I watched the screen a few weeks ago as NFL players were holding a whole turkey and biting into it in celebration of winning a game. The reporter said, “You get a turkey! And you get a turkey!” It seemed so wrong to watch, as just hours earlier, I had seen a video of children eating only plain flour amidst genocide.

I opened my phone later to see a lady filming herself eating a Chipotle burrito. Normal, right? Why did she have millions of views across platforms? I was intrigued and clicked on her profile. I saw thousands of videos, with her dipping burritos larger than her head into sauce and struggling to even hold the burrito with one hand as she ate it. I watched her dip large chicken wings into 16 oz cups of sauce, so full that the sauce overflowed and spilled. This woman wasn’t an anomaly. In fact, I have been seeing more and more giant mukbangs on my feed lately.

Mukbangs are videos that often feature a person setting up their camera to eat a large volume of food while talking to the audience on their phone. I thought this concept was intriguing at first; it was a spectacle to see so much food being eaten at once. However, after watching video after video, not only does this seem like far too much food for any one person to be consuming daily, but it also feels morally wrong to watch. Why am I seeing one person indulge on piles and piles of food when the next scroll I am watching a teen struggle to have enough food to make a meal. I, too, see the appeal of these clips, and have seen my friends watching mukbangs because they felt like they were getting the same satisfaction. 

According to the National Institute of Health, a study showed that when people view someone else eating on their screen, they feel like they are eating the food themselves. The spectacle and vicarious indulgence that the audience receives allows for mukbang creators to make thousands of dollars per month. Mukbangs first became popular during the pandemic, like a sort of “eat with me” video, or a way to feel like you had company while eating. A harmless idea, turned now into monetization and overconsumption. So much food goes to waste from these videos, yet we as viewers are part of the cycle. We watch, shocked at how this woman even acquired a burrito larger than her head, and ask ourselves. “Why is it coated in a crunchy shell? Why is she eating in her car?” We are all fueling this glorification of wasted food. This is not to say one should judge how much another person is eating. This is to say, we should not contribute to more food waste or flaunt how much food we have, while we do nothing to help the many others who are suffering from extreme hunger.              

According to the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), one-fifth of food produced for human consumption globally is lost. This is equivalent to one billion meals a day. 60 percent of food waste happens in households, so simply not wasting food in your own home will and does make an impact.