by Ryan Nerz
—Badlands Booker
In the April 20, 2004, edition of the Stockton Record there’s a quarter-page advertisement for the Deep-Fried Asparagus Eating Competition that features Cookie Jarvis and the following tagline: “There’s 1,000 bucks at stake, and the competition is huge.” The article directly above this ad announces that Ralph Nader, the independent candidate for president, has called for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within six months.
To the layperson, it may seem that these two media artifacts are irrelevant to each other, but there is some correlation. On his Web site and in the Philadelphia Daily News, Ralph Nader has openly attacked competitive eating. He has called eating competitions a sign of societal decay on par with the excesses of former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who wrote off his wife’s $2 million fortieth birthday party in Sardinia as a deductible business entertainment expense. Here’s an excerpt from the article on Nader’s Web site:
Gluttony literally is rapidly becoming a competitive sport. In fact, out-gorging has become a contest with the gourgers [sic] riding circuit around the country performing in what its euphemists call “competitive eating.” No longer the seven deadly sins in this field, “Crazy Devin” [sic] Lipsitz, winner of the 2000 year United Carnegie International Pickle Eating Contest in New York City, describes his skill as “a sport” played by “athletes.”
There is even an International Federation of Competitive Eating which presides over dozens of events a year where contestants inhale hot dogs (the champion swallowed 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes), matzo balls, chicken wings and who knows what’s next—mayonnaise?
While the competitive-eating community is not known for taking stances of any kind, it has reluctantly been dragged into the political sphere. His spelling and research errors aside (mayonnaise has been done and is among the IFOCE’s finest records), Nader makes a few presumptuous assertions here, foremost of which is that competitive eating is not a sport. His stance has been seconded by Bill Maher, who said, “Competitive eating is not a sport. It’s one of the seven deadly sins…. What’s next, competitive farting?” In light of these assessments, some may even bristle at my insistence on calling competitive eating a sport throughout this book. Let’s hash it out.
The American Heritage College Dictionary defines the word “sport” as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill, governed by rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.” Is competitive eating an activity? Clearly. Does it involve physical exertion? Check. It only takes witnessing one IFOCE event to note the physical distress that eaters display in terms of heightened heart rate and excessive sweating. Take it from Don Lerman, a reliable primary source, “You put the body through more trauma in an eating contest than, let’s say, a heavyweight boxer after three rounds.”
Does competitive eating involve “skill”? This would likely be a sticking point for nonbelievers, because “skill” is a subjective term. Judging from my experience on the circuit, the average man on the street would not stand a chance in a contest against the top twenty IFOCE-ranked eaters. Topflight gurgitators rarely lose to local trenchermen in contests around the country, which implies that they have a “skill” that allows them to perform above and beyond average—even naturally talented—speed-eaters. Therefore, it’s a skill, and one that is increasingly rewarded by society. Finally, is competitive eating governed by rules and customs? Absolutely. So by definition, competitive eating is a sport.
For the sake of argument, let’s take into account factors outside this definition by which some might contend that it’s not a sport. Some feel that activities like figure skating, diving, and gymnastics are not sports because they are entirely subjective—based on the decisions of judges. (This criterion breaks down in the case of boxing, which is both subjective and objective.) Competitive eating is usually timed and weighed, so it still meets this requirement.
Some might say it’s not a “real” sport because it’s not popular enough. Such naysayers might even call competitive eating a “fringe activity.” If this is indeed the case, how can one explain Wing Bowl, which annually fills a sports arena with over twenty thousand fans? And what about the annual broadcast of the Nathan’s Famous competition on ESPN, the “total sports network”? Doesn’t this suggest popularity bordering on mainstream legitimacy? (Of course, ESPN covers nonsports like poker, too, which complicates the argument.) Furthermore, don’t Sonya Thomas’s total 2004 earnings—estimated at over $50,000—suggest a market for competitive eating?
