»"a belt of fat" theory
A survey of contemporary eating contests, with emphasis on the Fourth of July action at Nathan's on Coney Island, published in the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times.
Not only does this bring to mind the "King-Size Homer" episode of The Simpsons ("... it's your window to weight gain!"), this underscores the weird disparity between the U.S. and Japan -- here enormously fat men train to consume more, but are routinely beaten by rail-skinny Japanese contestants.
August 31, 2003
'That Stomach Is Going to Make You Money Someday'
By CHRIS BALLARD
It ends with the hot dogs. No matter how hard Carson Hughes tries, he can't bring himself to eat the six franks in front of him. So they sit there on the table, each on its own plate, abandoned like orphaned children. Hughes breaks one in half and lifts it to his mouth, steeling himself for one last attempt, but he can't manage even a bite. Slowly, he lowers both the dog and his head in defeat.
It is 11:30 p.m., the end of a long night of gastronomic training for Hughes. For the past four hours, he and his wife, Tereasa, have been buffet-hopping with me in and around their hometown of Newport News, Va. First came Captain George's Seafood, where the 44-year-old Hughes systematically attacked the 80-foot spread, downing 10 soft-shell crabs, 120 or so shrimp, a small steak, a handful of crawfish, a plate of crab legs and one (purely symbolic) asparagus stalk. At one point, he peeled and ate 60 shrimp while Tereasa timed him with her electronic wristwatch. Tossing them into his churning maw as if they were M&M's, shellfish shrapnel spraying the table, he finished in 4 minutes 32 seconds, an effort he pronounced ''respectable.''
After abortive trips to the Golden City buffet and the Golden Palace buffet, each of which Hughes deemed too low on food, we headed to the Szechuan Inn, where Hughes inhaled 10 pieces of sushi, another 20 shrimp and some chicken. Finally, we drove to the County Grill and Smokehouse. Before entering, Hughes, a stubby, cherubic man imbued with childlike enthusiasm, lifted his shirt to show off his distended stomach, which had swollen to just under the size of a beach ball and made an elastic pinging noise when he thwapped it with his finger. Inside the restaurant, he ate two orders of collard greens, a pile about the size of two fists, in 18 seconds. To an untrained eye, the evening was an astounding digestive display. But to Hughes, who eats heavily at buffets like these two or three times a week, it was a grave disappointment. ''You see, this is my problem,'' he said, small pebbles of sweat clinging to his forehead as he surveyed the obstinate wieners, which had been ordered post-collard greens. ''I'm good on speed, but I just can't do the volume yet. If I'm going to be a champion, I need to be able to go big on volume.''
Such are the concerns of an aspiring star in the world of competitive eating, a peculiar pastime -- its participants would say sport -- in which people try to eat as much of a given food as possible in a set time, usually 12 minutes. Speed eating has been around in one form or another for the better part of a century, practiced informally at county fairs and fraternity houses. In the last few years, however, it has been transformed into a national competitive circuit complete with television coverage, prize money and its own governing body, the International Federation of Competitive Eating.
The federation oversees 150 events and counts 3,000 eaters in its register. Its competitions boast strict rules and regulations -- vomiting leads to automatic disqualification; any food in the mouth at the buzzer counts if swallowed thereafter -- and its competitors include superstars like the 144-pound Takeru Kobayashi, a 25-year-old from Japan who holds the world record of 50 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. (Kobaya-shi is said to make more than $150,000 a year between the American and Japanese circuits.) As with any other sport, there is now a hierarchy that extends from the minor leagues of qualifying mall contests and international satellite ''feeder'' tourneys all the way to the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest, held every Fourth of July on Coney Island. The Nathan's event is attended by thousands of fans and a media contingent that numbers in the hundreds.
