Why Are We All Addicted to Watching YouTube While We Eat?

Happy (early) birthday, YouTube. To celebrate the site’s 20th anniversary, we present: The InsideHook Guide to YouTube, a series of creator profiles, channel recommendations and deep dives about the viral, controversial, unstoppable video-sharing giant.

When I’m working from home and decide to take my lunch break, there’s only one thing I want to watch while I consume the giant salad I just prepared: a YouTube video.

Now, the YouTube meal is decidedly different than, say, a movie or TV meal. Even scrolling mindlessly through TikTok while shoving pasta into my mouth can’t hold a candle to the YouTube video I’m about to put on while I eat from the comfort of my bed.

Turns out, this is not a unique inclination enjoyed by yours truly. It seems like no one can sit down to eat a meal alone without first queuing up a video on the site. There’s even a meme dedicated to the phenomenon.

According to Know Your Meme, Eating Without YouTube “refers to a series of memes that imagine that eating a meal without watching a YouTube video…can have various adverse effects, such as ending up in a hospital, or describe it as a difficult or impossible feat.” Simply put, we would perish if not for the YouTube video playing in the background of our feast.

Obviously the concept of dinner and a show is nothing new. Dating back to ancient Rome, Roman banquets saw feasts accompanied by music, poetry and theatrical performances. Spectators tore up turkey legs while jousters rode horses around arenas in the Middle Ages. During the Prohibition era, speakeasies became popular venues for jazz performances. Then there is the true predecessor of the YouTube meal: the TV dinner. The frozen-meal-on-a-tray went hand in hand with the boom in television owners in the late 1950s. These days, we have Alamo Drafthouses and Movie Taverns, where moviegoers are served full-on dinner in plush recliners. Not only do we have the luxury of spending over $20 on a ticket to see the hottest new release, but we get to overpay for a drink and a burger while we watch it!

Say what you want about our increasingly small attention spans courtesy of our phone-centered, algorithm-dominated world, but humans have always wanted to distract themselves from intruding thoughts with a meal accompanied by entertainment.

But when we eat at home, we have a daunting, endless stream of possibilities. We can scroll mindlessly on various social media apps. We can choose one of the many streaming services to sink our teeth into. Movies, hour-long television episodes and 30-minute sitcom reruns are all at our fingertips. So why do so many of us choose to watch a random YouTube video?

Despite the fact that I partake in this YouTube meal ritual nearly every day, I don’t have an obvious explanation. So I decided to pose the question to a true expert: a moderator for r/mealtimevideos, a subreddit with two million members who share specific YouTube videos they believe pair great with breakfast, lunch or dinner.

“I find the best content [for watching while eating] is often under half an hour, but over 10 minutes,” says the moderator who uses the handle WritewayHome. “It has to be engaging and something that isn’t too visually demanding, that you can mostly listen to, and won’t feel like you’re missing out by looking away.”

The InsideHook Guide to YouTube

For YouTube’s 20th anniversary, we’re profiling creators, recommending channels and dissecting the viral, controversial, unstoppable video-sharing giant

YouTube allows viewers to call up exactly what they’re in the mood to watch, whether that happens to be comedy skits, gaming streams, commentary videos or mukbangs, a popular genre where creators eat an excessive amount of food, often from a chain restaurant or fast-food spot. “TV is harder to get a good handle on exactly what you want to watch,” WritewayHome adds.

For solo diners, eating along to food-centric YouTube series like “Eat the Menu,” a popular show from The Try Guys that racks up tens of millions of views per episode, and even interview shows like “Hot Ones,” where celebrities battle through a lineup of increasingly spicy wings, might help viewers feel less alone when enjoying their meal.

Then there is the simple excitement of browsing through YouTube and discovering your favorite creator has just uploaded a new video. “All the big creators on YouTube — MrBeast, Lemmino, Veritasium, etc.— often go viral and there is a race to post their content [on the sub],” the moderator says. “Most of them don’t post too regularly, so it’s always a treat when they put something new out there. I notice a lot of the best content is deep dives into topics — people on Meal Time Videos are hungry to learn, understand their world, all while enjoying a good meal.”

So maybe it’s not about turning our burnt-out brains off for 20 minutes and dissociating into mindless consumption. Rather, YouTube meals are about taking advantage of the little free time we have throughout our hectic days to learn something new through a video essay, gain a new perspective through commentary or, simply, take comfort in not eating alone.