Having to listen to people eat is the bane of my existence. Truly, I would rather listen to a plane full of screaming babies next to road construction than someone slurping soup. And someone chewing gum next to me makes me so crazy, I have literally offered my open palm to strangers and said, “Please. Just spit it in my hand.” (And they have.) I know. I know. But here we are. I have misophonia—a mental health condition that makes sufferers extremely sensitive to certain repetitive noises, and eating sounds are among the most common triggers.
So it was with much dismay that I recently joined a Zoom call for work and discovered that one of the attendees was eating sushi. With her mouth open. And juicily licking her cursed fingers. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that was discussed in that 45-minute meeting because all I could hear was lick, smack, slurp, gulp, swallow. I feel nauseous just thinking about it.
So clearly I’m not a fan of people eating on video calls.
But—and I admit this freely—I know that this is a me problem. It’s my brain with the glitch, not hers. So while I may not like people eating on video calls, is it actually rude to do it? Especially on work calls? Let’s discuss.
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The case for the lunch-and-munch video call
I’m going to drop some depressing math on you: Remote workers attend an average of 7.3 video calls per week, more than one a day, according to a 2026 survey done by SpeakWise. And, of course, depending on your job, that number can easily climb higher. At some point, lunch hour collides with calendar reality, and your options are to eat during the call, eat at 4 p.m. while questioning your life choices—or not eat at all. None of these are good options, and only one of them is actually your co-workers’ fault. Sometimes efficiency wins.
And it’s not just logistics—eating together over video has genuinely become a team-bonding tool. My husband works for a fully remote company, and once a month, they all get UberEats delivered and “eat lunch together” on camera as a team social event.
But basic biology is the broader argument here. Eating is a basic human need, not a character flaw. (Chewing gum, on the other hand …) Remote work has permanently collapsed the boundary between “office” and “home,” and a lot of the etiquette we’re now improvising—including how we communicate at work—is being written in real time. Expecting remote employees to never eat during the workday is a policy that makes sense only if you also think they should never use the bathroom or let their dog out. We don’t hold in-office workers to that standard. We let them eat at their desks, grab coffee during a presentation and return from lunch with something inexplicable in their teeth. Remote workers deserve the same basic grace.
The case against the graze-and-daze video call
The problem isn’t the eating itself—it’s what it broadcasts.
First: sound. Eating is loud, and microphones are unforgiving. Even people who eat perfectly politely in person can sound like a nature documentary at close range over a laptop mic or (heaven help us all) a headphone mic. And while I may be on the extreme end of eating-noise sensitivity, I’m not alone. Research suggests that up to 15% of adults have clinically significant misophonia, and a national study found that nearly 80% of people report sensitivity to at least one misophonia-triggering sound. That means in your average eight-person Zoom meeting, you’ve got statistically excellent odds that someone is quietly suffering every time you reach for a chip.
Second: optics. There’s something about watching a co-worker eat that can come across as unprofessional. You wouldn’t eat a burrito bowl in the middle of a conference-room presentation. You wouldn’t crack open a bag of pretzels during a client pitch. The fact that you’re doing it through a screen doesn’t make it less visible. If anything, the frame of a Zoom window puts your face (and your food) center stage in a way that sitting in the back of a conference room never would.
Third: It’s just genuinely difficult to communicate with your mouth full. The involuntary “hold on” hand wave while you frantically chew and try not to spit is awkward for everyone.
And finally: When you’re eating on a call, you’re not fully doing either thing. Research consistently shows that eating while distracted leads to eating more, enjoying food less and retaining almost nothing about the meal afterward. But flip that around, and the etiquette problem becomes clear: If your attention is split between your lunch and the meeting, your colleagues are getting half of you. Eating on a call isn’t just potentially rude to the people listening to you chew—it’s a quiet signal to everyone on the call that you’ve mentally checked a box that says “present” while your actual attention is somewhere else entirely.
The gray areas (and yes, there are many)
In my poll of my social media followers, 60% avoided the “yes” or “no” answers and went with “it depends.” So, like most etiquette questions, context is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
- The type of call: A formal presentation, a job interview, a meeting with a client you’ve never spoken with or any call where you’re the one doing most of the talking? Put the food down. A casual internal check-in with your small team, a Friday afternoon catch-up, a virtual lunch that everyone knows is a virtual lunch? The expectations are lower, and the atmosphere is different.
- What you’re eating: A banana? Fine. A quick handful of crackers? Probably fine. A full rack of ribs, an entire bowl of cereal or anything that requires you to crinkle packaging for 30 seconds before you can even begin? Kill me now. As a general rule: If it makes noise, requires two hands, produces drips, makes immediate flossing necessary or forces you to open your mouth wide enough to park a bus, save it for after.
- Camera etiquette: Turning your camera off while you eat is thoughtful—out of sight, out of mind—but don’t vanish entirely without warning. The same way leaving someone on read sends a message you may not have intended, silently going dark mid-meeting raises questions. A quick “I’m going to turn my camera off for a sec” in the chat costs you nothing and prevents everyone else from assuming you’ve either left the call or had a small personal crisis.
- Culture, both workplace and otherwise: Some teams are deeply informal—cameras off, first names only, jokes in the chat—and in those environments, eating on camera barely registers. Others are more buttoned up. If your company’s video calls feel like conference rooms, treat them accordingly.
- And then there are beverages: Hydration is important, and universally, across all cultures and call types, beverages are generally fine. Just please—and I say this with love—do not slurp. Do not sigh loudly after each sip. Do not do the post-drink exhale that sounds like you just finished a race. Just sip quietly, like a person who has been sipping beverages their entire life without incident, because you have.
The verdict
It’s not overly rude, as long as you’re intentional and thoughtful about it. There are worse etiquette sins. That said, here’s the rule that makes all the other rules unnecessary: If you wouldn’t eat during the in-person version of this meeting, don’t eat during the virtual one.
The golden standard is consideration, not prohibition. Eating on a video call isn’t inherently rude, but eating loudly, messily or conspicuously without any regard for the people watching and listening is. The difference isn’t what’s in your hand. It’s whether you’ve thought for even 30 seconds about the experience you’re creating for everyone else on the call.
Mute when you chew. Keep it quick. Choose quiet food. And for the love of all that is good, do not eat sushi on a Zoom call. I cannot stress this enough. I speak from trauma.
Have a social situation you can’t stop ruminating on? Email us at advice@tmbi.com, or message Charlotte on Instagram at @CharlotteHiltonAndersen.
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Sources:
- Speakwise: “Video Conferencing Statistics 2026”
- Misophonia Institute: “Prevalence of Misophonia”
- Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science: “Prevalence, phenomenology, and impact of misophonia in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults”
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