The promise of fame and glory is enough to make Hughes, a cylinder technician with National Welders, devote himself to the pursuit of the Holy Grail of eating: the Mustard Yellow Belt awarded each year to the winner of Nathan's. In his first shot at the belt in July, he placed 14th. ''My goal is to train hard and make it into the Top 10 by next year,'' says Hughes, whose rookie performance vaulted him to No. 17 in the federation's world rankings. ''Then, if I can increase my volume, well'' -- he pauses, almost dreamily -- ''who knows?''
The annual contest at Nathan's began, according to legend, in 1916, the same year Nathan Handwerker started his hot dog business. As the event became more popular during the early 1990's, George Shea, a P.R. agent working on the Nathan's account, saw an opportunity to expand. In 1997, he and his brother Richard created the International Federation of Competitive Eating and persuaded Nathan's to extend the contest to its franchise locations. The circuit grew rapidly as new foods were ''sanctioned'': chicken wings led to burgers, cabbage begat pelmeni, pickled eggs inspired reindeer sausage and so on.
By last year, with the guidance of the Shea brothers, the federation had evolved from a marketing goof into a viable commercial enterprise and legitimate competition. The prize money, which for all but one or two superstars is negligible, represents a small chunk of the sponsorship fees the federation collects from food companies and other businesses. (In non-federation-sponsored events, the purse is typically provided by the host restaurant.) The Sheas promote their sport with a tongue-in-cheek, carnival-barker approach that walks a line between letting the audience in on the joke and carefully maintaining an image of the eaters as true athletes. ''If we go on Howard Stern,'' Richard Shea says, ''he's going to go lowest common denominator and say, 'These guys throw up.' But we hold the line. It's always 'sport'; it's always 'reversal of fortune''' -- a federation-approved euphemism for vomiting. George Shea adds: ''The weird thing though is that it is true -- it is a sport. I do know the records. The eaters are serious, and they really are crestfallen when they lose.''
Hughes first heard about competitive eating 10 years ago, when he saw a hot dog contest featured on the ''Today'' show. Though he had always been a big eater -- when he was 14, his mother told him, ''That stomach's going to make you money one day'' -- he never thought to capitalize on his skill. Then, in the fall of 2001, he entered a collard green eating contest at the County Grill and won the $100 prize. He scarfed down 2.5 pounds in 17.5 seconds, before most competitors had even made a dent in their piles. (He now often goes by the nom de consume of Collard Green.) For someone who had been cut from his Little League team and was never, in his words, ''all that good at sports,'' it was an electrifying feeling.
Emboldened by his victory, Hughes, Tereasa and three of their children piled into the family minivan on June 14 and headed to a mall in Norfolk, Va., for a Nathan's regional qualifying hot dog contest. The winner would head to New York City to compete on July 4. As close to 500 curious shoppers looked on, Hughes began eating. After eight minutes, he had downed over a dozen dogs but was starting to flag (the dreaded eight-minute mark is when, according to eating lore, your brain catches up to your stomach and you begin to feel full). With the urging of the crowd and a giant clapping French's mustard mascot, Hughes finished strong to win the contest with 16 dogs. At the announcement of his victory, he leapt up and down, high-fiving anyone within slapping range and letting out a prolonged cry of celebration. As he told me later, ''It was the first time in my life I'd ever won a trophy.''
New York was a blur. Hughes had never been on an airplane, let alone visited the city. He hit the pubs, he went to Carnegie Deli and he even crank-called Kobayashi the night before the competition. He took 272 photos during his three-day stay, posing with each of his eating idols, the same wild grin stuck to his face. One of the snapshots, a 40-inch-by-50-inch framed photo of Hughes with third-ranked Eric (Badlands) Booker, (Hungry) Charles Hardy, the pelmeni-eating champion Dale Boone and Boyd Bulot, is the first thing you see when you walk into Hughes's house. On the big day, Hughes faltered, eating only 15 dogs and finishing in a tie for 14th. ''I was nervous, and I had a cold,'' he explained. ''I was disappointed.''
