China has banned 13,600 channels that stream so-called “big eaters” devouring food in real time in its latest move against food wastage, as content creators find new ways to broadcast their food shows.

An order to preserve food was imposed upon Chinese citizens last month, as livestreamers who eat large amounts of food on their channels were being banned on social media platforms. Many of the livestreamers changed the name of their channels to “food bloggers” instead of “big eaters.”

The food preservation order also inspired one new livestreamer who instead only pretends to eat food on his channel, which has already attracted more than eight million views within a few days.

Peng Niao Peng Niao told Apple Daily that he only started the livestream for fun, and it was not related to the food preservation order. He said the order was unnecessary, as even if there were 10,000 big eaters streaming online, the food they wasted was only a small fraction compared to country-wide consumption.

The 19-year-old currently has more than 13,000 followers on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. He started uploading clips in February pretending to eat fried chicken, noodles and pizza, despite actually not consuming any food. He said he earned the following probably only because people were curious.

Peng Niao Peng Niao, a fitness coach, said he would only put up training videos when they are perfect. He considers his “eating” videos to be a form of performance art, and there was still room for him to improve.

His followers said his acting was so realistic that some said they even “salivated” during the broadcast.

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