Competitive Eating

Yesterday the world's best competitive eaters met at a pizza eating competition in New York City's Time Square. Joey Chestnut, the nation's champion in hot dog and hamburger eating, broke the record with an amazing 45 slices in ten minutes at the Famous Famiglia pizza eating competition. Pat "Deep Dish" Bertoletti was Chestnut's closest opponent — he ate 43 slices in the quick ten minutes.

Chestnut folded the regular cheese slices before launching them into his stomach. He washed the pizza down with water in paper cups and "never appeared to chew." After winning the pizza-eating contest, Chestnut is certainly the current star of Major League Eating. Although I find the whole thing pretty disgusting, I'm excited to see what other records Chestnut miraculously beats.

What do you think?

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Yesterday competitive eaters Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi met for a highly anticipated rematch at the Krystal Square Off World Hamburger Eating Championship in Chattanooga, TN. The dynamic duo last faced off at Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition. Chestnut slammed Kobayashi with his quick consumption of 93 hamburgers in eight minutes. Rising star Patrick Bertoletti out ate Kobayashi by one burger and came in at second place. According to Richard Shea, the president of Major League Eating, the event was a momentous one:

There are precious few moments in professional sports when you can watch as a competitor affirms his place in the history books. With this win today, Joey Chestnut just said to the world: I am Krystal King hear me growl.

Chestnut was awarded $20,000 for winning. Although the sport of competitive eating continues to gain momentum and popularity, I remain grossed out. How about you? Have you warmed to over-eating as a competition? How many burgers could you stomach in eight minutes?

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Yesterday the Internet was abuzz with rumors about the Food Network's new competitive eating show.

However, I spoke with a source at the network today, and she informed me that, contrary to gossip, the Food Network is not filming a competitive eating series. According to PR manager Lisa Krueger, the show is more like a culinary version of The Amazing Race. Called Eat the Clock, Krueger says it will feature "two teams who will race through a variety of culinary hot spots and compete in challenges for the ultimate chowhound smack-down." Apparently the words "ultimate chowhound smack-down" were mistaken for competitive eating.

While I find competitive eating to be quite disgusting, a show about it has the potential to be a hit. Still, I'm interested to see what Eat the Clock is about. Will you watch? Are you more inclined to watch if competitive eating were involved?

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It may not be in the Olympics — yet — but competitive eating has become one of the world's fastest-growing sports. Last month, as many as 1.5 million people tuned in to ESPN to watch Joey Chestnut beat Takeru Kobayashi in Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. According to the Major League Eating spokesman Ryan Nerz:

At the big eating events you have normal guys who get up and do this thing well, beat a bunch of people, and all of a sudden they have a camera shoved in their face. They get a whole new group of friends, a blog, a MySpace page, fans. It very quickly becomes their identity, and it transcends their former identity as a waiter at a pizza restaurant, an accountant, or whatever.

The profile of a typical competitive eater has also evolved in recent years. The demographic has changed from the overweight, blue-collar male champions to trimmer, younger, white-collar competitors that include men and women. Many competitors believe in the Belt of Fat theory — that a skinny build allows the stomach to expand with less difficulty than if it were surrounded by a constricting layer of fat tissue.

Have you or would you ever try competitive eating? For some recent records in the world of competitive eating, read more

• Learn how competitive eater and Nathan's Hot Dog champ Joey Chestnut eats 15 pounds of hot dogs. — Time
• Why Americans are crazy for all things bacon. — Salon
• Speaking of America, here are ten foods only Americans could have invented. — Endless Simmer
• Yesterday sliced bread turned 80. — SlashFood
• Looking for good barbecue? Try one of these twelve restaurants. — Concierge
• Disgusting: the world's worst eating contests. — Esquire
• For my next party I plan on making these adorable, tasty looking salami cones. — Janet is Hungry
• Eleven foods to add to your grocery list. — FitSugar
• It's confirmed: the winner of Hell's Kitchen will be one of 65 chefs in Ramsay's kitchen and is only 'executive chef' by title. — Serious Eats

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Interested in competitive eating, but can't quite stomach the thought of eating a bajillion hot dogs in one sitting? Then get ready, a new video game will allow you to pretend you're a Competitive World Eating Champion. On May 12, game publisher Mastiff will be releasing Major League Eating: The Game for the Wii.

I read about it the other day and have been dreaming of the craziness ever since. The game will use the Wii controller extensively in order to "simulate a variety of eating techniques" — I can't wait, it will be hilarious to see my friends making eating motions with the Wii controller — and will play like a fighting game.

While regular competitive eating seems rather gluttonous, not to mention a total waste of food, a virtual competition could be a bit fun. So who's going to challenge me when it comes out?

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This afternoon, over 20,000 fans packed the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Penn., to see the sixteenth annual Wing Bowl. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, who was the reigning champion, held onto his title by chowing down on 241 chicken wings in 30 minutes. This was 14 more than his nearest competitor Patrick Bertoletti and 36 more than third place Bill "El Wingador" Simmons.

For his gastronomic feat, Chestnut — when did he obtain the nickname "Jaws"? I swear he didn't have it for the Fourth of July Hot Dog Contest — received a Toyota Tundra, a 2008 Black 883 Sportster motorcycle, a championship ring, and, of course, all the bragging rights.

So what do you folks think, could you eat that many wings in 30 minutes? Could you even eat half the amount? Also, can you believe the number of folks who attended? From the look of things, this place was packed!

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You may have eaten a lot of food on Thanksgiving, but did you eat enough to feed ten people? Tim "Eater X" Janus did. In a strange publicity stunt aimed to draw attention to New York City's hungry, competitive eaters from around the globe gathered to see who could eat the most during a Thanksgiving battle. Janus pushed out his competitors — including hot dog champ Joey Chestnut — by chowing down on a 10-lb. turkey, 4 lbs. of mashed potatoes, 3 lbs. of cranberry sauce, and 2.5 lbs. of beans. The event raised $6,000 — enough for 30,000 meals — for the Food Bank of New York City. The week prior, the league donated $4,000 to Second Harvest food bank.

On one hand it's fantastic to see that they're donating the funds, on the other it's a sad that a waste of food is needed in order to donate food. What do you think?

To see the video from the earlier preliminary competition — it's quite long, fast-forward to 30 minutes for the turkey portion of the battle — read more

We've all heard of competitive eating, but what about competitive air dining? That's right, air dining. Our imaginative friends over in Japan have thought up a new form of guiltless eating and they've made a game of it. Good pretend manners are a must and a well-trained player always finishes his plate. Bon appetit!

Yesterday, at the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, reigning champion Takeru Kobayashi was bested by Californian Joey Chestnut. In a down-to-the-wire race, Chestnut dethroned six-time champion Kobayashi by downing 66 hot dogs (plus buns) in 12 minutes - that's one hot dog every 10.9 seconds. Kobayashi, despite recently having a wisdom tooth extracted and treatment for a sore jaw - managed to do his personal best by inhaling 63 hot dogs.

However, the event wasn't without some controversy. At the final few minutes Chestnut was devouring hot dogs so quickly, the counter couldn't keep up and they had to actually go back and count all plates.

If you didn't get to catch it on ESPN, you're in luck. Catch the final few dramatic minutes, just read more