Ahh, summer. Freshly-cut grass, summer jobs at fast food restaurants, lemonade and picnics, and of course, the obligatory mayonnaise-eating contest. Yes, yes, its true. Americans love their contests and a food eating contest, in which men and women stuff their faces with pounds of Spam, bologna, or hard-boiled eggs, is by far the most esteemed.
I was reading my local paper today and saw its story about the coming onslaught of summer competitive eating contests. There are people out there who have eaten one large cheese pizza in 3 minutes and 20 seconds and there are others who have stuffed 9.5 pounds of peas into their stomach in 12 minutes. Thanks to International Federation of Competitive Eating there is an entire organization dedicated to the promotion, standardization, and coordination of competitive eating contests. The IFCE also wants to insure the safety of participants, therefore EMTs and other emergency personnel are onsite at all times during official contests.
All of this is well and good, but it still begs the question of WHY!?! I'm afraid the answer is similar to the one Sir Edmund Hillary gave when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because its there." Why eat 43 soft tacos in 11 minutes? Because humans can. The human body can take quite a bit of abuse. Example: the record for hot dog eating is 50 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Other than instantaneous fame, this feat also gives you a year's worth of sodium in under a quarter of an hour! Hooray!
I just want to say hoo-rah to all those people who do abuse their body for their food-eating records - at least they have some goals in life.
In case you were wondering - the record for eating mayonnaise is 4 32-ounce bowls in 8 minutes, held by one Oleg Zhornitskiy. (Yummy, right Jason?)
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