I despise eating contests.

[poltr1]

Yesterday was the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island. This year's winner was Joey Chestnut, beating last year's champion Takeru Kobayashi. Joey ate 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

First, it's not healthy to eat so much food so quickly. If I tried to race-eat until I burst, I'd probably barf it all up. Yecch.

Second, it's a huge waste of food. I don't need to eat that much food in one sitting. It would all end up around my gut. The food could be better utilized by feeding many hungry people instead of one person.

I probably wouldn't mind these eating contests if each person in the contest was given a set portion of food and had to eat it in the quickest time. But an all-you-can-eat bingefest in a specified time period is just disgusting.

Comments

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it's funny, eating contests never bothered me much before (a little, but not that much). And then this morning ESPN, showed the highlights of the Nathan's contest, and I just had a visceral "WTF" hit me. Maybe it was the winner's "just barely holding back the hurl" facial expression that did it. I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole existence of "competitive eating" but it's pretty negative.

I seem to recall that Guinness Book of World Records no longer sanctions eating contests, but I forget if that holds true for all or just some types of eating. (For instance, they might still keep track of speed-eating, just not 'total amount' records. I just don't remember for sure, and casual googling was insufficient to settle the issue.)