In this blog post, we will take a look at the other side of mukbang and foodie content, and explore how the media influences our culinary experiences and consumer desires.

Introduction

I often find myself saving information about restaurants on social media sites such as Facebook. The era of eating to live is over. We have become beings who live to eat. Modern people search for restaurants to satisfy their palates and watch cooking programs to satisfy their eyes. This can be said to be the beginning of the mediatization of food.

The birth of “mukbang”

The term “mukbang” is short for “eating broadcast,” which originated from BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys) broadcasting themselves eating food on personal internet channels. Actor Ha Jung-woo played a major role in bringing mukbang to the public’s attention. In the Korean movie “The Yellow Sea,” he played a fugitive who used every muscle in his face to “inhale” gukbap (rice soup with beef), potatoes, seaweed, kimchi, and dog meat, which was enough to make him the “king of mukbang.” The huge success of programs such as “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator” and “Three Meals a Day” shows that mukbang has become a part of mainstream culture.
Why are people so enthusiastic about mukbang? First, experts suggest that it is closely related to changes in society, industrial structure, and family structure, which have led to a decrease in the number of family members. The decrease in family members has triggered a desire to build family bonds through cooking and eating, and mukbang has become very popular as it indirectly satisfies loneliness, emptiness, and the desire for family bonds. In addition, the public’s growing interest in food due to improved living standards and wellness trends is also contributing to the popularity of mukbang. TV producers predict that eating and cooking will continue to be a major interest for the general public, and that programs featuring meals and cooking will continue to appear in popular culture.

Are the restaurants featured on mukbang shows really good?

“I have an embarrassing experience appearing on TV.” This is the opening paragraph of a column written by comedian Nam Hee-seok for the daily sports newspaper. The story goes like this. He ate food from a country he had never visited before as if he were a regular at the restaurant and made various exaggerated comments in front of the camera. He also confessed that he received additional transportation expenses on top of his appearance fee for appearing on the show.
“According to statistics released by the National Tax Service in 2010, 515 restaurants are opened and 474 are closed every day in South Korea, making it a survival game. The fierce struggle of restaurants to survive in this brutal jungle has caused the purity of taste to disappear, and an “inappropriate relationship between the media and restaurants” has begun.” This is an excerpt from the documentary film “True Taste Show.” Like Nam Hee-seok’s case, it sharply criticizes the current situation where cooking programs have become a means of promotion for restaurants rather than simply a means of sharing information about “restaurants with good food.”
The popular food bloggers and Facebook pages that we often encounter are not immune to this criticism. This is because restaurant owners provide free food or money to bloggers in exchange for posting about their food. One influential blogger confessed in a phone call with a reporter, “It benefits bloggers to post about restaurants. Even if the food isn’t tasty or popular, it’s not difficult to find restaurants in good locations that are easy for the public to find.”

How should we eat?

The documentary “True Taste Show” ends with the question, “Who is the Big Brother forcing us to watch True Taste Show?” Here, Big Brother could be us. This is because our standards are not high enough. The cooking programs we often see have little room for experts to intervene in the production process. However, viewers accept these programs without verifying their lack of expertise. In this situation, blindly following the media’s recommendations for restaurants is not “gourmet” but rather “gluttony.”
We cannot taste the food on TV. TV media can only convey information through our eyes, and our eyes, which are easily deceived by contrived scenes, are the biggest liars. Amidst all this, we are so superficial that brokers have appeared who claim that “it’s not what tastes good that matters, but how you express it.”
Taste is pleasure and life itself. In order to fully enjoy our pleasures without being toyed with by broadcasters, we must open our eyes to taste. In order to find the real gourmet restaurants, we must not believe what we see, but judge for ourselves. Now, let’s eat. Let’s eat with our eyes open. Let’s remove the veil of television programs and eat with a critical eye. If democracy can finally flourish under the dictatorship of television stations that we have created, then taste will truly be ours.