Professional eating

There was a video of a grilled cheese sandwich eating contest on the internet that I watched inadvertently, thinking it was going to be something about the Virgin Mary’s visage or something. Oh well. But it got me to wondering. Who comes up with this stuff? And why? Remember, I have a little too much time on my hands this week? So I'm off and running, so to speak, about Professional Eating...

We’ve followed with great interest the career of the indisputable top-of-his-game-best professional eater, Takeru Kobayashi. He is the guy who wins the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest – 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes last time – every year on the 4th of July. Kobayashi weighs only 113 pounds (before the contest) and there is some speculation about him having 2 stomachs, but so far the International Federation of Competitive Eating (yes – the IFOCE - every professional sport has to have its governing body!) has so far refused to consider drug or DNA testing regulations so it’s all just a maddening mystery to his competition, the closest of whom manages only 26 hot dogs.

Like other sports, the competitors have nicknames: Kobayashi is “The Tsunami”, and there is also the “Locust,” “Badlands,” “El Wingador” (no, I don’t really know how that relates) and, of course, “Hungry” Charles Hardy.

There are also techniques that have been 'named,' to facilitate further discussion maybe... or, well, actually I can’t imagine why they would need to be ‘named’ but there you have it. There is the “Solomon” method (split the dogs in half to put both pieces in the mouth at the same time) and "The Double Japanese" (putting two hot dogs in at once, then dipping two buns in water and putting them in at the same time.) For that matter, suffering a “roman-method incident” will disqualify you – according to IFOCE rules.

And we all know what THAT means.

Internet gamblers even put odds on these contests – Kobayashi was favored to win by 20 dogs.

Of course there are other venues besides ‘Nathan’s Famous’ on Coney Island. (There is more than Augusta in golf, isn’t there?) There are eating contests for cow brains (17.8 pounds in 15 minutes), jalapenos (152 in 15 minutes), chicken wings (137 in 30 minutes), burritos (15 in 8 minutes), hard-boiled eggs (38 in 10 minutes), oysters (168 in 10 minutes), jars of mayonnaise (four 32-oz jars in 8 minutes) and even butter (Don Lerman ate seven quarter-pound sticks of butter in five minutes.) Presumably for the glory of it?

Actually, it isn’t just the glory. Kobayashi ate his way to $150,000 last year.

I just wouldn’t want to be around for the aftermath.

Oh yeah – the grilled cheese guys? 47 in 10 minutes. And a week of intestinal agony, no doubt. Maybe there’s a ‘Virgin Mary’ visage in there somewhere after all?