A record 72 bangers on buns in 10 minutes. I watched it on the telly and almost projectile vomited across the room. 
Still, an impressive feat indeed.
I fucking hate this competition. I rail against it every year.
Competitive eating when people are starving (probably within miles of the competition itself) is offensive. You might as well have a Competitive Breathing and Having a Roof Over Your Head event while you’re at it. And I find nothing impressive about some asshole stuffing soaking wet hot dogs into his face and generally making a utter pig out of himself.
Your mileage my vary, Little_Pig, et al.
I understand the sentiment, but there’s a fuckton of leisure activities that use up precious resources for no public return. Golf courses waste water. Car racing wastes gas. And we have lots more of those two things alone than competitive eating contests.
I’m not saying it’s not conspicuous consumption, but I can’t bring myself to think it’s even close to the most offensive example.
The grossness alone annoys me. What’s next? Competitive vomiting?
Some cultures have their** Great Tradition**; this is Today’s.
A great result.
Exactly. whenever I hear “Eating contest”, I can’t help but to think of that scene in “Stand By Me”.
Do yourself a favor and never watch any episode of The Amazing Race where the contestants have to eat an entire ostrich egg. In Africa.
BTW, awesome username/thread title combo.
See, to me it’s all about the sides. Baked beans, potato salad, pasta salad, deviled eggs, guacamole and chips; that’s what would interfere with me downing 72 hotdogs in ten minutes.
Otherwise, yeah.
It is sexist to forget that Miki Sudo upheld the honour of American womanhood by claiming the Pink Belt; like the redoubtable male winner, upping her intake year by year.
I’m sure sure dreary little feminists like Emma Watson will try to end the gendered prizes, but as ever women would lose out, as with say graeco-roman wrestling or weight-lifting, since few women want or are capable of shoving 72 wieners in their mouths in ten minutes.
Joey is a man of strange pleasures. But a fine American Hero nonetheless.
I admit that my first reaction to hearing of these “Glutton Bowl” types of “competitions” was “this is some kind of Fall of the Roman Empire level of wasteful and profligate decadence going on”, but I admit to a special fascination with the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest because (a) I love their hot dogs, (b) live not too far from Coney Island and have been there many times, and © am impressed by human ingenuity that can invent non-obvious techniques to significantly improve performance in what is a basic, universal human action.
“The Fosbury Flop” revolutionized high jumping, and the “Cliff Shuffle” in the world of endurance running, with motions that were funny-looking, non-obvious, even ridiculed (by nickname), yet yielded such efficiency of power that the athletes in question - who were not exactly Adonis-like figures, or previously notable in their sports - a huge and immediate advantage.
Similarly, nobody paid much attention to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest outside of people who happened to be on the Coney Island boardwalk on July 4 – until the late 1990s, when a wave of pro/semi-pro “competitive eaters” (of other foods) came over from Japan, wiry little guys at that (not sumo wrestler types), to go toe-to-toe with the more traditional image of a huge, 300 lb. truck driver from Queens, raising the bar from 12-15 hot dogs in 10 minutes to 20, 22, and then 25 hot dogs.
Then, in 2001, a “wiry little Japanese guy” named Kobayashi - nicknamed “The Tsunami” - came over and ate FIFTY. They almost ran out of hot dogs. They didn’t even have “running count” number signs big enough for his score, they had to start handwriting signs up furiously.
Competitive eating was a fringe and frivolous thing to Americans, but damn. An event that had a 30+ year history just had its previous record shattered by DOUBLING it. That got people’s attention!
And he did it by inventing a new technique: soaking the bun in water to shrink down its volume, and doing a “Solomon split” to break the dogs in half and then jam them into his mouth at the same time, effectively doubling his bandwidth. This has been done by the winner ever since, every year.
Wastefully profligate decadence on display? Yeah, I guess it still is. But something that shows what “thinking outside the box” can achieve is still inspiring!
You all realize that the next logical step is competitive pooping.
I’ll set my DVR!
It’s on right after “Oww, My Balls!”
This may go way over your head, but a woman actually won one of the earliest eating contests. And check why she entered the contest.
In the vast scheme of things you’re technically correct but all the hotdogs eaten here put some people to work to produce them, the network people have to buy local lodging, so it gives a slight bonus to their local economy.
But it seems to me that eating that much food that quickly is dangerous. I’d rather see who could finish off say 5 fully dressed hotdogs in the least amount of time.
And I’ve been told Nathan’s Hot Dogs, sponsor, donates a certain amount of hot dogs to the needy. Which is why I’m now organizing a dog-fighting ring in my back yard, but I’m going to give 10% of my profits to the ASPCA, so it’s all cool.
And the losers go to needy local Asians. 
Why would that go over my head ? I was applauding the feminist credentials of Miss Sudo, who eats as well as any man.
Of course, 12 hot dogs in 5 minutes is equal to 24 hot dogs in a modern-day 10 minutes.
I’ll float the same idea as I did the last time I got a wild hair across my ass about this: Competitive Non-Eating. Ten guys - ready, set, don’t eat. Last guy to die wins. ***That ***will impress me.
I wonder what the sodium content is for 72 hot dogs and 72 buns. It must be astronomical.