Saudi health alert over new online eating craze
‘Mukbang’ streaming food shows can trigger eating disorders, nutritionists tell Arab News
Saudi health experts have raised the alarm over a new internet food video craze that they fear encourages dangerous binge eating.
Mukbang, or “eating show,” began in South Korea in 2010 and has since taken the online world by storm. Hosts consume food in front of a camera, while chatting to viewers on streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.
Some Arab show hosts have millions of subscribers. Many eat large portions of food while on camera, but severely restrict their intake at other times, which nutrias tionists say is unhealthy. There are also fears that the shows can trigger eating disorders in viewers.
Eating unhealthy food and burning it in the short term contributes to stress and fatigue and depletes
energy. In the longer term, it can increase the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, eating disorders and depression.
“The burn-and-refuel mentality is dangerous,” Dr. Ruwaida Idrees, a nutritionist in Jeddah, told Arab News. “If a person is eating lots of unhealthy food and burning calories with a severe exercise regime to maintain their weight, that may not be an indicator of good health.”
Mattias Strand, a senior consultant psychiatrist from the Stockholm Centre for Eating Disorders who conducted the first study into mukbang shows and eating disorders, said the videos could be a destructive force.
“We found that watching mukbang could certainly be problematic for people who already suffer from disordered eating, in that it could trigger binge eating or serve an inspiration for eating too little,” he said. “Some people seem to keep coming back for more, and some of them probably have their own issues around eating.”