8 Reasons Competitive Eating is The Worst Thing Ever

By:: Seanbaby

April 30, 2009

The essence of competition is the reason we learned to walk upright and turn dumbass animals into footballs. But competition isn't always a good thing. For example, our cloven-hoofed opponents are such sore losers they're trying to kill us with biological flu weapons. Assuming we live through this pork terrorism, we may need to rethink some of the ridiculous things we've done in the spirit of our competitive spirit. Especially in the field of professional eating. Read more just inches below in The Top Eight Reasons Competitive Eating Sucks. #8: It's Not Good For You. Lots of sports are dangerous: plate spinning, karateball, masquerade poontanging, junior masquerade poontanging... however, in sports like these, you can eliminate the danger by performing well. Boxing is theoretically safe if you punch your opponent in the face hard enough and first enough, or if you lure them onto a trap door hours before the fight. But when your fight is against hot dogs, it's in fact more dangerous when you perform well. Millions of colons don't lie: In the battle of Man's Insides vs. Hot Dog, Hot Dog always wins. According to their website, professional eating is held up to strict safety regulations. These must be unusual since, from a safety standpoint, swallowing six hot dogs is already like swallowing the front part of a gun, or mocking God in a bear cage. So I imagine these regulations involve more than a Heimlich Maneuver poster... probably some kind of body armor for the first rows of spectators to avoid any burst-ribcage shrapnel. Also, their legal department requires former champions to be bibbed and on site to eat the evidence of any detonated contestants and the witnesses. #7: Joo Americans and Joor Decadence! There are several steps to a chicken wing eating competition. First, you weigh the chicken wings. Next, chaos. Third, the remains are weighed to see how much chicken was ingested. This amount is generally anywhere from impossible to stupid. Finally, a messenger service makes certain that each individual starving person around the world is told to fuck themselves. I kid, but because there are no government regulations on irony, Major League Eating does donate money to hunger-related charities. Because when you're starving in the desert and some guy is holding a check next to a glorious pile of uneaten meat, you're eyeballing that check. You can't put a stamp on that burger? No? You're... you're just going to dunk it in a Big Gulp and snap it down your throat like a penguin. That's cool too. Maybe you guys could have a medicine destroying race after this. #6: You Can't Dream It

You can't send a kid to competitive eating camp. It would be insane. Growing up with dreams of being a competitive eater will never work because you die of diabetes at 10. Either that or your fat ass is carried away by a confused condor, the deadly natural enemy of the pig. As a sport, competitive eating can't really inspire you. Let's say a casual fan is watching competitive eating. We'll call him Competitive Eating Tony. Competitive Eating Tony has trained to eat, at least non-competitively, every single day of his life. And he knows that he flat-out can eat a maximum of seven tacos. Tony is maybe even proud of this because the bet was that he could only eat six. Now Tony sees on his TV that some chick can eat 48! Tony knows, numerically, that that's impossible for him. He can't train to get there, and attempting to would only core out three inches of asshole tissue on each side. So end his eating sports dreams, as quickly as they began. So he goes back to watching basketball because he knows,

knows that he totally could have made that free throw. #5: Tim Janus Soft-spoken eat-journeyman Tim Janus's idea of adding showmanship to the sport is wearing Ultimate Warrior face paint and coming in 16th. You can't wear Ultimate Warrior face paint and call yourself Eater X when you're just some shy dude that sucks. That's like a fourth string quarterback giving himself a nickname. "Great practice, fellas! But please, from now on, call me The Razor Dinosaur!"

#4: Side Food

Side Food is the term I use to describe the pasty mash that oozes or sprays out of the side of your mouth while you struggle against your own swallowing capabilities. It's gross. If gymnastics can dock you a point for taking a step after you do three flips, someone should be able to take a point away from you if you're eating a stick of butter and you give anyone a view of the inside of your mouth. But this scoring penalty should only be used if the death penalty is out of the question. #3: Seven Thousand Billion Title Holders Tokeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut, known as Eat Monsters in the talking hot dog community, usually win competitions by a margin that would feed a small family of 70 for a week. And yet as all the other inadequate competitors are introduced, they each have a long list of world records. They might be the four-Minute Asparagus champion, hold the six-minute record for Most Mayonnaise on a Horse or hold The Peanut Allergy Council's Posthumous Award for Excellence in Peanut Butter Sandwiching. With an infinite number of foods and seasoning choices multiplied by an infinite choice of bout durations, you're looking at almost 300 different world record possibilities. Any person with access to Google and a grocery store can have one for at least a couple minutes. Think of it like different fighting leagues. One organization might have 10-minute rounds or allow you to stomp on a guy's head. But it's more or less the same thing. And while it might be worth mentioning that a UFC fighter has 30 straight victories against children and furniture, that should maybe be left off his official fight record. Just like how your world record for some bullshit shouldn't matter when you're about to get humiliated in the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. "And because the good eaters haven't made the time to eat frozen peas near someone with a stopwatch, here is the current frozen pea eating champion of central Wisconsin!"

#2: Merchandising

It's hard to promote a sport with merchandising when it's disgusting. If you marketed a home version, that would destroy our nation's toilets. And you're not going to buy a brand new competitive eating t-shirt knowing that it's going to immediately get covered in horrible half-eaten food drippings. One notable attempt they made at merchandising was with a Major League Eating video game. In it, you jam food in your mouth, wiggle to prevent puking and your special attack is a burp. I think Navy Seals are currently using it to train for sex with fat people. Burping on your opponent during an eating contest? That has got to be the most unsportsmanlike way to take advantage of a situation that has ever been. When you put a number of hot dogs greater than zero into a human body, the nitrates are broken down into a death-like stench only made stronger by your past sins. To intentionally unleash this onto a fellow sportsman just because you can... it's like, well, to use a sports metaphor: It's along the lines of waiting until your team is safely inside the speeding bobsled, then taking your dick out and putting it in the man in front of you.

#1: Wait, Now Fat People Can't Do Anything! As the sport of eating has become more competitive, one very paradoxical thing has happened: there aren't any fat people left. And not because they were rendered for lamp oil and perfume. They simply can't eat as fast or as much as normal-sized people. Hey, obese people, that's got to be a wake-up call to the health risks of your condition when you can't even fucking win at eating.