As someone who speaks Chinese, I got a chuckle out of reading 'put your favorite snack in your 口 and 食t it!' due to the association in my mind of that character and its Chinese pronunciation, immediately followed by a 't'.
So in Mandarin you wouldn't find people using 食 as a verb, but in cantonese it is the correct verb.
In Cantonese it's pronounced something like "sekk"
("sihk" in Yale romanisation, but I think if you're not familiar with Yale you'd try and read that "sick" or "sikh")
Edit: "sikh"
I learned a bit of one dialect from a friend's mum. And the basics were very similar to Cantonese.
Would be interested to learn more dialects once I'm done with Mandarin and Cantonese.
The pronunciations of kanji correlate to different Chinese eras and areas.
The usage and choice of characters are influenced by Classical Chinese, which was the literary language in Japan until, uhm, recently-ish.
There is a very good recent YouTube video that explains the usage of Chinese characters in Japanese and which I recommend to anyone interested in the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF3MRMBjd20
I was very impressed by the accuracy and knowledge displayed, as most of what is written and said on the subject is ehhh somewhat disappointing.
From my brother who studied Japanese for a while, the Kanji was a real blocker for him. So I did wonder what it'd be like, given I already know a good amount of Chinese characters.
I guess this video answers that question:
Even more confusing.
†IPA something like this: /ʃɝ/
Edit: To add a clear example, look at 事. Standard Mandarin would pronounce it "sure", Beijing dialect goes even further and pronounces it more like "shar".
Not all the people in television shows, including talk shows, speak Standard Mandarin. This is especially true in shows produced in the north. They adopt Beijing accent to certain degrees, which, more or less, leads to the erhua pronunciation.
For Standard Mandarin, listen to 新闻联播，the official news program from CCTV.
I notice that for non-native Chinese speakers whose mother tongue is Indo-European language, it sounds erhua pronunciation is easier for them than Standard Mandarin. If erhua pronunciation is pushed to extreme, it is called 大舌头。
Also erhua pronunciation is usually NOT used in very formal conditions, like presentation, etc. Some people regards erhua pronunciation as vulgar, except for very widely adopted cases.