The Fat Diaries: Competitive Eating is Nothing to Cheer About
Profuse sweating? Lethargy? Painful gas? A diet of yogurt and water? Ah , the glamorous lifestyle of the professional eater. As you know, the weenie heard round the nation this week was number 62 for Joey Chestnut, fifth consecutive male-league winner of the Annual Nathan’s Hotdog-eating contest. Joey defended his title by consuming 20,000 calories worth of hotdogs and buns in ten minutes. This year also saw the first all-women’s contest which saw winner Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas take top dog with a whopping 40 wieners.
Um… kay.
I was once a competitive eater myself. I wasn’t affiliated with any league, and the idea of participating in a pie-eating contest or similar would have shocked and insulted me. No, from age 9 to 17 I was simply a girl with two brothers. Eating was a way to show dominance over my brothers because that was how they were hardwired: Wolves fighting for alpha status and the right to the best parts of the moose. The kid on top got the last slice of pie, could eat a twinkie without chewing once and fit an entire slice of pizza in their mouth. It was repulsive, it was rude, it was mean at times, but that was simply how we related to each other and if I wanted to escape the pecking order, I played too as hard as I could. Never mind that I often ate well after I was full to bursting. If I didn’t finish that last pancake, it meant the boys won.
Eventually this power play was slapped out of me by my fellow XX-chromosome bearers and I found other ways to be competitive with my brothers like being the first to get married and have babies. But I wasn’t alone with my juvenile tendencies towards competitive binge-eating.
How many kid conversations have you heard that went like this?
“I ate so much food! I had two hotdogs, three bags of chips, three sodas and five brownies!”
“Oh yeah? Well I ate five hotdogs, three bags of chips, four sodas and eight brownies!”
“Oh yeah? Well I ate six hotdogs, four bags of chips, three sodas, a hamburger and a dozen brownies with ice cream on top!”
“Dude! There’s ice cream here?”
Kids have very few ways to assert dominance over their peers. Not all of them are good at sports, and no one cares about grades if they aren’t already A-students. For most kids, there’s eating until life, parents, or something else knocks that impulse out of them. And of course with eating comes the taunting, the slur names like “piggy” and body issues, but a lot of kids think it’s worth it to be noticed —to be the best.
It’s only natural therefore that in a country like ours, with a love of food and an insane thirst for competition, competitive eating thrives. Oh sure the Japanese took the idea and ran with it, and then returned it to the US, a slimmer more streamlined and efficient eating machine. Gone are the champions who are 400lb men in their 50’s. These new champs are slimmer, train harder, eat more, and are probably looking at a shorter life-expectancy than their egg-shaped predecessors. That’s one way to gain dubious fame and a cash prize. It’s also a way to die of a coronary at age 30.
So I put it to you, readers. Look real hard at these champions and ask: does scarfing 20,000 calories in 10 minutes make one worthy of fame and fortune, or did another food company just find a way to exploit a fat competitive America?
Let’s surprise them and say competitive eating doesn’t impress us and we don’t care.