LIKE many 2-year-olds, the youngest member of the Candoo family loves fast food. Unlike most 2-year-olds, her parents earn money whenever she eats it. For over half her life, she has been delighting her family’s 370,000 fans by eating in front of a camera. More than 4 million people have watched a video of her enjoying chicken nuggets and fries, while nearly 3 million have viewed her 6-year-old brother devouring a burger.
The Candoos are a family of YouTubers. Parents Katherine and Andrew broadcast themselves and their five children eating fried chicken, tacos, burgers, instant noodles and pizza on their channel . The US family, and others like them, earn money from adverts that play before their videos and take direct sponsorship from companies, most recently a video for food subscription service HelloFresh. Overall, it is pretty simple: they eat, they film themselves, they make money. But why are their videos so popular? And is there a physical and psychological toll on their children?
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Originating in South Korea in 2009, a mukbang – Korean for “eating broadcast” – is a video of someone eating large quantities of food. Its pioneers were adults. By 2015, some of the most popular were reported to earn up to $10,000 a month live-streaming themselves. Academics began theorising about why people enjoy the videos: a at Chosun University in South Korea posited that they relieve stress. In 2016, US journalist and cultural commentator Jeff Yang claimed the videos enabled lonely, unmarried South Koreans to simulate social eating.
Then, last year, the genre took off on YouTube, earning it a place in the website’s official yearly recap, YouTube Rewind. According to video marketing company Tubular Insights, . The rise can partly be attributed to 30-year-old Shane Dawson – a popular YouTuber in the US with – who filmed a viral 10,000-calorie mukbang with his friend in January 2018. Dawson brought the genre to a brand new audience, and other Western YouTubers quickly capitalised on its popularity.
“We saw that it was quite trendy on YouTube and people seem to enjoy that type of content, so we thought we would try it,” says Londoner Nikky Bafana, a full-time family vlogger who filmed her 6-year-old daughter in August 2018. The previous month, the Candoos went viral after their , and a new appetite for child-centric mukbangs was born.
“It’s this whole big thing that’s on YouTube now. It’s not just adults that can do it, kids can do it too,” says Nikki Ean, a US woman who earns up to $2000 a month from her 6-year-old daughter’s mukbangs. Ean says her daughter’s subscribers increased “a whole lot” after the 6-year-old began eating in front of the camera. She has now eaten everything from king crab legs to McDonald’s Big Mac meals in .
The draw of the videos, especially those featuring children, might seem baffling to many. Their appeal in the West could be tied to the rise of “dude food” TV in the 90s, when food shows began to focus less on cooking and more on eating, says Glen Donnar at RMIT University in Melbourne, who studies mukbangs. People like to watch to gain an intimate and visceral experience. In general, family vloggers are popular because they trade on making the ordinary and everyday visible, says Donnar.
“Some watch just to decry the perceived manipulation of the children”
“It seems adults watch for a mix of positive or negative reasons: either because they think the kids are cute or the family dynamic sweet, or because they want to loudly decry the perceived manipulation of the children, the parents’ commodification of their children’s image, and food choices deemed extremely unhealthy,” says Donnar.
Child mukbangs are now a global phenomenon. In Canada, a mukbang star with 1.8 million subscribers frequently films with her children, while in Japan, two young siblings broadcast their homemade meals to 400,000 subscribers. In the UK, a dad and his three daughters chat over KFC and McDonald’s; in Pakistan, two primary school-aged brothers do timed challenges.
“Eating together should be a family time to bond and share, but it’s being used as a spectator sport, which is a sad reflection of modern society,” says Aisling Pigott, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association and a registered dietician.
Pigott worries about how these videos may affect young viewers. “We know early years’ nutrition sets little ones up for life – both in terms of physical risk and emotional relationship with food,” she says.
One from the University of Liverpool, UK, split children into two groups and showed them famous YouTubers eating healthy or unhealthy snacks. The children were then offered food. Those who saw the vloggers eating fatty foods ate 26 per cent more calories than those who didn’t. The demographics of a YouTuber’s audience aren’t available to the public, but a quick glance at the Candoos’s social media pages shows that many of their fans are young children.
