Advertisement
China’s new food waste law hard to stomach for binge-eating internet stars, who could face fines of US$15,000 for promoting overeating
- Binge-eating videos have become very popular in China but under the proposed new law anyone who promotes overeating will face fines of up to 100,000 yuan
- Restaurants will also face fines if they induce or mislead consumers to ‘order excessive meals and cause obvious waste’
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
19
A particular subset of China’s food vloggers are set to find the government’s latest crackdown a bitter – and expensive – pill to swallow.
Advertisement
Under a proposed new wide-ranging food-waste law, spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping and submitted to China’s highest legal committee last week, anyone who posts videos online that promote overeating will face fines of up to 100,000 yuan (US$15,300).
Binge-eating, or mukbang, videos – in which influencers gorge on massive amounts of food in a short period of time – have become a popular form of online entertainment. The trend has boomed not just in China, but internationally too.
Many of the most-viewed videos on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, are of beautiful, often petite young women eating their way through mammoth-sized meals, such as 10 bowls of spicy noodles, 15 hamburgers or, in one case, a 17kg (37lb) roasted lamb.
Advertisement
The nation’s lawmaters, however, want this popular viral trend to end.
Advertisement