In the end, one hundred skewers of spicy Guizhou chicken proved to be too much.
Alongside lashings of potato, dumplings and noodles, food vlogger Mires munched her way through the kebabs in a small local restaurant in the southern Chinese province.
In the video from May, the young woman leaves trails of sauce across her mouth as she slides dozens of meat-laden sticks between her teeth.
Visibly slowing after several hours, she eventually gives up. She then informs a waiter that the rest of the food, including a half-eaten bowl of rice, will have to be taken away.
“I am really full, I don’t think my stomach has endless space,” she sighs.
While displays of greediness like this have earned Mires an avid following of 300,000 YouTube subscribers, they appear to have irked the Chinese government.
On Friday, Beijing announced a fresh crackdown on influencers and live-streamers, issuing 31 guidelines for their behaviour that included a warning against “food waste”.
The regulation by the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation also targeted “traffic-driven videos”, “money worship”, “fandom culture”, and “abnormal aesthetics”, a reference to China’s ongoing efforts to restrain “effeminate” culture among men.
It is not yet clear what impact the regulations will have on thousands of so-called “Mukbangs” – live-streamers who gobble large quantities of food to the appreciation of an online audience.
As of Sunday, Mukbang videos can still be found on popular Chinese social media platforms including Douyin and Weibo.
However, the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to clamp down on the country’s 15.8 million professional live-streamers and influencers is tied to an ongoing economic slowdown.
Ostentatious displays of wealth have already been banned including the account of Wang Hongquanxing – “China’s Kim Kardashian” who boasted of never leaving the house in less than $1.4million in jewellery which was blocked in May.
Xi Jinping, China’s president, has tightened government control over perceived cultural “excesses” at a time of slow growth, high youth unemployment and a troubled property market.
Mukbangs, who take on challenges from their audiences to eat staggeringly large plates of food, run counter to the Communist Party’s messaging on waste.
According to a 2020 survey by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, at least 34 million tons of food are thrown away in restaurants alone in China every year. (Across the UK’s entire supply chain, the figure is 10 million.)
The CCP has already attempted to curtail the Mukbangs. In 2021, China imposed an anti-food waste law that prohibits food vloggers from making and distributing binge-eating videos online, with fines of up to 100,000 yuan (around £10,937).
While the regulation reduced the number of Mukbangs who gorge themselves to the limit, many still order extreme quantities of food – they just are not seen polishing off the lot. Instead, they may cut away, or invite fellow diners to join them. Some add, out of extra caution, that they have exercised a lot to digest, or post a warning subtitle stating “food wasting is not allowed, please stay healthy”.
Mires, for example, presents herself as a guide to the delicacies of restaurants across China, rather than a greedy guts.
Zhang Xixi, a Youtuber from Sichun with 160,000 subscribers, recently posted a video at a barbecue restaurant where she ordered around two pounds of meat – enough for four people.
But she invites passers-by to dine with her, showing the empty plates to her audience at the end of the meal. Before the 2021 regulation, her table was strewn with unfinished food in most videos.
Mukbang’s audiences typically express adoration for the iron stomach and petite physiques of their favourite stars.
However, some commenters take the more critical approach of Mr Jinping.
“It is impossible to keep that thin while eating such a huge amount of food”, one Mires viewer responds, while asking bloggers to stop wasting so much.
The post China cracks down on bingeing food bloggers in a warning against waste appeared first on The Telegraph.
