11.29.2007
Why starving people should hate Joey Chestnut
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Do you think starving folks watch eating contests and just cry?
Of all the cruel games in the world — including giving wedgies to the girl who wore pigtails and glasses to school — an eating contest has to be the meanest.
There are blocks of TV time and Web sites and enlarged stomachs devoted to people gorging themselves merely for sport.
Surely just seeing obese people can bother the truly hungry (“They have enough food to eat too much? How many biscuits did it take to make those rolls? Are you really ordering a Diet Coke with that super-sized triple cheeseburger meal?”).
Can you imagine the frenzy that a food-eating contest would incite?
If the thought of someone dipping hot dog buns in water and then forcing dozens of them down their throat isn’t disgusting enough, try swallowing this: According to feedthechildren.org, which may or may not be a reliable source, there are millions of starving children in America.
According to the International Federation of Competitive Eating, a completely reliable and authentic source, this year, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut downed 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes on the Fourth of July.
In total, the 17 contestants who competed in Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest ate 576.5 hot dogs and buns during those 12 minutes.
Take that out over the course of a full day, and the participants would have eaten 69,180 hot dogs and buns, had they not all immediately puked their brains out after realizing they just ate 576.5 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes.
Just think: 69,180 hot dogs and buns a day is enough to feed 3 million starving children in America .02 hot dogs and buns a day.
That may not sound like much, but kids love hot dogs, and starving kids love them even more.
So here we have Major League Eating (that’s really what they call it) in a nation in which millions of kids don’t even get to eat .02 hot dogs and buns a day.
Whoever said “Life isn’t fair” must have been comparing the number of hot dogs and buns in an eating competition to the lack of hot dogs and buns in starving households.
But wait, here’s the real kicker: The winners of these eating competitions receive thousands of dollars.
Picture yourself impoverished, having eaten only a can of tuna for the past few days, and you pass a TV replaying Joey Chestnut eating 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes and then receiving a check for $10,000.
Wouldn’t that make you want to ball up your last remaining ounces of self-dignity and shove that down Chestnut’s throat to join those digesting 66 hot dogs and buns?
“Chew on this, %#&*@,” you might say.
And who could blame you?
To be fair, IFOCE did set up a fundraising campaign to support food-distributing charities and disaster relief agencies worldwide.
But still, why hasn’t someone realized that every year, Nathan’s Famous (and any other eating-contest contributor) gives hundreds of hot dogs (or other food) to people who clearly eat enough instead of splurging on those who really need it?
Oh, probably because these people think it makes sense to eat 8.31 pounds of Armour Vienna Sausage in 10 minutes (that’s Sonya Thomas’ world record from a competition at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in 2005).
They may be eaters, but they aren’t thinkers.