A 24-year-old binge-eating live-streamer died while broadcasting a 10-hour food binge on cake, chicken fingers, and seafood to thousands of her followers.
Pan Xiaoting, from China, died last week from a suspected stomach tear while gorging on 10kg (22lbs) of food, including what appeared to be chocolate cake.
Autopsy results revealed that her stomach had become severely deformed and filled with undigested food, suggesting that her stomach could have burst, causing stomach acid and food to leak into her abdomen.
Xiaoting – who was morbidly obese – became famous in China for her Mukbang live streams, a trend which sees people eat huge amounts of food, usually very unhealthy food on camera. It originated in South Korea.
Now doctors are warning influencers in the West could be next – with several content creators in the US becoming extremely popular.
Among the most well-known content creators is Nicholas Perry, better known as Nikocado Avocado to his 3.8millon YouTube followers.
The 32-year-old, from Pennsylvania, has become a multi-millionaire by filming himself binge-eating ungodly amounts of food and documenting his weight-gain journey in unhinged videos.
While he began filming himself consuming vast amounts of ramen or a stack of pancakes at IHOP in 2017, he now often eats more than 10,000 calories live on camera in videos with such titles as ‘I hate myself, Goodbye YouTube & life’ and ‘Celebrating Our 700 Pound Milestone’ which features a friend.
He currently weighs a reported 350 pounds, having begun his journey in around 2016 weighing around 160 pounds.
Another YouTube sensation is Hungry Fat Chick, or Candy Godiva, who has become a fixture in the mukbang video scene with more than 280,000 YouTube subscribers. Her net worth hovers around $1 million.
Dr Andrew Harris , a senior lecturer of psychology at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, said: ‘Mukbang videos center around consumption and indulgence, potentially reinforcing a cycle of overeating or unhealthy food relationships.’
China has such an all-out ban on mukbang videos, but it has not stopped content creators from live-streaming their binges.
Pan Xiaoting live-streamed her 10-hour food marathon on July 14 when she collapsed. Viewers reportedly tried to provide remote help, but it wasn’t enough.
She had recently been hospitalized with stomach bleeding though it’s not clear how long ago she was discharged.
When she died, most of the food she ate had not been digested yet and was sitting in her stomach.
Having a history of stomach bleeding greatly increases one’s risk of experiencing other severe GI issues down the line.
Details about her death coming out of China are slim, but there are several ways in which consuming vast quantities of food nonstop could kill someone.
Eating that much food can cause the stomach to rupture or tear due to excessive stretching.
Eating a massive amount of food can also lead the stomach to expand and become distended, which can compress surrounding blood vessels as well as put pressure on the heart, raising the risk of cardiac arrest.
It can also cause a severe electrolyte imbalance, which can cause severe cardiac effects.
The appeal of mukbang videos originally began as a way to make people feel less lonely, especially when eating alone.
Dr Harris said: ‘While some studies suggest that watching mukbang videos can alleviate feelings of loneliness by providing a sense of social connection or companionship, others indicate that excessive consumption of these videos may exacerbate loneliness by substituting deeper real-life social interactions with more superficial virtual ones.’
But it has since become a grotesque display of gluttony and self-harm, according to registered dietitian Katie Lopez.
She told DailyMail.com: ‘Sadly, this is another example of the glorification of self-harming behavior.
‘More specifically, these people are at risk for stomach perforation, significant elevations in glucose and lipids, acid/base disorders, electrolyte shifts, dehydration, and heart rate abnormalities.’
Watching people gorge themselves on unhealthy foods can reinforce unhealthy eating habits, according to Dr Harris, who said the videos ‘centre around consumption and indulgence, potentially reinforcing a cycle of overeating or unhealthy food relationships.’
