Mukbang- and Cookbang-watching status and dietary life of university students who are not food and nutrition majors
Sowon Yun, Hyunjoo Kang, Hongmie Lee
Abstract
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: As watching food-related programs has become very popular among the young generation in Korea, this study sought to compare the Mukbang- and Cookbang-watching status of university students with their dietary life. SUBJECTS/METHODS: The participants were 380 students who were not majoring in food and nutrition at a university in Gyeonggi, Korea. Based on self- reports, the participants were grouped according to their frequency of watching Mukbang or Cookbang: frequent-watching (FW) 21.1% and 5.3%, respectively; moderate-watching (MW) 43.9% and 27.9%, respectively; and not-watching (NW) 35.0% and 66.8% respectively. RESULTS: < 0.01 for Cookbang and Mukbang, respectively). Moreover, the participants answered that Mukbang-watching prompted them to eat more of less desirable food, such as through eating out and purchasing convenient and delivered foods, whereas Cookbang-watching made them want to cook more of their own food. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggested that Korean university students who frequently watch Mukbang, but not Cookbang, may be a nutritionally vulnerable group that needs attention.