one of the millions of people across the world who watch mukbang videos that feature people binge-eating or taking part in eating challenges for entertainment.

WHAT IS MUKBANG AND WHY PEOPLE WATCH IT

The mukbang phenomenon started about a decade back in South Korea and has become a rage in India with people of all ages hooked to these videos.

These are videos of people eating enormous amounts of delicious food on camera with enhanced slurping and chewing sounds, as if they were eating right beside you.

If you are not a mukbang fan or have never watched a mukbang video, you must be wondering why people would watch someone else eat – an activity considered to be so everyday and mundane.

Wanting company while one is eating alone is just one of the reasons.

“Sometimes some of the mukbangers eat very exotic food, so that’s also kind of interesting to watch. I also watch ‘big bite’ videos where they, for instance, try to finish a burger in two big bites,” says Varsha.

Then there are others who satiate their craving through those videos.

“There are times when I am craving a particular dish but I cannot have it for some reason, so I would rather watch the mukbangers them eat,” says Aparna Pillai from Kanpur.

The 25-year-old who is pursuing a BEd degree says most times she watches these mukbang videos just for fun. “I don’t watch them regularly or too often.”

Like fusion food, the term mukbang is a fusion of two Korean words -- ‘muk-da’ (to eat) and ‘bang-song’ (broadcast). So, we can loosely translate mukbang to “eatcast”.

This unusual genre of content began to emerge in the early 2010s in South Korea. Initially, people living alone would watch these eating broadcasts as a way to combat loneliness. They would also chat online during the live sessions.

Soon, like K-pop, it spread worldwide and also took the form of eating challenges.

Eating becomes a matter of showmanship as mukbangers create an elaborate, colourful spread of food, with strategic camera angles to almost fill the screen with food.

Ashifa tells IndiaToday.In that she and her mom usually cook the food she devours for almost all the videos.

“We then set up the shooting table. I place my light setup facing the subject, and place a camera, and also a microphone to capture sounds,” says the Indian mukbang star.

“I then place the food items one by one and rearrange them to suit the visual appearance on camera. I then make note of the food positions on the table to maintain the food placements across multiple sittings,” she reveals.

The colour and the arrangement of course work their magic.

For some viewers, mukbang videos are also tools to make food more interesting or increase your appetite.

“I watched mukbang because I thought it would make me hungry and I would eat more,” says Manish. “It kind of helped. It did make me hungry. But I would not say that the videos were the sole reason behind my appetite,” he says.

Psychologist Nikita Benjamin says there are several reasons why people watch Mukbang videos.

“For some, Mukbang is purely entertainment or a form of vicarious culinary exploration, while for others, there may indeed be a sexual element to their attraction to this content,” she says.

MUKBANG IN INDIA

Apart from Ashifa ASMR, the Indian mukbang community consists of MaddyEats, Akshanshu Aswal, Foodie JD, Foodie Bobby among many others.

These mukbang stars eat a lavish meal, including fish curry, chicken biryani, paneer kadai, mutton biryani, desserts, drawing in millions of views per video.

The videos feature the mukbanger with a huge spread of numerous food dishes in front of them and a plain black background to limit distractions.

Mukbangers usually eat in silence, taking big bites and enjoying their meal and seem to finish all the food kept in front of them.

It appears, from the comment sections in mukbang videos, that many of the viewers are fascinated by the large appetite of the mukbangers and the delicious or exotic food in the videos.

DO MUKBANGERS EAT ALL THE FOOD?

However, people, including fans, suspect that some of the mukbangers use editing tricks to make people believe that they have consumed all the food.

“I think mukbangers edit their videos and don’t really eat all of the food shown,” says Varsha.

Even Aparna from Kanpur says she doesn’t believe that mukbangers eat all the food they display as “it is not humanly possible for a person to eat all the spicy food they show the audience”.

Popular mukbanger MaddyEats addressed such doubts in one of her videos where she said that her appetite had increased over the last 3.5 years as a result of making mukbang videos.