George Shea draws a parallel to snowboarding, which was, not long ago, viewed with scorn. “Fifteen years ago, snowboarders were assholes. They were the morons of the mountain. People hated them. They were universally reviled…. But now that they’ve broken through the resistance, everybody goes, ‘Oh, great sport.’ It’s in the Olympics. It’s a great sponsorship moneymaker.”
The debate rages on. As competitive eating steadily gains a groundswell of support in America and abroad, a handful of detractors remain. Baseball manager Lou Piniella succinctly captures the skepticism of many old-school sportsmen with his flip dismissal of Kobayashi’s feat: “Fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes? That’s not a sport. That’s stupidity.” To Rich Shea, the comment reeks of territorial pissings. “Lou Piniella is trying to protect a sport that drives dollars into his pocket. And that is a sport called baseball, and we’re pulling eyeballs away from that sport. So for Lou Piniella, it may be a knee-jerk reaction. He wants to protect his sport, baseball, because he’s threatened by our sport.”
Perhaps the reason skeptics like Piniella can’t reconcile themselves to the athletic nature of competitive eating is that, unlike in most sports, the real physical skill takes place internally. Unlike, say, soccer or basketball or football, where the playing field is decidedly external, much of the talent involved in what a competitive eater does is invisible to the naked eye. Another bias against the sport is the culturally reinforced assumption that the main function of eating is nourishment and enjoyment. This attitude has its place, but most competitive-eating supporters believe that this Europeanized view will be replaced by a more expansive take on eating. In the future, perhaps the world will look at a hot dog and see it not merely as a delicious snack, but as a piece of sporting equipment no different from a tennis ball or a hockey puck.
“There is a parochial and elitist attitude in sports,” says George Shea. “But in what way is this not a real sport? Pick any sport. Mini-golf, which is in the World Games, or curling, which is in the Olympics. Curling, what is that? My point is competitive eating is a very fundamental sport. The fundamental sports are running, jumping, pushing, and fighting. Eating is even more fundamental: Who can eat the most and in the quickest time, when that mattered in terms of whether or not you survived? There are rules. We have a governing body, and we keep track of the records.”
The airtight case that competitive eating is a sport will not, however, silence the detractors. Nader’s other allegation—that competitive eating is sanctioned gluttony—is a more complex and moralistic one. “Gluttony” is defined as “excess in eating or drinking.” Even the most loyal fans might concede that eating as much as possible in a timed interval would fall loosely in the category of “excess in eating.” Touché.
There is a difference, however, between eating immoderately and eating competitively. The first implies a lack of discipline, the inability to restrain the urge to eat. This sort of day-to-day gorging rises from the wellspring of greed, of reveling in pleasure. Competitive eating, on the other hand, requires considerable discipline. Gurgitators don’t come to the table to enjoy a big meal, then find themselves unable to stop. They push themselves well beyond the point of moderation into a realm of physical discomfort, even pain, similar to the discomfort all athletes feel at the height of competition. “We are not eating like this every day,” says Badlands Booker. “This is a sport. It’s a skill that we exhibit for people who appreciate it. We’re not tryin’ to go out and just gorge every se
cond. There’s a purpose to it, so it’s not gluttony.”
Whether it is gluttony or not, the critics—or “haters,” as Badlands might call them—continue to attack from all angles. Unsurprisingly, the most vocal critics are foreign reporters, who see the sport as a negative sign about American culture. Charles Laurence, a reporter from South Africa’s Sunday Times, tosses out statistics about the obesity epidemic in America and adds, “Critics see the contests as a grotesque metaphor for America’s consumer society.” While this is indeed a tempting metaphor, it conveniently disregards the fact that nearly everything in contemporary America is a metaphor for consumerism. We walk around in $100 brand-name sneakers and jeans, toting shopping bags, iPods, and BlackBerrys: there are armadas of SUVs on every road and two hundred cable TV stations in each household; advertising and marketing are so ubiquitous as to be downright inescapable. These are all metaphors for the grander concept of consumption, and most of them are just as commonplace in any other country with a somewhat robust economy.