“I don’t watch kid mukbangs when I’m alone, only when my kids are watching, just because I know it will be something appropriate for them,” says , a mother in the US, who recently made a mukbang with her children. Over half of the UK’s 3 to 4-year-olds and more than eight in 10 of its 5 to 15-year-olds now watch YouTube. The popularity of the mukbang videos among children is understandable, says Donnar. “Kids love watching other kids and they love reliving or encountering treasured or special experiences and moments from their own life.”
Junk food tube?
While fast food giants rarely pay Western mukbangers to promote their products, one concern is that the videos may undermine efforts to curb children’s exposure to adverts for unhealthy foods. Since 2007, the UK has prohibited advertising foods high in fat, sugar or salt before, during and after children’s TV shows. But children are still exposed to these unhealthy foods online, says Anna Taylor, executive director of UK think tank the Food Foundation. And, of course, many mukbang videos include packaging branded for the fast-food outlets where the items were purchased.
Bahee Van de Bor, a specialist paediatric dietitian in London, also notes the potential psychological consequences of being a mukbang star. “If a child is only being filmed when they’re eating these high-fat, takeaway foods, then they may associate these foods as being very positive, when in fact there are nutritionally better choices,” she says.
Internet stardom could also be damaging for children, who face scrutiny and comments from thousands of viewers. , a US man who broadcasts mukbangs with his wife to 65,000 subscribers, recently decided to stop filming his daughter. “I felt we were exploiting our daughter. I didn’t want to put her on screen just for the sake of views, just for the sake of monetary gain,” he says. “It really messed with my integrity.”
When he began to video his daughter, Jones says his views “skyrocketed” – some months the family earned $3000 from their videos. But commenters also critiqued his daughter’s speech patterns when she was just 3 and other blogs insulted his parenting skills.
Three days after being asked for comment on child mukbangs for this article, YouTube began removing Eating with the Candoos videos, notably those featuring the family’s 2-year-old. The Candoos have uploaded mukbangs of their children for three years.
“Some months the family earned $3000 from their daughter’s videos”
“We believe technology presents great opportunities for young people to express themselves creatively and access useful information, but we also know we have a responsibility to protect young creators and families, and consider the potential impact of emerging trends on them,” said a YouTube spokesperson.”We have seen interest in young creators making mukbang videos, so we’ve been working with experts to update our enforcement guidelines for reviewers to remove videos featuring minors engaged in more intimate or inappropriate acts.”
Restrictions are also on the way in the nation where it all began. In July 2018, the South Korean government launched a strategy to tackle obesity after national rates rose from 26 per cent in 1998 to 34.8 per cent in 2016. Part of this was a pledge to for mukbang videos.
Yet no child mentioned in this article appears obese and videoing kids eating isn’t inherently wrong. Ean dislikes mukbangs with excessive quantities of food, and her 6-year-old daughter has eaten scallops, squid and sushi on camera. This might inspire other children to have a more varied diet, she says. “The more open you are at a young age, the more open you’re going to be as an adult.”
Bafana – who only has a couple of mukbangs on her channel, but plans to do more – says viewers also misunderstand her 6-year-old’s relationship with YouTube. “People don’t realise that she wanted to start YouTube and she enjoys it. I’ve always said that if she comes to me and says she no longer wants to be in the vlogs, that’s perfectly fine with us.”
While the Candoos didn’t respond to a request for comment, they have responded to criticism in previous videos. In November 2017, Andrew mocked concerned fans. In a falsetto voice, he imitated internet commenters: “Oh my god, I can’t believe you guys are giving a baby hot Cheetos” before adding, “Sorry, not your child.”
Although the issue is complicated, it is clear the area is presently under-regulated. The Candoos also allow viewers to request certain meals in exchange for money sent via PayPal – a set-up that seems open to abuse.
Shortly after YouTube took down some of their videos, the family uploaded another showing their 10-year-old daughter eating cheesy fries. “This video most likely will be removed by YouTube like most of our other videos. So I wont [sic] be posting after this one,” the description reads. Since then, they have uploaded videos of their older children eating McDonald’s, chicken wings and seafood – and their 2-year-old eating an array of sweets.
The Candoos don’t seem to be going anywhere. And there will probably be no shortage of copycat YouTubers after a piece of the pie.
