I probably don't need to even explain what "mukbang" is, although its history is actually a bit more interesting than it might sound at first. You see, originally "mukbang" wasn't actually about overeating (and streaming it online).
As the name suggests, the term comes from South Korea and it actually originally consisted of people (usually young women) just filming videos as if they were on a dining date with the viewer. In other words, they would just eat a completely normal meal and talk to the camera as if she were on a date with the viewer. It was kind of a "fantasy date" form of video, where the viewer could imagine being on a date with the (usually young female) streamer.
In other words, eating the food itself was not originally the main point of the video. It was merely a setting. The main point was a simulated "date". However, these streamers and video authors quite quickly realized that most viewers formed a sort of "semi-fetish" with the eating itself, rather than imagining being on a date with the woman. Thus, even in South Korea itself, and quite quickly in many other parts of the world, the eating itself became the primary focus of these videos, and likewise quite quickly portion sizes and unhealthiness of the food skyrocketed. It quickly stopped being a "date simulator" and became "gluttony voyeurism". Turns out that millions and millions of people had a sort of fetish about watching people eat copious amount of unhealthy junk food. (Indeed, nobody is interested in watching someone eating a healthy salad. The greasier and unhealthier the food, the stronger the fetish.)
This caused an explosion of "mukbang" videos where people of all kinds and sizes started uploading such videos, sometimes literally daily, where they would eat absolutely astonishing amounts of junk food. Where a normal person (even an obese one) would normally eat eg. one hamburger, at the very most two, these people would eat ten or even twenty of them. Where most people would, at most, eat one entire pizza, these people would eat eight, or even more. (And, of course, the greasier and unhealthier the pizza, the better.)
With some of these people one could literally see their progression over a year or two from normal-sized or at most just slightly overweight, to absolute morbid obesity.
But, unsurprisingly, there are also some "fake" mukbangers. People who do lots and lots of these videos but don't seem to gain any weight, no matter how long they have been doing it, and how often.
Sometimes this might be because they are actually extremely active athletes in top fitness, and they do an enormous amount of exercise (such as running half marathons almost daily) to compensate. However, while there are actual examples of this, these people are a microscopic minority. Most of the ones that don't gain weight achieve it by faking the videos.
One very telling sign that the videos have been faked is if there are cuts and editing. Most mukbanger will just upload contiguous uninterrupted video footage, but the fake ones will have cuts and edits.
And, indeed, the edits cut out them spitting out the food instead of swallowing it. They just pretend to eat, and then just spit out most of the food, cutting that out of the video.
One cannot blame them for doing that: After all, it's their own health at stake. If they are actually taking care of their health and actually not stuffing themselves with junk food, just pretending to do so, kudos to them. And if it fulfills some people's fetish of watching someone eat unhealthy food, who cares if it's "fake"? Movies are "fake" in this sense as well: Nobody is actually literally jumping between buildings or engaging in high-speed car chases, it's all just pretend, special effects and editing.
However, there's one negative effect of them doing that, which they can be blamed of: They are helping normalize this kind of content. They are indirectly inducing other people to start doing such videos, and most of them will eat the food legit rather than pretend, like they do. They are, in a way, indirectly encouraging people to become extremely unhealthy by promoting this kind of video.
And that's not ok.
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