As plus-sized model Rosie Jean sat down to film herself eating a rack of ribs, a pound of sausages and two sides, she knew her life had to change.
‘I developed diabetes, I could barely walk. I was very sick, nauseous and dizzy all the time,’ she tells DailyMail.com.
Her health had been wrecked – thanks to continuous over-eating fueled by one of the most dangerous sexual fetishes yet to sweep the internet.
Rosie, 32, from Florida, had been sucked into the dark world of ‘feederism’, a terrifying phenomenon exploding in popularity. Like thousands of young women around the world, she was selling videos of herself binge-eating to men online.
The results are all too predictable.
‘They’re setting themselves up for weight gain and for chronic diseases,’ explains Dr Mike Fenster, a professor at the University of Montana College of Health Professions.
‘They have an accelerated risk of diabetes which opens the door to heart disease, kidney disease,’ he says.
‘It’s a horrible perversion of a basic piece of humanity where we feed each other. It’s having these people indulge in slow poison.’
The feeders, the men paying for these feats of consumption, don’t always see it that way.
‘For me, it’s about deep affection and respect and intimacy,’ one man from Canada told The Mail.
‘Gluttony turns me on. A girl overeating as part of sexual relations is the ultimate intimacy.’
This man, who watches feeder content online, says he has been attracted to ‘fat women’ since elementary school.
‘I have a belly fetish and I think it would be tremendously erotic and intimate – as part of lovemaking – to encourage her to eat, caress her fat and declare true love of her fat,’ he says.
Another feeder, a 74-year-old man from Connecticut, is equally frank: ‘The idea of girls getting fatter and being happy about it – like so happy that they’ll put getting fat before anything – is appealing.’
The man, who did not want to be named, tells The Mail he’s among the thousands who have paid for feeding content, once requesting a custom video of two girls eating a large pizza together.
Today, global demand for sexualized feeding content has grown so vast that there are at least 30,000 feeding-related accounts on OnlyFans alone, according to search analysis site, FansMetrics.
So-called ‘feeders’ – mostly men, although not exclusively – flock to online platforms including Reddit, Feabie and FantasyFeeder, to find ‘feedees’ – mostly women – who will eat huge amounts of food on camera or in person.
Feabie alone has over 97,000 users.
The women involved can make thousands of dollars selling their ‘content’ to men desperate for sexual gratification.
These ‘feeder’ videos have one simple and consistent theme: the women post videos of themselves eating usually with plenty of loud biting and chewing noises.
Often, they perform naked or wearing revealing outfits. Sometimes they feed, or are fed by, someone else.
There’s no doubting the excitement of the male voyeurs but for the ‘feedees’, too, the experience can be intoxicating – validating, even – and lucrative.
‘I was treated like a goddess, because I was 530 lbs,’ says Rosie, who made thousands of dollars selling videos.
She once made $600 from one person alone over one weekend. And, she says, that’s a typical payment for a popular feedee.
‘It turned my eating disorder from a shame cycle to a pleasure cycle, where you’re sexualizing the act of stuffing yourself and you have these people adoring you.’
One feedee, who uses the name ContrASS to share her content, where she films herself eating vast amounts from a funnel, said she does it for ‘business and pleasure’.
‘I’m empowered by having full control of the production process and enjoy sharing what I find sexy with a reciprocating audience,’ she told The Mail.
One account on OnlyFans run by a 24-year-old from Southern California charges $19.99/month for what she describes online as ‘nudes, lingerie, feedings, stuffings’.
Another account seen by The Mail charges $11.99/month for daily nude pictures with such captions as: ‘My fat clothes are being outgrown by the minute with all the calories I’m pumping into my body… Soon I won’t be able to walk!’
The men subscribing to such accounts – the followers – can often order videos tailored to their wishes, choosing what food they would like to see consumed and how.
Some feeders and feedees take the fetish to extreme lengths and aim, for example, to gain so much weight that they become immobile, or even die – a sub-category of the fetish known as ‘death feederism’.
‘After hitting 400 lbs, I’ve found myself getting more and more turned on by death feederism,’ one woman posted on Reddit.
‘I keep imagining my “lasts”, my last steps, the last time I can move my arms, my last breath. If anyone would wanna make me so huge I don’t make it to 30, we should totally talk.’
Another wrote: ‘I’m a 255 pound 21-year-old girl looking for a male feeder to do stuffings for.’
She wanted to find someone to help her ‘become immobile’, explaining that ‘uncontrollably destroying my body with weight gain has been a very big turn on for me.’
Some in the feeder community go beyond food itself and engage in something called ‘inflation’ – blowing air into their stomachs with a pump to expand their stomachs and appear fatter.
This is a particularly dangerous activity and could even be fatal, notes Dr Fenster, who teaches culinary medicine, a practical discipline that seeks to address health conditions through diet.
‘Depending on how they’re doing it, you could rupture something. That can be life-threatening.’
The damage and destruction go beyond the health of the feedees, says leading nutritionist Dr Lisa Young.
‘Paying someone to eat a lot of junk food on camera promotes unhealthy behaviors, glorifies overeating and can contribute to the normalization of poor dietary habits,’ she tells The Mail.
‘This can have a negative influence on viewers, especially those who might already struggle with food-related issues.’
In southeast Asia, interest in extreme overeating has spawned its own viral trend known as Mukbang videos, where creators consume huge amounts of food in a short time on camera.
The Chinese authorities have recently banned the practice.
Back in Florida, Rosie has now stopped making feeder content and now tries to highlight the dangers on her YouTube channel.
‘I implore you and beg you not to [become a feedee],’ she warns any women who might be tempted by this darkly destructive online world.
‘There is nothing that makes it worth it, it is just the short-term validation of artificial affection and the short-term dopamine hit of a binge fest.
‘The money isn’t going to be worth it when you’re indebted to the hospital for terminal health complications.’
‘I wish I had never heard of feederism.’