OBSESSED by tiffany giraudon

CAN'T STOP. WON'T STOP.

AUGUST 2017 VOL.1 NO.1

A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE What 72 hot dogs do to a power eaterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body

CAN’T STOP. WON’T STOP. AUGUST 2017

World Record Holder

JOEY CHESTNUT 72 Hot Dogs in 12 Minutes p. 10

01 03 06 10 14

ONE MORE BITE SPARKLE GOLden CORN HOTDOGS EXPENSIVEST

ONE MORE BITE

Mankind’s quest to conquer food Major League Eating is the undisputed authority on competitive eating. All official eating contests are sanctioned by MLE and MLE maintains all official eating records. These people really really really like to eat. MLE conducts approximately 80 events annually, including the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. Past event and broadcast sponsors include Procter & Gamble (Pepto-Bismol), Pizza Hut, Krystal Hamburgers, Heinz Ketchup, Old Navy, Netflix, Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven, ESPN, Jimmy John’s, Cedar Fair Entertainment, Johnsonville Sausage and Roy Rogers.

BOB SHOUDT

44 Years Old Philadelphia, PA 285 lbs

SONYA THOMAS 50 Years Old Alexandria, VA 105 lbs

JOEY CHESTNUT 33 Years old San Jose, CA 230 lbs

SLICED APPLE PIE

6 THREE-POUND PIES in 10 minutes September 16, 2008 • Sonya Thomas CHICKEN NUGGETS

BAKED BEANS

80 Nuggets 5 Minutes June 23, 2009 Sonya Thomas

6 lbs Beans 1 Minute 48 Seconds April 13, 2012 Don Lerman

LOBSTER ROLLS

JALAPENO POPPERS

41 Rolls 10 Minutes September 23, 2006 Takeru Kobayashi

118 Poppers 10 Minutes April 18, 2006 Joey Chestnut

HOT WINGS

PB&J SANDWICHES

52 Wings 5 Minutes November 6, 2011 Patrick Bertoletti

36 Sandwiches 10 Minutes January 9, 2010 Ben Shoudt

CHILI SPAGHETTI

SHRIMP COCKTAIL

14 lbs Spaghetti 10 Minutes September 7, 2009 Bob Shoudt

16 lbs Shrimp 8 Minutes December 3, 2016 Joey Chestnut

BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

50 THIRTY-OUNCE PANCAKES in 10 minutes September 29, 2012 • Patrick Bertoletti

MY ADDICTION TO DRINKING NAIL POLISH

orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Netus et malesuada fames ac. Dignissim diam quis enim lobortis scelerisque fermentum dui faucibus in. Rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac auctor. Elit sed vulputate mi sit amet mauris commodo. Faucibus ornare suspendisse sed nisi lacus sed. Sodales ut eu sem integer. Purus sit amet volutpat consequat. Tellus orci ac auctor augue mauris augue. Eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra magna ac placerat. Adipiscing at in tellus integer feugiat scelerisque varius morbi. Rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac auctor augue mauris augue. Cursus metus aliquam eleifend mi.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Netus et malesuada fames ac. Dignissim diam quis enim lobortis scelerisque fermentum dui faucibus in. Rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac auctor. Elit sed vulputate mi sit amet mauris commodo. Faucibus ornare suspendisse sed nisi lacus sed. Sodales ut eu sem integer. Purus sit amet volutpat consequat. Tellus orci ac auctor augue mauris augue. Eu turpis egestas pretium aenean pharetra magna ac placerat. Adipiscing at in tellus integer feugiat scelerisque varius morbi. Rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac auctor augue mauris augue. Cursus metus aliquam eleifend mi.

DOCTORS ADVISE AGAINST SPARKLING FROM THE INSIDE, OUT

At in tellus integer feugiat scelerisque varius morbi enim. Ultrices mi tempus imperdiet nulla. Volutpat consequat mauris nunc congue nisi vitae suscipit tellus mauris. Quis auctor elit sed vulputate mi sit. Accumsan tortor posuere ac ut. Vel orci porta non pulvinar neque. In hendrerit gravida rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac. Nunc aliquet bibendum enim facilisis. Massa eget egestas purus viverra accumsan in. Molestie at elementum eu facilisis sed odio morbi quis commodo. Iaculis at erat pellentesque adipiscing commodo elit at imperdiet dui. Vel fringilla est ullamcorper eget nulla facilisi etiam.

