Is it ethical to make a sport of consuming mass quantities of food while people around the world still regularly die of malnutrition? Or is it every capitalist’s right to consume as much as he pleases (or can afford) regardless of the plight of others?
Part of me finds this so-called sport amusing, but I can’t help but be a little repulsed by the vulgarity. I’m sure many of its advocates are going to say that countless other activities affect the third world to a far greater extent. But, leaving that aside this one strikes me as particularly outlandish and mostly unnecessary. It’s almost a metaphor for western decadence.
I think it is ethical. Is it ethical to get expensive medical care when people are dying from a lack of basic medicine in the third world? Is it ethical to go to graduate school when people can’t read? I guess if you feel these are limited quantities and it is a zero sum game it isn’t. But I don’t think it is a zero sum game. Technology improves agricultural yields and as a result more people have enough food to eat. Food is not a zero sum game. There are currently 2x more overweight people on earth than malnourished. 1.7 billion vs 800 million.
What does one have to do with the other? It may be vulgar and unseemly but so far as I can tell the mass quantaties of food consumed by the people in these contest have squat to do with starving people in third world nations.
Sorry, I just think it’s a stupid activity. I’ve never watched it nor would I. I gloss over any mention of it in print without feeling any pangs of guilt. It’s just stupid and done for what purpose? There’s no entertainment value in seeing people gorging themselves.
There will always be people dying of malnutrition somewhere in the world and it’s not my personal responsibility that they survive. It’s much bigger than that.
It’s stupid and potentially dangerous, I would imagine, but unethical? No.
To me, this argument is no different than the old, “clean your plate because there are children starving in such and such country.” Whether or not I clean my plate doesn’t feed those kids.
As I said I understand that the amount of food wasted on competitions isn’t the issue here. And it’s admirable that the IFOCE makes donations to fight hunger. The problem for me is the conspicuousness.
To me its like someone going on TV and smoking cigars wrapped in $100 bills. It’s just a sad display of wealth. The fact that with competitive eating it’s actual food thats wasted just makes it all the more crass.
Sure, but unless you’re a starving person in the U.S. or Japan, and just happen to be walking by an electronics store, why would even smoking cigars wrapped in hundreds make any difference? It’s not like your average third world citizen even KNOWS such things are going on.
It is perfectly ethical activity, so long as no one is forced to do it or potentially harms themselves with obviously dangerous food items. (say, fugu eating contests.)
It’s morality and tastefulness is far more questionable, seeing how participants and ethusiasts essentially celebrate gluttony for sport and amusement.
Were I in the right mood, I think I’d watch competitive smoking of cigars wrapped in hundred-dollar bills, but only if I could bet on it.
I’m not so concerned with the conspicuous waste involved in this activity. The electric bill for any major-league night game would probably cover the IFOCE’s needs for quite a while. Besides which, there is probably a moderating effect on food consumption as a whole when you take into account all the meals skipped by spectators who have been grossed out of existence by the sight of someone eating ten gallons of lard or whatever.
Though most eating contests are centered around plain food, not fancy, I would love to sponsor one that involved foie gras. Just to see if any of the contestants spot the irony.
I can’t imagine that eating 30 hot dogs in one sitting can possibly be good for anyone’s health. Perhaps a part of the ethical consideration should also be the fact that the contest sponsors are encouraging participants to do things which are damaging to their health in both the long and short terms. (I understand that massive consumption of fatty foods in a single meal can set off a heart attack. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.) The publisher of the Guiness Book of World Records refuses to publish records for alcohol consumption on the grounds that they ought not to encourage something which is obviously dangerous to one’s health. I think the same thing applies here.
Eating 30 hot dogs (about 5 pounds of meat with a ton of salt and nitrates) isn’t necessairily “obviously dangerous” food consumption the way your alcohol example is. Tain’t healthy, but if you’re in otherwise good health it’s not gonna kill you.
It’s just as ethical as deciding to watch TV or play games with your free time instead of volunteering at the soup kitchen or farm.
(Incidentally, even if we optimized our economy to help others, we would still need to include some recreation time, as time off helps rejuvenate. I’m not sure what this minimum level of entertainment is, since it wouldn’t be ethical or efficient to enforce this level of organization, unless for instance a 10-mile asteroid were blazing toward the Earth.)
I would guess that it has the same moral value as that row of Doritos and potato chips in your local supermarket. Neither are a particularly good use of resources.
But…there’s pretty much agreement that third world starvation is due mostly to f**ked up local politics and not the ability to produce and distribute food stuffs. Chances are if you distributed those 30 hot dogs to the third world country of your choice, they’d be stolen from the docks by local warlords and sold on the black market. Or given to tribe A in preference to tribe B.
Not in the short term, maybe, but chain smoking a pack of cigarettes probably wouldn’t kill you right away if you’re otherwise in good health. Would we want to encourage tobacco smoking contests? Wouldn’t you question the ethics of someone who held such a competition? And I assure you a heart specialist would be quite horrified and disgusted at the sight of someone ingesting five pounds of fatty food in fifteen minutes.
Damn, when did I get to be so politically correct?
I’ve heard that competitive eating contests are much more common in Japan than elsewhere. I happened to catch the end of a televised program a few days ago that showed Takeru Kobayashi (the current record holder for hot dogs) casually putting away a hundred dumplings as they passed by him on a conveyor belt.
Yes and yes. I haven’t seen people snatching food out of the hands of malnourished babies. It’s not like there’s a fixed amount of food in the world, and every time you skip a meal someone gets fed.
Ask yourself what would happen to this food if these competitions didn’t exist. Would Nathan’s be shipping the hot dogs to third-world countries? No, that number of hot dogs wouldn’t have been made in the first place. Maybe an animal or two wouldn’t be killed until tomorrow; big deal.
This reminds me of my ex, who objected every time I bought him flowers. He considered it wasteful, when the flowers could have been happily growing in the wild. I explained to him that these flowers were raised specifically to be cut and sold, and if nobody bought them, they wouldn’t exist, in the wild or otherwise. Just like chickens.
If you choose to indulge in your own personal guilt trip, that’s your problem. But in the time it took you to create and follow this thread, how many mouths could you have fed?
You want to see conspicous waste? Forget competitive eating. Watch some MTV. Bling is conspicuous waste on a level far beyond competitive eating.
Here in Philly, we have the Wing Bowl. It’s held in a private building.
The Eagles play in a stadium built a few years ago, with government funds. This is despite numerous objections from the city council, and the testimony of experts that the city could safely refuse to provide any funds without fear of the Eagles moving. Any footbal or baseball game taking place in that stadium is a display of millions of dollars wasted when we have people who need food, medical care, etc right here in Philly.
The victor of Wing Bowl is not acknowledged by the local government in any way.
When the Phillies or the Eagles make it to the championships, a custom made giant hat is placed on the head of the William Penn statue atop city hall. That hat, and the workmen who mount and secure it probably costs more than all the wings bought for Wing Bowl. Conspicuous you say? Giant red baseball cap on massive statue atop prominent and tall building? I’d say that’s pretty conspicuous.