Since then Hughes has been training. He is now supported by a local wings joint called Rooney's Grill and Bar that provides him with free wings, and the County Grill has followed suit with complimentary ribs and collard greens. When eating hot dogs -- of which he received 480 for winning the contest in Norfolk -- he has adopted the popular strategy of separating the dogs from the buns, then dipping the buns in a glass of water to make them go down easier. He also worked on the ''meat umbrella'' technique for chicken wings -- that is, bending the wingette in half so the edible part pops up -- in preparation for a contest at the National Buffalo Wing Festival scheduled for this weekend in Buffalo. ''Gotta train to win,'' he told me. ''They say Kobayashi works out three times a day, eats 10 packs of ramen every night and talks to his stomach.''
In its normal state, the human stomach is about the size of a small cantaloupe. When a person is hungry and smells food, the body sends signals to the brain, which releases neurotransmitters that relax the stomach. In this state, it can hold up to 10 times its normal volume, which is why people can eat so much at Thanksgiving dinner. Some are blessed with more room than others. According to Dr. Anil Rustgi, chief of gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania, stomach capacity varies 10 to 15 percent from person to person. At a certain point, the stomach sends a second signal -- ''I'm full'' -- to the brain. It is a signal that successful competitive eaters are able, it seems, to disregard. ''It may be that they are eating so fast that those signals don't have to register,'' says Dr. Brian Lacy of the division of gastroenterology at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. ''It's also possible that they've taught themselves to ignore them.'' Rustgi speculates that a gifted eater like Kobayashi may be able to naturally pass a certain amount of undigested food from his stomach into his intestine, clearing more room in ''the suitcase,'' as Hughes refers to the belly.
Top eaters take strategic bites of food that are as large as they can comfortably swallow, so they are in effect gulping down each bite as one would a pill. Hughes demonstrated this for me by putting a large piece of sushi on his tongue and then swallowing it whole. It is a skill similar to that of sword swallowers, who are able to relax the upper esophageal sphincter, in effect overriding the gag reflex. If the eaters can get the food to a certain point in the throat, peristalsis -- the automatic swallowing reflex -- takes over. There are drugs available that induce peristalsis, the most potent being a motility agent called Reglan that is often used in premature infants. Not surprisingly, there have been accusations that Kobayashi uses drugs, though, as George Shea points out, eaters used to accuse Hirofumi Nakajima, a Japanese hot dog champ in the mid-1990's, of having two stomachs.
Some federation competitions have drawn protesters who charge that competitive eating is wasteful and promotes unhealthy attitudes in a country that already has a significant obesity problem. ''It's probably not the best eating behavior,'' Lacy concedes. ''Medically, you can't rupture your stomach; it will just propel the food backward at a certain point. However, in the short term, there are some risks. You could overeat, throw up and inhale it.''
There is also the issue of long-term health. Consider that in his record run of 50 1/2 hot dogs at Nathan's, Kobayashi consumed 15,600 calories and more than 1,000 grams of fat in 12 minutes. For this reason, most eaters train with cabbage, watermelon or other roughage that has very little caloric content. A slimming diet may offer a strategic advantage as well. Edward Krachie, a former competitor and federation board member, half-seriously submitted a paper to The New England Journal of Medicine promoting a ''belt of fat'' theory, arguing that larger guts, contrary to what you might expect, constrict the stomach's ability to hold food (as evidenced by the dominance of the wispy Kobayashi).
Kobayashi has won the last three Nathan's contests by double-digit dog margins, and defeating him has become something of a patriotic endeavor. America's best hope at the moment is Ed (Cookie) Jarvis, a real-estate agent who holds records for ice cream (1 gallon 9 ounces in 12 minutes), cannoli (21 in 6 minutes) and dumplings (91 in 8 minutes), among other foods. Six feet 6 inches and 409 pounds, the 37-year-old wears a denim jacket that lists all of his eating conquests on the back. When I called him recently, he said he ''just happened'' to be cooking up a vat of 10 hot dogs to use for a ''10-dog sprint.'' He was going to eat them without the buns, however, because, as he said, ''I'm on the Atkins.''
