What started as a simple love for food content online grew into making her own for the internet to see. Senior Ana Roman quickly gained a following of 52,000 on TikTok, with millions of likes and views. From Crumbl cookies to fried sushi burritos, she’s tried it all.
“I grew up watching mukbangs and ASMR eating videos all the time, so I have always wanted to do this,” Roman said.
A mukbang is a video where a person eats in front of a camera, addressing the audience and reviewing the content. Roman’s first video that blew up was posted in 2023. In it, she tried Valkyrie Donuts and rated them, receiving 718.6k views and 95.3k likes.
“The first video that blew up, I got so excited and gained so much love from it,” Roman said.
Roman posts all types of eating content, including “what I eat in a day,” or “eat dinner with me” videos, as well as mukbang content.
Roman has cumulatively 5.6 million likes and her most popular video has 3.6 million views and sits at 576.8K likes. This video was a celebration of her eating cake because she hit five thousand followers, not knowing this would boost her even more.
Around 2020, mukbang videos grew significantly in popularity on TikTok, particularly during the early days of the pandemic when people were seeking social connection and entertainment. By mid-August 2024, over 4 million mukbang videos were published with the #mukbang hashtag on TikTok.
“Sometimes people send me cool foods to try for free to promote, which is so fun,” Roman said.
Her first ever video was made in 2023 of her trying Wingstop with her friend. “I always look back on my early videos just to see how far I’ve come.”
This content-creation is not just for fun, as it takes some dedication as well. Roman posts up to three times a week to keep her followers satisfied.
“A lot of editing and planning goes into my videos because there always has to be something new,” Roman said.
“The best food I’ve tried is Valkyrie Donuts. They have the best donuts ever and the workers are so kind and knew me personally because of how much I went,” Roman said.
Though this all seems like a piece of cake, content creation often comes with hatred as well.
“I get some hate comments about my eating videos and some people think it’s cringy, but all I do is just delete them and keep doing what I love,” Roman said.
Roman typically rates the food that she tries and states whether or not she would recommend it to her followers.
“I used to be such a picky eater but I have grown to love food, and making these videos has opened me up to trying pretty much anything,” Roman said.
She has been posting for about two years now, trying new things every week.
“So many people think my content is embarrassing or cringy but I don’t care,” Roman said. “My advice to anyone trying to start posting content is to just not care what anybody else thinks of what you do.”
