'Eating hosts' providing a visual feast for viewers

Food sales

About five years ago, a trend developed in South Korea in which viewers watched good-looking people eating online. The phenomenon, dubbed muk-bang ("eating broadcasts") in Korean, has now been taken up in China, where it is attracting a growing audience.

Last year, 1.6 billion people watched eating broadcasts on Taobao, the world's largest e-commerce website, and sales of related foodstuffs on the platform quadrupled year-on-year, according to a survey conducted by Alibaba, Taobao's parent company.

However, Taobao isn't the only platform showing muk-bang, and it has become a major element on short-video app giants such as Douyin, Bilibili and Kuaishou.

The Alibaba survey said the average age of the audience is 33, with 65 percent being female, and most people watch the videos after 7 pm.

It concluded that watching muk-bang can stimulate viewers' appetites, and noted how an unnamed online eater sold 10,000 bags of spicy instant noodles within 10 minutes of a broadcast on Taobao.