Ante metus dictum at tempor commodo. Luctus accumsan tortor posuere ac. Elit scelerisque mauris pellentesque pulvinar pellentesque habitant. A erat nam at lectus urna. Rhoncus urna neque viverra justo nec ultrices dui sapien eget. Feugiat nisl pretium fusce id velit. Odio euismod lacinia at quis. Mattis vulputate enim nulla aliquet porttitor. Risus pretium quam vulputate dignissim suspendisse in est ante in. Sed ullamcorper morbi

America’s Most Nobody deserves a $55 dollar kernel of popcorn M

ovie theatre popcorn is expensive. But before you complain, you might want to look at the world’s most expensive popcorn. Named Berco’s Billion Dollar Popcorn, the popular movie-time snack has finally had a major overhaul. Now it is fit for royal consumption. Who else can shell out $100 for a quart and $1,000 for 6.5 gallons worth? The most expensive popcorn is available in two other sizes too – $250 for a gallon and $500 for two gallons. Why is it so expensive? The answer lies in the ingredients. Berco’s Billion Dollar Popcorn is created out of the finest ingredients sourced from around the world. The butter comes from the Vermont Creamery. Laeso, the world’s most expensive salt, is sourced from the Danish island of the same name. The recipe uses organic sugar for the caramel and Nielsen Massey Bourbon Vanilla. And to top it off, the world’s most expensive popcorn is garnished with 23-karat edible gold flakes. And as the Berco’s website brilliantly puts it, “Do you know who eats real gold? Kings, Queens, Tycoons, Fire Breathing Dragons, the guy who invented paper clips, and Unicorns that’s who.”

THE FOOD

$55

BUYS AROUND THE WORLD

BILLION DOLLAR CORN BLACK BEANS Mexico 60 lbs of beans

United States 1 kernel of popcorn

SHORT GRAIN RICE China 14 lbs of rice

2Chainz

Eats Expensive

BANANAS

Costa Rica 110 lbs of bananas Rapper 2 Chainz just tasted this uber-posh popcorn (which, despite its name, doesn’t actually cost a billion dollars, but it does cost a whopping $5 a kernel and $500 for a tin) on GQ’s video series, “Most Expensive S***’”. In the video, the founder of Berco’s, Matt Bercovitz, walks Chainz through the tasting, beginning with the best-selling cheddar flavor and then moving on to the “Way Too Expensive White Truffle” blend tossed with truffle butter (Nicki Minaj would be a fan). Last comes the Billion Dollar Popcorn, dusted in (you guessed it) gold flakes—that would be 23-karat gold flakes—along with what is allegedly the priciest salt in the universe.

PAD THAI

Thailand 17 lbs of pad thai

The salt is flown in from the small island of Leso in Denmark and costs $10 a pound, and it’s apparently so good, 2 Chainz fakes doing a line of it off his hand. Then the three proceed to eat straight edible gold flakes, at a cost of $125 to $150 per gram. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t 2 Chainz’s first time eating gold, so he demonstrates his proficiency at this task, with proskater Nyjah Huston by his side.

THE STOMACH OF

A COMPETITIVE EATER EXPANDS UP TO

ITS NORMAL SIZE

On June 24, Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi posted some troubling news on his blog: The greatest eater in the world could no longer open his mouth. The culprit? An arthritic jaw. Kobayashi, who has dominated every Fourth of July hot-dog-eating contest since 2001, later blamed the injury on wisdom teeth that had grown in crookedly, coupled with overly vigorous training. As the Google translation put it, “Long time strength training, becoming big stress in the jaw, it is to be accumulated.” Sounds reasonable—and if Kobayashi’s jaw had crapped out six months ago, few would have noticed. But this is hot dog season. When the champ implied

