DOH mulls banning mukbang

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health is looking at banning eating vlogs or mukbang videos, saying it is an unhealthy practice.

DOH Secretary Ted Herbosa said mukbang is a bad practice because people make content by overeating.

“Overeating is not healthy. It will lead to hypertension, heart condition, non-communicable diseases and even heart attacks,” Herbosa said in a television interview Friday night.

He added, “I can ban it locally. I can propose banning mukbang locally and even ask DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology) to ban those sites.”

The DOH chief stressed that through mukbang, one promotes unhealthy behavior to Filipinos.

“It is like food pornography, making people eat like gluttons,” said Herbosa. The DOH issued a public health warning against mukbang videos following the death of vlogger Dongz Apatan.

Earlier reports said Apatan, a mukbang vlogger with over 400,000 followers on Facebook, suffered a stroke on June 14 after eating fried chicken.

A mukbang is an online eating show in which the host consumes excessively large amounts of food while interacting with the audience.

Several vloggers now use mukbang as content in their short videos.