A mukbang video can keep bringing in ad revenue long after the meal is over. For some Korean creators, those old uploads have become something to worry about.
Mukbang, a Korean portmanteau for “eating broadcast,” took off in South Korea as a live format: A host would eat on camera and talk with viewers, turning a meal into something people could share from home. An enormous spread might catch someone’s eye, but research on mukbang viewers suggests the conversation and sense of company help keep them watching.
On YouTube, those viewers can also bring in money. Creators in its Partner Program earn a share of ad revenue from eligible videos, even when the views come years after the upload. That makes a restriction on older videos a problem for a creator’s income today.
Salppaejo, also known as DietJo, is dealing with exactly that uncertainty. The creator, whose channel has about 447,000 subscribers, said YouTube had suspended its monetization. “We have also stopped uploading videos because we do not know which ones might be penalized,” she wrote in a community post, according to Seoul Economic Daily’s translation.
The concern isn’t simply about eating a large amount of food on camera. YouTube’s rules target eating-disorder content that depicts behaviors vulnerable viewers might imitate, including binge eating, hiding food, or tracking weight and weight loss. That distinction is becoming important for creators whose videos mix food with dieting or weight-loss content.
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Miso, a diet and food YouTuber with about 100,000 subscribers, found herself sorting through four years of videos. In a Sept. 15 upload, she said YouTube first notified her of a guideline violation in mid-March and, later that month, told her that her channel’s monetization would be temporarily suspended. She spent April contacting YouTube and appealing the decision before reviewing every video she had posted. “I reviewed all 667 videos on my channel and deleted 339 of them with tears in my eyes,” she said.
Miso added that she had made some of those videos to share her own weight-loss experience. But since they included specific weight and diet figures, as well as descriptions of weight-loss routines, she said they could be risky for vulnerable viewers to imitate. What mattered in the YouTube review, as she understood it, was “not the creator’s intent, but rather how teenagers and viewers perceive the content.” Mashable reached out to YouTube for more information about how it applies these rules but did not receive a response by press time.
The concern has reached muckbang creators at large. Tzuyang, one of South Korea’s best-known mukbang stars with 13.5 million subscribers, told viewers during a visit to an Incheon market, “I heard eating a lot isn’t the trend these days.” She added, “I’ll try to be a YouTuber who eats a reasonable amount from now on.” Then she ate fried chicken, spicy rice cakes, donuts, and several other dishes. There’s no indication YouTube has penalized her channel, but her joke shows that she’s following the conversation.
So what changed? In 2023, YouTube expanded its rules to prohibit disordered eating content that featured what it calls “imitable behavior” or actions vulnerable viewers might copy. Later that year, it updated its ad guidelines, stating that videos focused on eating disorders that depict such behavior “will not receive ad revenue.” Under YouTube’s current guidelines, examples that can affect ad eligibility include references to binge eating or hiding food, showing a lowest weight or BMI, and tracking weight-loss progress. YouTube also considers a video’s title, thumbnail, description, and tags. (The rules don’t amount to a ban on mukbangs overall, and there’s no evidence that simply eating a large meal on camera automatically leads to demonetization.)
There’s a lot at stake for YouTube, too. The company said videos with “mukbang” in the title drew more than 30 billion views worldwide from January through July 2024. But it also faces questions about the eating disorder content it recommends to young viewers. In a July 2026 study, researchers created accounts posing as 13-year-old girls. After those accounts watched a video featuring disordered eating, researchers found that an average of one in nine “Up Next” recommendations featured harmful eating disorder content.
For the creators in this story, the consequences are already concrete. The next change to mukbang may happen before anyone takes a bite. Creators can still film a meal, but they may think more carefully about how they portray excessive eating, as well as the titles and thumbnails associated with it — at least if they want to keep getting the views and ad dollars they’re used to.