that he might not compete in this Wednesday’s big contest at Coney Island, the 29-year-old’s refusenik mandible was the lead story on the New York Times’ Web site. A few days later, he beat a quick retreat. “Thanks to everyone’s support,” he blogged, “I am able to aggressively pursue treatment for my condition. ... I look forward to facing my fellow competitors on July 4th!” It’s rare, to say the least, for a competitive-eating injury to rate coverage on CNN and ESPN. Eating-related maladies tend to be chuckled over by newscasters and DJs, who see eating contests as fodder for light human-interest stories, and exploited by op-ed jeremiahs, who see competitive eating as the apotheosis of a litany of American sins: gluttony, obesity, our love of dumb spectacles. Honestly, most eating injuries are pretty unsurprising, arising from health conditions you’d expect to find among the professionally hungry (obesity, diabetes) or from the poor choices of inexperienced eaters who get in over their heads. But Kobayashi’s sore jaw deserves all the attention it’s getting and more. It is something new to competitive eating: a true athletic injury. By introducing a tragic dimension to a phenomenon that has always gorged on irony and slapstick comedy, the man they call “Tsunami” is doing competitive eating a great and useful service. You can’t say the same for the eaters of yore. The annals of gurgitation are dotted with strokes and blocked windpipes, of guts literally busted. Go as far back as you like. The novel The Golden Ass, written around A.D. 200, tells of an

“

ancient food fighter almost choking to death on a piece of cheese. The native Tlingit peoples of Alaska used to hold raucous eating contests at their potlatch feasts; one such bacchanal came to a tragic end when a warrior ate a box full of dried hemlock bark and washed it down with water. According to a turn-of-the-century ethnography of the Tlingit, “This caused the hemlock bark to swell and his stomach to burst.” As for more recent harms, you can’t top Mort Hurst’s Guinness World Record attempt in 1991. Hurst, a MoonPie-eating champ from North Carolina, suffered

their stomachs with huge volumes of chugged liquid (water, milk, etc., up to two or more gallons at a time). On account of this capacity training, it’s clear that the future of eating injuries lies not in the jaw but in the gut. In addition to a theoretical risk of gastric rupture—a burst stomach, a rare and usually fatal event—capacitytrainers are endangering their future ability to digest food normally. Nobody knows how stretching will affect the gut five or 10 years down the line. Indeed, a new documentary on the National Geographic Channel, Science of Speed Eating, suggests that the stomach of one speed eater— filmed in real-time by a curious gastroenterologist—has

A woman in California died after drinking almost two gallons of water in a contest to win a Nintendo Wii. a stroke after eating 38 soft-boiled eggs in 29 seconds. He recovered and went on to compete again. Others weren’t so lucky. Just this January, a 28-year-old woman in California died of water intoxication after drinking almost two gallons of water in a contest sponsored by a morning radio show. She was trying to win a Nintendo Wii. Kobayashi’s injury won’t be the last. Thanks to increasing prize money and media exposure, there’s incentive now for competitive eaters to challenge the physical limits of the body. Most eaters aren’t challenging those limits by trying to mimic Kobayashi’s jaw and esophagus—that part of the champion’s game is probably innate—but by stretching

adapted to capacity training by basically paralyzing itself. Of course, this also means that capacity training works. Two years ago, Kobayashi was the only person alive who could eat at least 40 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. Now, three young American eaters can too: Joey Chestnut (59.5), Patrick Bertoletti (46), and Tim “Eater X” Janus (41.5). Chestnut now holds the world record for hot dogs, having beaten Kobayashi’s prior record of 53.75 at a June qualifier. He predicts he’ll eat 65 franks on Wednesday. The apparent frivolity of competitive eating has always colored our response to its bad health outcomes. An eating injury or death has never seemed tragic or heroic, just … sad. Kobayashi’s injury ought to change that. It deserves to move competitive eating past the joke/jeremiad dichotomy and into the framework of actual sport—with all of sport’s narrative dignity, its metaphorical richness, and, most importantly, its empathy for the human bodies it churns through and spits out. The squeak of the Tsunami’s jaw grinding against its joint isn’t the

WHEN FOOD BITES BACK

sound of a freak meeting his end. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the sound of his sport limping, heavy-gutted and mumble-mouthed, into a new Golden Age.

AN EATING INJURY OR DEATH HAS NEVER SEEMED TRAGIC OR HEROIC, JUST SAD.

CAUTI

RUPTURED STOMACH

CHOKING

A native of Alaska competed in eating a box of

A novel writen in 200 A.D. tells the story of an

dried hemlock bark that later swelled and ruptured

ancient food fighter almost choking to death on

his stomach

a piece of cheese

ARTHRITIC JAW

WATER INTOXICATION

Famous eater Takeru Kobayashi attributed his

28-year-old woman died after drinking almost

temporomandibular joint disorder to vigorous

two gallons of water in a contest

training

STROKE

DEATH

Mort Hurst suffered a stroke after eating 38

Japanese housewife choked to death on a

soft-boiled eggs in 29 seconds

wheat-rice cake at a contest