Are #mukbang or high-calorie food bloggers fetishizing obesity?

And should such videos come with a trigger warning especially for eating disorders?

When was the last time you thought of having a heap of pizzas, cheese-laced meaty burgers, fries, tons of chicken nuggets or other food items quite literally glittering with every colour possible? It is no secret that the pandemic triggered food tutorials on YouTube. According to YouTube’s of the pandemic views, what seemed momentary, that is a spurt in consuming cooking and eating videos, soon became a defining trend. The analysis further cites cultural anthropologist Susan Kresnicka’s model of intersecting needs—self-care, social connection and identity.

In India, with its culinary culture lending itself to the idea of excess, food takes on emotional, passionate hues for many. And the exponential reach of food delivery platforms certainly doesn't help either.

A healthy relationship?

The appeal of watching high-calorie food bloggers consume massive quantities of food on video may not entirely be mysterious. Nishant Tanwar, a popular stand-up comic who started a similar food channel in the pandemic, says that for him it purely came out of his sheer love for food.

“There is nothing I won’t eat,” he says. “Even during my school days, I’d just as happily eat even bitter gourd or bottle gourd.” Some of Tanwar’s viral videos feature him testing out over a dozen burgers and pizzas—his dining table a smorgasbord of ketchup packets, pet cokes, and cardboard boxes. “The idea was simple: if I have to know what’s the best burger in the city, just having the big three won’t work,” he says.

At the onset of the pandemic, it was the cooking and eating videos that helped him get over the lockdown blues. As a professional stand-up comic, there was an undercurrent of humour that he sensed in such videos. “They all brought to the table their own quirks, it wasn’t just about eating a hundred different pizzas, so that appealed to me and I wondered if I could do the same,” he adds.

According to nutritionist Nikita Chotani, while this lifestyle may appear unhealthy on the surface, there is an internal nuance to it that its critics might miss. “There is no doubt that eating ten burgers a day is inherently unhealthy, but the relationship these bloggers have with food is not—and that tells the whole story,” she says.

The way she sees it, the difference between overeating and emotional eating must be clearly demarcated, and it’s the latter that can actually end up harming you more. “People under strict diet regimes may usually have trigger foods that can potentially send them in a spiral of binge eating,” she explains. “Or you could be stress eating, which again comes under unhealthy emotional eating. For these food bloggers, it’s none of that. They eat because they are happy and eating them makes them happier, so there is no conflict in their minds.”

Appearances and ambitions

Chotani’s healthy relationship theory perhaps holds true for Ulhas Kamathe too. With a multicolour turban, his neck stiff against the many gold chains threatening to weigh it down, Kamathe brings a theatrical, almost grand quality to the art of consuming food.

On social media platforms, he goes by ‘Chicken Leg Piece’ and that has a fascinating story too. “It all started when my daughter took a video of me eating a whole platter of food which is absolutely normal for me,” he recounts. “Somewhere in there, I funnily pronounced chicken leg piece and it somehow caught the imagination of both Indians and foreigners alike.”

For Kamathe, consuming ladles of chicken curry, ten different dishes on the sides and endless chapattis is a traditional, everyday affair. He doesn’t necessarily view it as something out of the ordinary. “This is what I eat on a daily basis too,” he says.

Across Mumbai, Kamathe can be seen relishing the newest delicacy in town. His Instagram is filled with reels of waiters carting off mega thalis to his tables, close up shots of him chomping on meat. Additionally, he also runs nine gyms, two beauty parlours and nearly a dozen juice centres across the city.

How does he respond to some comments on his post that accuse him of fetishizing obesity? “This is what I genuinely eat every day,” he says. “Everyone has their own capacity and this is mine. And I don’t just own those gyms, I actively work out too.”

According to Jasdeep Mago, a neuropsychologist, the viral appeal of such videos can be attributed to the fact that we as humans have always been fascinated with the impossible, the bizarre. “It gives us a sense of accomplishment watching others do things we never thought could be done,” she says. “So, I don’t see it as some sort of a recourse that people sought in the pandemic.”

For Mago, it all boils down to the eternal human curiosity of gaping at the extraordinary. “I’d even say this can be equated to watching someone scale Everest or perform a difficult underwater stunt.”

A universal appeal

Globally, food bloggers continue to amass millions of views for their culinary stunts. Mark Weins, on his channel migrationology, can be seen gobbling on everything from the giant dino BBQ rib in Arizona, buckets of deep-fried chicken necks in Los Angeles, open-faced tortilla overflowing with cheese in Tuscany to even heaps of lobster rolls in Maine. While Avocado can be seen having visceral and funny reactions to him quite literally dissipating in tones of spaghetti, Taco Bell and heaps of onion rings and burgers.

“As long as you have a healthy and not toxic relationship with food, you’re not hurting anyone,” says Chotani. “But of course, a healthy and safe diet regime never hurt anyone either.”

But some of Avocado’s videos take a darker hue–he can be seen stuffing his face with heaps of noodles, teary-eyed, helpless because he is putting on weight, and the whole deal is quite literally breaking his back.

“The virality of such videos push some of these bloggers into a vicious circle,” says psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Ruksheda Syeda. “It’s like you’ve created a monster and you need to feed it now.”

Syeda views this as a dual problem. While the food bloggers we spoke to for this piece do not have any eating disorders and have cultivated a healthy relationship with food, some content might get potentially triggering for those with eating disorders.

“We don’t want to censor content creators, but such videos must come with trigger warnings for eating disorders and resources for help for those struggling with body image and obesity issues,” she suggests. “It’s not healthy to say that people who have eating disorders must simply not watch these videos–as most of them struggle with restraint. Self-care gets thrown around very casually but for many, it’s more difficult than one would assume."

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