A few months ago we noticed that
competitive eating was a rapidly growing "sport": This year, 1.5 million people tuned in to ESPN to watch the
Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, and there's now a game,
Major League Eating, available on the
Nintendo Wii. Yet while it's entertainment for many, it comes at a cost for others. Yesterday, Saurab Sabharwal, a 22-year-old engineer at Nokia-Siemens in Gurgaon, India,
died during a company-sponsored pastry eating contest held in the office cafeteria.
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.
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.
The excitement was incredible this morning at
Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition. The
reigning champ Joey Chestnut and the Japanese firecracker
Takeru Kobayashi faced off in a shorter — 10 instead of last year's 12 — minute competition to see who could eat the most hot dogs. For the first time in history, after the ten minutes, there was a tie: both Chestnut and Kobayshi, who eat at basically the same pace, had eaten 59 hot dogs.
Watching this video of our very own
7bits win a peach pie eating contest makes me wonder just how much I could eat for a prize. Do you think you could do it? Would you consider entering a food eating contest?
