Shove it in your face!?!?!

So, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted my next post to be about. I had a list of possible topics but none of them caught my interest at the time. Finally I decided to get my friends together for dinner and hopefully find some inspiration… lucky for me my friends came through and we enjoyed a tasty meal at Brazil Grill.

The red eyes were bugging me so I played with the color... not a bad result :)

Mmmm... grilled pineapple... soooo good!!

I love shrimp!

While trying to coordinate and get everybody together I came up with the idea of having a contest… get everybody together and see who can eat the most, though we didn’t end up actually having the competition we had fun anyways and inspired me to write a post about competitive eating.  I’m gonna start this off with this ridiculous video!!

So, what do you think of when you hear about competitive eating? The local county fair where people are stuffing pie into their faces, likely with their hands tied behind their back?? Or, maybe the popular hot dog eating contest? A few years ago I saw a TV show about competitive eaters and apparently the competitions are very serious business. People actually travel all over the world to compete in these battles of epic intake. The show that I watched focused on a guy from Japan, Takeru Kobayashi (who was also mentioned in one of the videos in this post and in is the star in the above video, or is the bear the star?), who has taken the “who-can-shove-more-shit-in-their-faces” world by storm. What I found amazing after researching this “sport” is that a lot of the competitors are in decent shape, with many of the champions being downright skinny. Like these two ladies:

Sonya Thomas

Gal Sone

First of all, Sonya is also known as The Black Widow, which is epically fitting since female black widows tend to kill their male spiders after the “act”.
After watching a bunch of videos and searching around the interweb  I started to wonder how these people actually get that much food in their tummies without putting on a disgusting demonstration of their gag reflux doing what it does best. Apparently, people (amateurs) tend to barf pretty regularly and receive judgy looks from the seasoned pros while they continue to chomp on those hot dogs and soggy buns.
Despite what you might think a lot goes into competitive eating events and participants. It all started at local fairs and gatherings as a form of messy entertainment and eventually evolved to focus on speed. In 1997 the International Federation of Competitive Eating formed (IFOCE). Seriously, there is an international federation for stuffing your face... they even have rules! Each contest usually last 10 to 12 minutes and the winner is the person who eats the most during that time. Each competitor can eat the food however they choose, for example, eating the hot dog separate from the bun or dipping the food in water. Personally, if I cannot stand to eat soggy bread… it just grosses me out… so I don’t think I would do very well with that aspect. At the end of the timed period any food that is already in the eaters mouth is considered eaten as long as they eventually swallow it. Afterward the competitors are allowed to get the brick of food out of their stomachs however they want… ewww…. By the way, if somebody barfs his or her guts out it’s called a “Roman Incident” for whatever reason.

Wait... that's not right

Awww, that's more like it

These gladiators of gluttony have come up with a few tried and true techniques for consuming an unnatural amount of food. Like I already mentioned, the water dunk is a popular tactic and Kobayashi pioneered the style known as the “Solomon Technique” or “Japanesing”… yep, “japanesing”, this involves breaking the food up into smaller pieces so that more can be shoved into the mouth. By breaking a hot dog in half they can eat a whole dog at once since an intact hot dog would be hard to chew and swallow… feel free to insert all inappropriate jokes here while I insert these...

Nom Nom Nom

That's a happy weiner...dog...

Serious eaters will often train their stomachs by eating large meals once a day or by drinking a lot of water… both are frowned upon by the IFOCE because I guess you can die. Kobayashi has said being a champion eater means you don’t die… well said Kobayashi. There have been ideas as to why competitors that are in shape do better than those that are overweight. The theory is that any extra layers of fat over the stomach restrict it from expanding to the extent that is necessary.
Still not convinced that competitive eating is a sport? Here are five reasons that will make you eat your words:
1. You have to train to be good
All the other sports out there require you to train and practice over and over again if you want to be successful at it. There is absolutely no difference when it comes to competitive eating because you have to train hard to eat.
2. There is Technique
Every sport has some sort of technique or specialty move that helps people surpass the competition. It’s just the life of the technique. Most players will follow the same techniques, but there are signature players that have their own special techniques that help them win.
3. You Have Competition
You can’t be in a sport if you don’t have competition to mop the floor with, right after they mop up all that vomit.
4. There Are Winners and Losers
Someone has to win and someone has to lose. It is our desire to achieve and succeed that drives us to push ourselves to new heights; or would it be new lows in this case? That is what makes this such a great sport.
5. Huge Fan Base
What sport wouldn’t be complete with the people that come out to watch the events both in person and on television? Someone has to be enjoying the competition for it to be a sport or it just wouldn’t exist. I guess people got ape-shit over some of the top competitors, wearing t-shirts to support their favorite. Also, it’s a hilarious bonus that the eaters don’t take themselves serious but add humor by pretending to take themselves very seriously. Once the competition has started its actually pretty gross to watch so the real entertainment comes for the announcer who fills the time with jokes and over-the-top antics.
If you’re sitting at your computer thinking… “Shit, I like to eat. I could totally kick some ass in this” here are some reasons you are very, very wrong:
1. You Think Liking To Eat = Good At Eating Competitions
I think this is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to competitive eating. I know this is about eating food, but liking to eat food doesn’t mean shit. It has been proven over and over again that skinny people tend to do far better in the competitions… maybe I have a chance!!
This is more about your ability to eat a huge sum of food in a very short period of time. That requires methods of fast consumption and maximum storing capacity, a hollow leg wouldn’t hurt.
2. You Don’t Treat This As A Serious Sport
I know that it can be very easy to view this as just some event that you would do at a carnival for fun, but the competitors you face are training. Just because you aren’t lifting weights are doing laps around the track doesn’t mean this isn’t a sport that requires training.
3. You Don’t Train Properly
The only way you can properly train for any event, you have to identify exactly what you’re eating. If you’re going into a hotdog competition, than you just can’t grab any hotdog from the store and start practicing with it. You need the exact size and the exact weight of hotdogs to train.
Typically events will be sponsored by the very food you’ll be eating, so it shouldn’t be hard to track down exactly what you’re expected to eat.
4. You Lack Mental Toughness
You’re going to feel things that you know you have to ignore. You just have to tell yourself that you’re going to keep going and that is all there is to it. In other words, when you really want to barf your brains out you’re gonna have to hold it in, mind over matter, right?
5. You’re Not Systematic
If you look at all the successful competitors out there for any competition, they’re all systematic. That means that they eat in a very continuous fashion. They’re putting food into their mouth, just as they finish swallowing some. Basically their consumption of food is consistent. You can’t rush at the start and slow down. You have to consistently do the entire competition, just as a marathon runner goes consistently.

Ready to chow down?!?!??