But the haters keep hating. John Sutherland, a reporter from the Guardian in the United Kingdom, takes this “consumerism gone awry” metaphor a step further. He uses the sport as a launching pad to denounce all of contemporary American culture.
Competitive eating is, like World Federation Wrestling, a sport for our degraded times. It coincides with an unprecedented boom in the American economy fueled by rampant “consumption.” If the American consumer stopped consuming, it would be 1929 again. America must gorge or die. But gorging is killing America.
So according to Sutherland, competitive eating—or the rampant consumption it represents—while keeping us from another Great Depression economically, is a catch-22 in terms of health. Hmm. It’s a compelling theory, but by no means novel and a tad simplistic. It makes one wonder just how well capitalist British society, filled with chain-smoking, beer-swilling fried-fish eaters, is maintaining the balance between wealth and health. Other pundits take Sutherland’s doomsday rhetoric a step further, saying that the rise of competitive eating in America brings to mind the fall of the Roman Empire. This apocalyptic view of America eating itself alive has been promulgated for over a century now, since the industrial revolution took hold. Why should we assume that this phenomenon represents the tipping point?
And to what extent is competitive eating an American phenomenon? There are eating competitions in Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Czech Republic, and Japan. As the Japanese circuit seems to wax and wane, America has emerged as the leading market internationally for the sport. This may have more to do with American sensibilities than our eating habits. Our fascination with guilt-laden pleasures—sex, eating, shopping, and leisure—fueled by our twin legacies of consumerism and a puritanical morality/work ethic, has prompted us to explore our own taboos in an uninhibited way. Further, the extremely competitive nature of American society has led to the view that almost any activity, from Rollerblade basketball to Texas hold ’em poker, can be transformed into a sport.
Associating competitive eating with obesity, however, is fallacious, as Sonya Thomas, Rich LeFevre, and every Japanese eating champion will attest to. That the best eaters are thin, bolstered by the Belt of Fat Theory, is a dashing blow to those who try to correlate the sport with America’s obesity epidemic. Naturally, these provincial reporters rarely discuss thin gurgitators, but instead use more rotund eaters like Badlands, Cookie, and Hungry Charles as the objects of their contempt. What they don’t mention is that these gurgitators didn’t become big men after their eating careers started. They’ve always been big guys. It’s not the dozen ten-minute contests per year that establishes a competitive eater’s frame, but the calories-consumed versus calories-expended ratio over his or her lifetime. In fact, now, thanks to the demands of competitive eating, they are all trying to lose weight to catch up with the front-runners.
The harangues of these editorialists often take on a hateful tone. Nick Sargent, a reporter from www.spectatornews.com, repeatedly spits venom at Jarvis and Jed Donahue for being “fat,” then adds that competitive gluttony is among “the top seven ways to ensure your fate in hell.” John Sutherland, the Guardian reporter, calls Cookie a “human garbage grinder…an unashamed 420 lbs of all-American lard (432 after the contest).”
While obesity is clearly an American health problem, this sort of fat phobia suggests a related problem. In his book Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West, Peter N. Stearns, a history professor and provost at George Mason University, dissects America’s obsession with fat. He attempts to explain why the French have more success staying trim than Americans, despite dieting less. Professor Stearns attributes this disparity to America’s tendency to equate thinness with moral rectitude. He says that this attitude is exacerbated by America’s increasing indulgence in sex and materialism, which leaves the population with a guilt complex and a proclivity for snacking. Indeed, the visceral “disgusted” reaction that some might feel in watching an eating contest has as much to do with this culturally ingrained association of free eating with laziness and obesity. Interestingly, for a true competitive-eating fan, the reaction of watching a skilled gurgitator in a contest is akin to the enjoyment one might feel watching a world-class orchestra play, or a fluid hitter swing a baseball bat.
