Shaurya Thapa dives into the upcoming culture of consuming copious amounts of food while the world watches

The world was first introduced to the idea of mukbang in 2010. This is when videos first started popping up about what seemed like a bizarre concept at the time. Fast forward 10 years down the line, the mukbang industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world of online content. In South Korea, the original home of the mukbang trend, bloggers sometimes earn up to $8,000-10,000 a month.

So what is mukbang?

The word originated from combining two Korean words, meogneun (eating) and bangsong (broadcast).  It simply means broadcasting yourself as you eat, often interacting with your viewers as you do so. Some mukbangers (as they are popularly known) also attempt ASMR from all their chewing and slurping. YouTube and Twitch are the most preferred platforms to upload such videos. And the trend seems to have taken an Indian twist. Just last year, the latest Google trends data revealed that the term has become three times more popular on Youtube and Google search in the last one year alone.

India’s batch of mukbangers come from varied backgrounds, and age groups.

Deepika Verma, who calls herself, “the first female mukbanger of India is from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Apei who runs the channel Apei Eats, often features her native Naga and other north-eastern dishes, even if she’s based in Belgrade with her husband (who often joins her for her mukbang videos). Then there’s Khai Khai Bengali, a channel run by a young Bengali girl who doesn’t reveal her name or occupation to her viewers. Sarvana Kumar is another Indian origin mukbanger, born and raised in the United States who’s currently in medical school. Similarly, the channel Saapattu Raman is run by a young doctor from Salem, Tamil Nadu. The doctor, Sabari Kumar and his father Porchezhiyan often engage in consuming kilos of biryani, curries, and other dishes in their videos that often cross over million views.

So, how did these mukbangers start their journey? What kind of food do they eat? Do they get judged for making mukbangs? Can mukbanging be a career? The questions are endless.

The Start of the Meal

Sarvana Kumar says the first time he watched a mukbang he found it very odd and only had one question, “what is the purpose of watching someone just consume large amounts of food while they talk about random things in life?” Before he knew it, he was deep diving into his Youtube suggestions, continuing to watch all the recommendations. “I found them less weird with each new video. It got to a point where I started searching for mukbang-style videos to pass my time before going to bed.”

Not soon after, Kumar created a channel called, Your Everyday Foodie and started posting regular mukbang videos. This was in 2017. Three years since, Kumar is still making mukbangs and covers a wide variety of food, but he is into fried chicken and noodles these days, he says.

As his followers grew, so did the requests and some of them were strange too. He laughs as he recalls one, “An item I would classify as the “weirdest” thing that I have eaten on my channel is raw honeycomb. Super delicious, but the waxy exterior is something I was not used to. Kumar was also asked to eat aloe vera once.” An item he’s yet to tick off his food list.

For Apei, these videos re-shaped her personality. She had started bingeing on YouTube’s travel and eating vlogs in the summer of 2017, with a passion to know more about authentic food from all over the world. Mark Wein’s food vlogs caught her eye in particular. And then randomly, she discovered mukbangs as she started her new life in Serbia.

“I am a very introverted person but watching mukbangs gave me new strength and I felt that I can do it, that I should do it.” Apei explains mukbang’s influence on her life. “After talking to my husband and my family, they gave me a lot of support and encouraged me to start.” A year later, she released her first video and has been gaining a viral following ever since.

While high production value is definitely a plus point for any kind of YouTube content, some Indian mukbangers try to make the best out of what they have.

For instance, Deepika Verma shot KFC Feast Mukbang, her first mukbang video from her smartphone. She still continues to shoot her videos via phone and they often cross a lakh views on YouTube. Unlike Aipei’s home-cooked multi-cuisine meals, Verma seems to apply a more Gen-Z approach by incorporating fast food or quick meals in her videos. Apart from the usual dishes, Verma’s mukbang diet includes treats from popular fast food franchises like Pizza Hut and KFC. Her KFC based videos feel somewhat similar to Peggie Neo’s ‘KFC Feasts’, a Singaporean mukbanger who has been an influence on Verma. Mukbangs can also shift from relaxed eating videos to ‘food races,’ as can be seen from some of her videos where she races against time to finish plates of biryani or packets of potato chips.