A subscriber to the ''belt of fat'' theory, Jarvis has lost 60 pounds in the last year, which he believes allowed him to finish with a personal best 30 1/2 dogs at Nathan's -- good enough for second place. He says he hopes to lose between 60 and 80 pounds more before next year's contest and predicts it will allow him to finish ''somewhere in the 40's.'' Until then, he works out with a personal trainer three days a week and rides 29 miles on a stationary bike six times a week (an idea he says he got from watching Kobayashi riding a bike an hour before a competition to get his heart rate up). He can drink a gallon of water in a minute flat, consume 6.5 pounds of watermelon in a sitting and says his stomach capacity is up to 15 pounds. ''Since 50 hot dogs is 11 pounds, that means I've got enough room to beat Kobayashi,'' Jarvis says. ''Now I just need the speed.'' To that end, he watches tapes of other eaters for tips -- ''football coaches do it, why shouldn't I?'' -- and jumps rope and hits a speed bag to increase his ''hand to mouth transfer speed.''
Though many competitive eaters are men who look like offensive lineman 10 years removed from their playing days, some female face-stuffers also thrive on the tour. One in particular is a 36-year-old, 106-pound woman from South Korea named Sonya Thomas. Attractive and athletic, she has long black hair, which she holds back with barrettes during competition. In her first appearance at Nathan's this year, she ate 25 hot dogs, which would have been the world record, regardless of sex, as recently as five years ago. Boasting a metabolism supermodels would kill for, Thomas says she eats only one meal a day, though a typical dinner is a one-pound burger, two large orders of French fries, a large order of onion rings, a 15-piece serving of chicken tenders and a shake. When I ask her why she competes, she pauses for a moment. ''Before, I was just normal, like everybody,'' she says. ''Now, I'm special.''
The joy of recognition appears to be a common theme among the eaters. ''It's a rush having the fans and people cheering you on,'' Jarvis says. ''I'm too old to play football. Where else could I do something like this?''
Hughes aspires to Jarvis-like heights of celebrity. Tereasa keeps all his news clippings -- mainly local Virginia papers so far -- under laminate, runs a Collard Green Web site and had a small brass hot dog engraved with the words ''I Love You.'' Though Hughes has been recognized a few times, he says he feels he has yet to break through. ''Allen Iverson grew up right around here, and when he comes to town, he can go to any restaurant and get a free meal,'' Hughes says as we drive through Newport News. ''Me? I'm 17th in the world and don't get noticed. I'm famous but nobody knows it.''
When we arrived back at Hughes's house, carrying the six hot dogs in plastic containers, it was close to midnight. Tereasa had insisted we stop at a 7-Eleven to pick up four of the convenience store's hot dogs, which are thinner and closer to regulation size than the County Grill's. Hughes gamely sat down at a table in his living room, and Tereasa readied the stopwatch. But there were no further displays that night; he eventually ate half of one dog and then called it quits. Dejected, Hughes told me he was worried that his showing, when recounted in print, would expose what he called his fatal flaw / ''bread is my ultimate weakness.'' Tereasa said glumly, ''I've never seen him eat so little.''
There was still a glimmer of hope, though, as Carson stepped on the scale. When he weighed himself at the beginning of the night, it read 232 pounds. Now, as the electronic numbers tumbled upward, a smile broke out on his face: 240 pounds. ''Hot damn!'' he said and hopped off the scale. He and Tereasa traded high fives and she rubbed his belly. ''Eight pounds of food!'' he said. ''I'd like to see Jarvis and some of those guys try to do that.''
He pumped his fist and laughed. ''I knew there was a reason I was feeling full.''
Chris Ballard is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated. He last wrote for the magazine about beer jingles.
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