Most of these outspoken critics have a dyed-in-the-wool vision of what an athlete looks like: he or she is thin, fit, and muscular. Period. At times, of course, the media makes exceptions for charismatic athletes like Babe Ruth, Mo Vaughn, or William “the Refrigerator” Perry (who, it should be noted, competed in the 2002 Nathan’s Famous competition and was a talentless speed-eater). Generally, America cannot accept the image of an overweight athlete.
Why not? Why not appreciate a gurgitator’s talent, even if he or she is overweight? In this day of rising salaries for spoiled, steroid-addicted pro sports stars, why not have a sport for Everyman? In this era of liposuction and salad-picking, all-protein diet fads and anorexic supermodels, where nearly every American feels insecure about his or her body, would it not be healthy to exalt the overweight man, or the woman who gorges openly? At a time when meals are laced with the bitterness of guilt, what harm is there in letting loose at the dinner table, if only for a ten-minute timed interval?
Even the thin gurgitators aren’t immune to verbal attacks. On his Web site, Jim Rome, sports journalist and former host of The Last Word with Jim Rome, refers to Sonya Thomas (a woman half his size) as a “freak.” “What a lady,” he says sarcastically. “The female Babe Ruth of competitive eating. I’ll bet her family is very proud.”
The debate continues to divide the very fabric of our nation. A protective mother says competitive eating sends a bad message to her kids about overeating, and another counters that the message implicit in most women’s magazines—emaciated is beautiful—is even more harmful. Some bleeding heart calls competitive eating a waste of food, and a devout fan stands up and says, “But at least they clean their plates!” Another one chimes in, “I don’t see you complaining about NASCAR being a waste of fuel!” Indeed, this national argument has become so rancorous that Ralph Nader, who is usually willing to verbally duke it out with his many opponents in hopes of publicity, now refuses to return phone calls from anyone associated with the IFOCE.
What Nader and other critics overlook about competitive eating is that elemental factor that has led to the sport’s meteoric rise: It’s fun. That’s right. It’s fun for the crowd and the participants and the announcers and the reporters covering it. Not yet tainted by the poison of big-time money, it’s still just a dozen or so regular mortals who have gathered at the table to answer that most fundamental of questions: How much can you eat?
The competitive-eating community may be a fun crew, but they can also hold a grudge. At times they’re tempted to step up and say, “Either you’re with us, or you’re with them.” George Shea dismisses Nader’s comments as the blather of a madman. “This is a man who, in an effort to protect
the environment and America, destroyed Al Gore’s chance of being president and still doesn’t recognize that fact.” Don Lerman also has no time for Ralph Nader and his gurgitator-hating cronies. “He’s just a killjoy, because we work hard at it, and it’s good old-fashioned family entertainment. People like to watch it. It’s fun. It’s entertaining. And every media outlet—the local, the cable, the independent, the print, the radio—are in hot pursuit to pick it up.” Lerman pauses to catch his breath and think this through. “He’s just a spoiler. Like he was in the presidential election.”
There is a precedent in the competitive-eating community for how to deal with adversarial politicians: They eat them. At a peaceful protest during the 2004 Republican National Convention, Badlands Booker and Crazy Legs Conti ate a life-sized mashed-potato version of Dick Cheney at a downtown Manhattan bar. Hordes of young New Yorkers, who had gathered to launch a magazine for which Crazy Legs had written an article, urged the gurgitators on with “Eat Dick! Eat Dick!”
With that precedent in mind, perhaps it only makes sense to eat Ralph Nader as well. Not in the living flesh, but in effigy. If the American competitive-eating community must be pulled into the political sphere, then let the world hear the gnash of their teeth. As for the potential ingredients of an edible Ralph Nader, a number of foods come to mind that are suggestive of Nader’s disposable political viewpoint—bologna, pork rinds, cheese puffs, or potted-meat food product.
13
Escape from the Popcorn Sarcophagus
Having to eat your way out to stay alive, out of a giant amount of food that’s weighing you down and crushing you, seemed like a very good and a very bad idea at the same time.