Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit

by Ryan Nerz

  So the unsurprising conclusion to my first eating contest is that I lack skills. Big deal—failure never slowed me down before. I make the obvious leap of logic under such circumstances: It’s time to train.

  OCTOBER 5, 2004

  On this, my first night of training, I decide to work on capacity instead of speed. The vice-presidential debates are on TV, so I reason that tonight’s exercise will be to spend the entire debate consuming. I purchase thirty bucks’ worth of cheap Mexican food, a gallon jug of water, and a six-pack of Budweiser tall boys. By the time John Edwards makes the snarky comment about Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, I’ve killed three tall boys, a roasted chicken, a beef burrito, and a salad. I’m completely stuffed.

  The phone rings. It’s my girlfriend’s father, a doctor, who gave me a physical the day before. The plan is to get a physical before and after training, so as to gauge the effect competitive eating has on health. Because I lack health insurance, Dr. Girlfriend’s Dad is the obvious choice. That said, the prostate exam was a level of intimacy we hadn’t previously shared.

  He’s got below-average news. My cholesterol is a little high. I turn down the tube. I’m at 232, and I should be about 190 to 200 for my age. (I’m thirty.) On the bright side, my triglycerides are normal at 127, and my HDL cholesterol, which is the good kind, is pretty solid at 56. So I’ve got that going for me.

  Unfortunately, my LDL cholesterol—the bad kind—is also high. He starts asking questions. Does heart disease run in my family? Does high cholesterol? I don’t know. Does thyroid disease? Diabetes? No clue. Because I might need medication like Lipitor if I can’t get my LDL down. Great. The whole death thing hangs out there. I pace past the TV. Edwards and Cheney seem to be mocking me. To compensate for my panic, I thank Dr. Girlfriend’s Dad profusely. “I’ve always been concerned about my cholesterol level,” I lie. “It’s just great to finally know.”

  He gives me the standard spiel. Avoid fatty meats, fried foods, and all things tasty. Get consistent, if not daily, exercise. Alcohol’s not great for cholesterol. Eat fiber, grains, oatmeal. Maintain ideal body weight. He asks what foodstuff I plan to compete in. Krystal burgers—they’re the Southern version of White Castles. That certainly won’t help anything, he says.

  I thank him and say good-bye. I decide to mellow out on the Mexican food and spend the last twenty-five minutes of the debate putting down a gallon of water. At a quarter gallon, I feel my belly and am proud of its turgidity. At a half gallon, I’m hurting. Toward the end of the debate, as Cheney and Edwards are issuing their canned final summations, I pound down the final gulp.

  I’ve exceeded my limit. Beads of sweat form on my brow, and that sickly taste of warm saliva rises into the back of my throat. It’s the feeling of knowing it won’t stay down, but with a new twist of no vacancy. Involuntary moaning. I need to relieve this pressure somehow. I go to the bathroom and pull the trigger. A few spurts of water and debris come up. I try again, with a little more success this time. Soon thereafter, a plague of endless hiccups sets in.

  The next day, I call a diet hotline posted in the Daily News. A nurse is befuddled by my questions and passes the buck to a general surgeon from NYU Medical Center named Christine Ren. Dr. Ren is informative. She says the main physiological strain of eating competitively—with, say, hot dogs—is absorbed by the liver. The abundance of salt can cause hypertension, or high blood pressure. There’s also pancreatic stress, because all the sugar pushes the insulin into overdrive. