User:Jman9601/Mukbang

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copied from Mukbang

It became popular in South Korea in 2010, and has since become a major spreader of Hallyu, along with K-Beauty, K-pop, and Korean drama, earning its status as a global trend. The purpose of mukbang is also sometimes educational, introducing viewers to regional specialities or gourmet spots.

Culture
Scholars have traced the mukbang trend back to a growing solo-eating population that discovered entertainment in watching actors and actresses eating in TV shows or movies. Mukbang emerged from a niche audience in South Korea, where the eating culture revolves around the family dinner table and eating from the same communal dishes.

In Korea, individuals who stream mukbang are called broadcast jockey s (BJs). According to Hanwool Choe, a PostDoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, the high level of interaction BJ-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer contributes to the sociability aspect of producing and consuming mukbang content. Her study analyzed BJ Changhyun's interactions with his audience via live chat and one instance where he temporarily paused to follow a fan's directions on what to eat next and how to eat it. Viewers may influence the direction of the stream but the BJ ultimately retains control over what he or she eats. Ventriloquism, by which BJs mime the actions of their fans by directing food to the camera in a feeding motion and eating in their stead, is another technique that creates the illusion of a shared experience in one room. Mukbang offers social gratification, as claimed by psychologists and education researchers.

Controversies
Excessive mukbang watching was also determined to be correlated with internet addition and the exacerbation or relapse of eating disorders. Scholars credit mukbang as a dietary restriction device for curbing food cravings. Other researchers suggest that mukbang can influence viewers' diets through repeated exposure to unhealthy, yet delicious-looking foods. In a survey involving 380 non-nutrition majors at a university in Gyeonggi Province, and their tendencies to watch mukbang and its close variant, cookbang, a significant 29.1% of frequent mukbang-watchers self-diagnosed negative habits associated with viewership, such as increased intake of processed and delivered foods or eating out.

Mukbang has been described as a muti-sensorial experience and compared to a similar carnal video type, pornography. Researchers liken the diminished satisfaction of sex from overconsumption of pornography to the reduced satisfaction of eating from fervid viewership of mukbang. In a pilot study from February 2022 on mukbang-watching and mental health, psychologists lay the foundation for future investigation into the potential detriments of using mukbang, or virtual eating, as a substitute for social experiences. A netnographic analysis of popular mukbang videos on Youtube revealed a significant number of viewer comments expressing fascination with the ability to remain thin after ingesting large amounts of unhealthy foods, and a major subcategory of which attempted to explain this phenomenon by naming medical mysteries, sourcing Asian ethnicity, as well as providing anecdotal evidence. This study also notes BJs' experiences with fat shaming and their underweight counterparts' with speculation for purging and engaging in other unhealthy eating habits off-camera.