Beijing, China

A woman from China passed away after attempting a food-eating challenge online live in front of an audience. Twenty-four-year-old Pan Xiaoting died due to overeating, something she usually did to earn gifts and tips from the people watching her. According to reports, Xiaoting was performing an extreme eating challenge prior to her death. As part of the challenge, she was supposed to eat non-stop for more than 10 hours every day. She indulged in all kinds of foods and had set herself the target of eating more than 10kg of dinner daily. Xiaoting also put on a host of odd dishes on her plate.

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Reportedly, she had earlier been hospitalised for gastrointestinal bleeding while conducting one of her food challenges. She started to do the latest challenge just a day after she was discharged. Autopsy reports show her abdomen to be severely deformed, with her stomach full of undigested food.

Xiaoting, as per Creaders.net, got involved with food-eating challenges after seeing a friend of hers make money from live broadcasts. She started off by eating alone on such live feeds in front of a few people and gradually gained more attention and started making money. She would even ask people to like her and give her gifts if they liked to watch her eat. 

As the number of people following her started increasing, so did the extremities of her challenges. Xiaoting started taking on bigger challenges, including eating several kilogrammes of food in a day. This led to overeating, in addition to consuming weird foods that can cause harm to the body. 

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Alarm over social media

Xiaoting's death has once again brought to the fore the perils of social media. Wildly following trends and challenges often lead to disastrous consequences, and death in a few cases. 

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This particular challenge where people eat in front of people, either live or recorded, is known as mukbang, where the participant eats certain types of food and talks to the audience.

Social media these days offers all kinds of ways to earn money. People play video games, eat weird foods, undertake extreme challenges and more just to gain a few likes and followers. Experts and parents have raised alarm over the use of social media among the youth time and again, leading to calls to regulate it.