We live to eat, and the popularity of food shows is a great substitute for loneliness and family bonding. However, cooking shows and food bloggers can often be manipulated by commercial interests, so we need to use a critical eye to identify the real deal.

Introduction

I often find myself on social media sites like Facebook, saving restaurant information. The days of eating to live are over. We live to eat. We go to restaurants to please our mouths, and we watch cooking programs to satisfy our eyes. This was the beginning of the mediaization of food.

The birth of ‘Mukbang’

The so-called “mukbang” is short for “eating broadcasting,” and it originated when BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys) broadcasted scenes of eating food in their personal broadcasts on the Internet. Mukbang gained traction thanks in large part to actor Ha Jung-woo. The scene in which he appeared as a fugitive in the Korean movie ‘Hwanghae’ where he ‘inhaled’ soup, potatoes, nori, bachelor kimchi, dog meat, etc. by mobilizing all the muscles in his face was enough to make him the ‘king of Mukbang’. With programs such as ‘Fridge, Please’ and ‘Samseokki’ becoming huge hits, it’s clear that food broadcasting has entered the center of pop culture.
Why are people so enthusiastic about mukbang? First of all, experts have suggested that it is closely related to the decline in the number of households due to changes in social and industrial structure and family patterns. The decline in the number of households has triggered the desire for cooking and eating food to build family bonds, and mukbangs have gained popularity as they indirectly fulfill the desire for loneliness, emptiness, and family bonding. In addition, the public’s growing interest in eating as a trend of improving living standards and wellness is also contributing to the popularity of mukbangs. PDs of broadcasting companies predicted that eating and cooking will continue to appear in many programs and pop culture because it is a major interest of the general public.

Are the ‘restaurants’ introduced in mukbangs ‘real restaurants’?

“I have an embarrassing broadcasting experience,” comedian Nam Hee-seok wrote in the introduction of his column on Daily Sports. The story goes like this. He ate delicious food from a country he’d never seen before, claiming to be a regular at the restaurant, and made all sorts of ‘gura’ comments in front of the camera. He also confessed that he was paid extra for his appearance on the show.
“According to the National Tax Service statistics released in 2010, there is a survival game going on in Korea, with 515 restaurants opening and 474 closing every day. In the desperate struggle of restaurants to survive in the murderous jungle, the purity of taste has been lost and the ‘inappropriate relationship between the media and restaurants’ has begun,” according to an excerpt from the documentary film True Taste Show. Like Nam Hee-seok’s case, it sharply criticizes the world where cooking programs have become a means of promotion for restaurants, rather than a way to share information about ‘good food’.
Even our favorite food power bloggers and Facebook pages are not immune from this criticism. Restaurants often offer free food or pay bloggers to post about their food. As one power blogger told us, “It’s in the bloggers’ interest to post about restaurants. In fact, it’s not hard to find a well-located restaurant that’s easy for the public to find, even if the food isn’t good or popular.”

How should we eat?

The documentary ends with the question, “Who is the Big Brother who is forcing us to eat?” In this case, the Big Brother could be ourselves. This is because we are not ‘good enough’. The cooking programs we see on TV leave little room for professional intervention in the production process, yet we, the viewers, accept the lack of professionalism without verification. In this situation, we are led on a blind food tour by the media, which is more like gluttony than gastronomy.
We don’t get to see the flavors in the broadcast. TV media can only be conveyed through the eyes, and our eyes are the biggest liars, as they are deceived by artificially staged scenes. We have become so shallow that there are brokers who claim, “It’s not what you taste, but how you present it that matters.”
Taste is pleasure and life itself. To fully enjoy our pleasures without being hijacked by stations, we need to open our eyes to taste. We need to be able to judge for ourselves and not take everything we see at face value in order to identify real restaurants. Now, let’s eat. Let’s eat with our eyes open. Let’s remove the curtain of programming and eat with critical eyes. If we can make democracy blossom in the dictatorship of the stations we have created, the taste will be ours.