Maybe you missed it (let’s hope), but someone named Joey Chestnut ate 75 — that’s SEVENTY-FIVE — hot dogs to win Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest for the 13th time in 14 years. That broke his previous record of 74.
Oh, and he did it in 10 minutes.
It’s a dubious distinction of course — a $10,000 prize and headlines for a feat of gluttony — but there it is.
It turns out that there is an entire competitive eating circuit like the hot dog contest on Coney Island, which — burp! (excuse me) — probably shouldn’t be surprising given America’s expanding appetite and waistline (more on that later) and taste for competition. Major League Eating, the professional league of eating contests, sanctions several events — oysters in New Orleans, wings in Buffalo, tamales in Lewisville, Texas, and on it goes through the regional favorites of sliced bologna, Ramen Noodles, red beans and rice, milk and cookies, shrimp cocktails, tacos, pork roll sandwiches, and poutine (a French-Canadian dish of French fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy).
Chestnut, the Michael Jordan of eating, has won several of those contests, too (he once ate 39½ 10-ounce bowls of red beans and rice in eight minutes, and 27 “Texas-sized” beef brisket sandwiches in 10 minutes).
But the event that made his legend is the hot dog contest. According to ESPN, which broadcasts the event live, Chestnut consumed 21,750 calories in the process — about nine times the recommended calories for men for an entire day. The Nathan’s website claimed that Chestnut consumed about 16 pounds worth of hot dogs “or as much as 42 billiard balls!” in his 2019 victory, with 73 hot dogs.
If you winced when you watched the Paul Newman character eat 50 eggs in “Cool Hand Luke,” then don’t watch Chestnut.
Here’s his technique, for those of you who want to try it at home: While Chestnut — 6-foot-1, 230 pounds, give a package of hot dogs or two — is putting a hot dog in his mouth — picture a human wood chipper — the other hand is soaking the bun in water, and as soon as he’s done with the dog he jams the bun in his mouth, and moves on to the next dog and bun.
On the 10-point Disgusting Scale, it rates about a 13. It’s more disgusting than an Adam Sandler movie. More disgusting than a men’s restroom. And almost as disgusting as those documentaries about fast food and chicken farms.
According to Nathan’s, the company’s hot dog eating contest attracts more than 40,000 fans each year and is broadcast on ESPN to nearly two million viewers. But you have to wonder if these eating contests — and the coverage some of them get — are really such a good idea. Americans are fat. They already overeat and they don’t even need a cash prize as incentive. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), more than 40% of Americans are obese and 10% are severely obese. Obesity of course is associated with a litany of health issues.
Americans have been living off the fat of the land and now they are the land of the fat.
According to a Vox media report, portion sizes have skyrocketed since 1950 — from 7-ounce sodas to 42 ounces, from 3.9-ounce hamburgers to 12 ounces. The CDC reports that the average restaurant meal has quadrupled. The CDC also reports that the weight of the average American man 20 years old or older has increased from 166.3 pounds to 197.9 since the 1960s, and the weight of the average American woman has climbed from 140.2 pounds to 170.6 since the 1960s.
And now we’re cheering on men and women who are jamming hot dogs into their faces?
Why not a cigarette-smoking contest, sponsored by Phillip Morris, as long as we’re at it? The winner is the person who can smoke the most cigarettes in 15 minutes. Or the first one who gets lung cancer. The winner’s prize includes a free chest X-ray. *Note: If any contestant follows Bill Clinton’s claim — “I didn’t inhale” — he’s automatically disqualified.
How about a weight-gaining contest? Remember the reality weight-loss show, “Biggest Loser?” This is the opposite. The winner gets a free hospital stay and discounts at Big and Tall. It almost makes that inevitable heart attack worthwhile.
It’s enough to make you skip your next meal, or never buy another hot dog.
Some of the contestants have been “injured” while training for the eating contests with the extreme overeating it demands. Matt Stonie, the 2015 Nathan’s champion, told USA Today afterward, “A lot of us don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just experimenting. Sometimes people go a little gung-ho, a little overboard, and hurt themselves.” He said that six weeks before the 2015 contest he ate as many as 60 hot dogs three times a week and concluded by drinking almost a gallon of water.
“Drinking as much water as I can afterwards till, bluntly put, I feel like I’m going to explode,” he said. “It’s pushing your limits.”
Somebody pass the Tums.