In regards to cuts in her videos, MaddyEats said that sometimes, she takes breaks in between the recording and other times, the recording gets interrupted by background noises so the video appears edited.

Ashifa ASMR doesn't pretend to be the demolition machine that some others feign to be.

“According to me, barring a few exceptional people, it’s almost impossible for a person to eat such amounts of food in one sitting. Being a mukbanger myself, I can do it in multiple sittings, which can be done by any willing person over time,” Ashifa tells IndiaToday.In.

“Just like movies, although the shoots have multiple takes, they must be made in one continuous video to satisfy the viewers, hence creating the aforementioned confusion,” she explains.

DOES MUKBANG PROMOTE UNHEALTHY HABITS?

Another criticism that mukbangers face is that they promote unhealthy eating habits.

Nutritionist and founder of Nourish with Sim, Simrun Chopra tells IndiaToday.In that children who watch these videos may believe that excessive eating can make them popular and has no side effects.

The nutritionist counters the claim of many mukbangers that they only eat one or two high-calorie meals a week for shooting. Chopra says it is not possible for the mukbangers to maintain a healthy weight even then.

“From a nutritional and content perspective, consuming 20,000 calories in one meal is unquestionably unhealthy. Even at the peak of his training, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps didn't consume over 12,000 calories in a single meal,” she says.

“Assuming someone has only two 20,000-calorie meals per week, they would need to engage in an extraordinarily rigorous exercise regimen to burn off those calories. However, the digestive and cardiovascular strain caused by mukbang videos would make such intense training nearly impossible,” she explains.

She says that the mukbangers’ normal weight may be because they are “either not consuming all the food depicted in their videos or resorting to post-meal vomiting”.

“This can perpetuate the false belief that overeating has no consequences and unintentionally promote unhealthy eating habits,” she warns.

Ashifa gives a disclaimer in her videos that the food shown wouldn’t be consumed at one go and these should not be replicated.

But such honesty is rare in the world of competitive mukbang where all the YouTubers are vying for views and followers.

Ashifa says she maintains a good physique by diet planning through her non-shoot days. She says she shoots just once every three to four days and also works out regularly.

“I also do bridal modelling on a part-time basis, which makes it a requisite for me to stay fit. Yoga has really helped me maintain my body despite the quantities of food I consume,” the mukbanger says.

IS THERE A SEXUAL ASPECT TO MUKBANG VIDEOS?

Can Mukbang videos satisfy our cravings for junk food? Often, people comment on mukbang videos claiming how it helped them deal with their cravings, especially if they were on a diet.

Psychologist Nikita Benjamin defines this as vicarious satiation, which means experiencing a feeling of being full by watching someone else eat.

“If someone is on a diet or unwell and they have these urges to eat a specific food, they might cope by watching mukbang videos. The sounds of slurping, sounds and sensations can be gratifying to them in that way,” she explains.

That’s what ASMR or autonomous sensory meridian response videos are all about – deriving sensation by watching stimulating videos.

Psychologist Nikita Benjamin also talks about the sexual aspect to mukbang videos.

“Watching fit and attractive people eating huge portions of food might create a sense of sexual gratification,” she says. “This could be because of their own relationship or struggles with food, body image, and societal beauty standards.”

The love for food and food videos are mutual on both sides of the camera.

Mukbang stars, apart from building a huge fan-following, think that they are helping people too.

“There is something about ASMR videos that trigger a person’s stimuli and is helpful to certain people,” says Tamil Nadu-based Ashifa, who is also an NEET and IIT-JEE physics teacher.

For Mumbai’s Varsha, who sits alone for her roti-sabzi dinner, the videos give her visual proximity to food that she otherwise doesn't have access to.

Food, apart from being a social bond, is an integral part of our sensations, visually too. Amid all the cookery shows, food reviews and cooking hacks, mukbang has carved a niche for itself. The colourful spread and the slurps are here to stay.