Rechristening herself as Foodie Bobby, she claims to be the country’s first female mukbanger as she says, “I only saw that Koreans were doing mukbang videos. No female YouTuber from India had done this before. So, that’s when I thought I should be the first one to give it a try and I guess, it turned out to be pretty well.”

Getting Judged While Eating

Apart from getting love from their followers, mukbangers are very used to getting hate comments. For instance, the channel Khai Khai Bengali featured several local dishes in mukbang sessions that didn’t boast of any high audio and video quality. The girl in the videos can be seen having a good time feasting on the (often home-made) dishes, occasionally joined by her relatives too.

Several comments on her videos however mocked her strong Bengali accent, her way of dressing, and her very decision of making mukbangs. The cyber-bullying rose to such an extent that the anonymous girl has disabled all comments on her videos as of now. In one of her uploads, a comment read, Shall we have to learn eating Bengali meal from village folk like her?. The elitism and sexism is evident in similar comments that she had been receiving, where her viewers questioned if she would make a good wife or daughter-in-law.

What makes this girl uncivilised’? The mere fact that she’s just eating large amounts of food and recording it?

Apei too has faced a barrage of similar hate comments on her channel. “Some of them are about how old and ugly I am. Some of them are about English language which is not even our native tongue…some of the viewers will call me really bad vernacular names. But you cannot please everybody, so we just ignore them and I’m sure they are kids who don’t know what they are talking about,” she says.

You waste food. Your video is not clear. Your accent is too poor. Foodie Bobby faces similar hate comments at times. However, just like Apei, she too has risen over these scornful attitudes. “Hate motivates me one step forward to accomplish my goal.”

So, in ways more than one, these mukbangers are defying social norms to just pursue their interests, while battling online trolls with every new video. Mukbangers all over the world are also shamed for indulging in unhealthy diets. The South Korean government even attempted to create mukbang guidelines that would regulate and control the phenomenon of ‘binge-eating’. However, the government was criticized, as this move was being seen as a curtailment of individual freedom. Many petitions against this decision also emphasised the fact that there’s no direct correlation between mukbang and binge-eating.

While some mukbangs have had a negative impact on the health of mukbangers Nicholas Perry (whose eventual binge-eating led to erectile dysfunction and diarrhea), others still feel the practice isn’t unhealthy bingeing when performed in control.

When asked if he went through any such eating disorders, Kumar offers insights on similar lines. “What I do, like many other mukbangers I know do as well, is only eat one meal the day we record, and that meal being the one we eat while recording. In addition, we make sure to incorporate a proper and healthy diet outside of recording, as well as exercise daily. Without such precautions for our health, yes, this would definitely have some long-term detrimental effects on our bodies.’

A World Beyond Food
Many mukbangers have succeeded in making these food-eating videos their very source of income. For Apei, mukbanging has become a full-time job with the YouTuber even putting up mukbang merchandise for sale on her website. “I have a fan base that I feel like it’s my extended family and I feel obligated to create videos for them to connect and enjoy.” says Apei, who usually publishes a video every three days.

Despite her channel building a community of about 48,000 subscribers, Verma who’s currently a law student, sees mukbanging as a part-time passion. However, even non-professional mukbangers can make a quick buck out of their hobby due to YouTube’s monetisation policies. As Your Everyday Foodie’s Kumar puts it, “I do earn advertisement revenue from my videos, but I create these videos because I enjoy sharing my experiences about my life and love for different cuisines, and interreacting with my viewers.”

While Indian mukbangers are cementing their position in food challenges, the ASMR-aspect of mukbanging is yet to be explored fully in the Indian mukbang scene.

Kumar is one such artist who has lately started uploading more ASMR videos. “…there is a large crowd that watch ASMR for its calming and relaxing properties that the auditory sounds elicit. Viewers have told me that they watch my ASMR videos to help them with their symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as to help them fall asleep at night.”

Aside from such therapeutic abilities of mukbanging, some viewers just tune in to Kumar’s videos for a sense of company. “Many viewers have told me that they watch my videos while they are eating because it feels like they are having food with someone else.” Hence, through foods of different cultures, mukbangers are succeeding in building a positive community of viewers from all over.

And this community is slowly yet steadily rising in India despite all the judgemental hate comments. In the end, these foodies continue doing what they love, and most importantly, eating what they love…