Comparing Competitive Eating Records

June 28, 2006 7:51 AM

Comparing Apples and Oranges. Which can you eat faster, onions or cheesecake? ROIs from (some) IFOCE records plotted together. The beginning of Sabermetrics for competitive eating? Of course, we can't ignore the Takeru Kobayashi effect. (See also earlier MeFi on International Competitive Eating.)
posted by skynxnex (14 comments total)

Via slashfood.com. It seems like if Kobayashi and Sonya Thomas had children, they might just be the world's perfect unstoppable eating machines.
posted by skynxnex at 7:54 AM on June 28, 2006

I get the feeling most of the "competitors" are in it for the, uh, "sport" of it rather than actually trying to win. The Black Widow excepted.
posted by GuyZero at 8:00 AM on June 28, 2006

Competitive eaters fascinate me. And Sonya Thomas just scares the bejesus outta me. Nobody that small should be able to eat that much, that fast.
posted by antifuse at 8:08 AM on June 28, 2006

The next generation of stars in this sport are sure to come from central africa...or perhaps north korea.
posted by stilgar at 8:15 AM on June 28, 2006

It seems to me that when I've seen stuff about competitive eating on tv, that it's usually the smaller, thinner people who are able to consume the most.
posted by tastybrains at 8:27 AM on June 28, 2006

Joey Chestnut is coming for Kobayashi.
posted by mosessmith at 8:53 AM on June 28, 2006

Am I the only one left that is just disturbed and saddened by "competitive eating"?
posted by blacklite at 10:34 AM on June 28, 2006

Disturbed, yes. Saddened, no. I'm looking forward to competitive dictionary lookup.
posted by oxford blue at 5:10 PM on June 28, 2006

Rats, I thought this was a MAc OS X vs. Vista thread.
posted by illovich at 6:45 PM on June 28, 2006

tastybrains : "It seems to me that when I've seen stuff about competitive eating on tv, that it's usually the smaller, thinner people who are able to consume the most."

Ditto. And if you've seen enough of the competitions (there was a regular competetive eating show on TV in Japan a few years ago, until a kid imitated it and died), you get so used to the idea that skinny people win that the idea of a fat person winning seems as weird as the idea of a person with short legs winning a marathon, or a sumo wrester winning on the parallel bars. I remember seeing one of the skinny Japanese contestants taking part in an eating contest in America, and all the Americans were looking at him with an increduluous "he can't win" expression, and I just kept thinking, "Of course he's going to win. I mean, just look at the other contestants: They're all huge!!"
posted by Bugbread at 9:12 PM on June 28, 2006

I was kinda curious about that Takeru Kobayashi effect, but dude, FUCK websites that blast loud audio upon loading. Fuck them to Hell.
posted by cribcage at 11:37 PM on June 28, 2006

Woah, sorry about the audio on the Takeru Kobayashi link. I had my speakers off when I found it. But, the main link describes the effect, I just liked the name of the site (and the fact it made me want to eat a hot dog).
posted by skynxnex at 7:04 AM on June 29, 2006

This July 4 is going to be the most dramatic eating event in five years. I am betting Chestnut beats Kobayashi. I found tons of info on the upcoming contest at www.competitiveeatingnews.com.
and at: www.competitiveeatingevents.com.
www.competitiveeating.net.
posted by JimMullen at 10:17 AM on June 30, 2006

Sorry, the other sites are: competitiveeatingevents
and competitiveeating
posted by JimMullen at 10:19 AM on June 30, 2006