Doctor's have lifted the grim lid on what happens to your body after an extreme eater died during a 10-hour food binge.
Pan Xiaoting keeled over in front of horrified Mukbang fans on July 14 after gorging on 10kg of seafood and chocolate cake during the mammoth marathon. An autopsy revealed the former waitress' stomach was left "deformed" and full of "undigested food."
The 24-year-old influencer became famous in China for taking part in the trend, which originated in South Korea and sees people chow down on obscene amounts of junk food in front of "fans."
READ MORE: Horror as extreme eater, 24, dies during livestream after 10-hour food binge
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Now doctors have issued warnings over the deadly craze which is sweeping the globe amid fears it can "glamourise" unhealthy eating practices.
Among the most well-known of such content creators is Nicholas Perry, better known as Nikocado Avocado who has 3.8m YouTube followers.
The 32-year-old, from Pennsylvania films himself binge-eating mounds of food and documenting his weight-gain journey in unhinged videos with titles such as 'I hate myself, Goodbye YouTube & life.'
Another YouTube sensation is Hungry Fat Chick, or Candy Godiva, who has become a fixture in the mukbang video scene with more than 280,000 YouTube subscribers.
Dr Andrew Harris, a senior lecturer of psychology at Nottingham Trent University in the UK told MailOnline: "While some studies suggest that watching mukbang videos can alleviate feelings of loneliness by providing a sense of social connection or companionship, others indicate that excessive consumption of these videos may exacerbate loneliness by substituting deeper real-life social interactions with more superficial virtual ones."
But registered dietitian, Katie Lopez said it has since become a grotesque display of gluttony and self-harm.
"Sadly, this is another example of the glorification of self-harming behaviour," she said.
"More specifically, these people are at risk for stomach perforation, significant elevations in glucose and lipids, acid/base disorders, electrolyte shifts, dehydration, and heart rate abnormalities."
Eating large amounts of food can cause the stomach to rupture or tear due to excessive stretching. It can also lead the stomach to expand and become distended, which can compress surrounding blood vessels as well as put pressure on the heart, raising the risk of cardiac arrest.
Watching people gorge themselves on unhealthy foods is a worrying trend that can negatively impact the next generation, according to medical expert Dr Gareth Nye, a senior lecturer at Chester Medical school.
Speaking to the Daily Star, he said: "There are a wide variation of health risks associated with overeating, particularly competitive eating or extreme eating which have become popular around the world.
"Extreme eating has some very specific dangers including basics such as nausea and vomiting as well as morbid obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
"You also have the risk of choking with food entering the wide pipe rather than the oesophagus. In addition there are unique conditions such as stomach perforation."
Dr Nye said extreme eaters are able to stretch their stomachs more than normal and have the ability to ignore signals from the brain to say the stomach is full.
"The quicker you eat the more you can get in before the signals are clear but the average person will still reach a feeling of fullness. Competitive eaters or extreme eaters do not have a normal pathway," he said.
Explaining what happens to the body in such cases, Dr Nye said: "The body will physically stretch to accommodate the food but the release from the stomach to the intestines is heavily controlled. There are only so many calories the body can take in so much of the food will go through the intestinal transit undigested.
"One issue with the undigested food is that way too much glucose. This causes a stress response known as 'dumping syndrome' that involves heavy sweating, rapid heartbeat, nausea, and diarrhoea."
Dr Nye said viewers pf such content might be indulging in a "morbid fascination or disgust in the same vein people watch pimple popping."
He added: "In my opinion it is glamorising unhealthy eating practices to a wide audience, particularly children which I worry will lead to issues within the wider population as our children grow and develop."
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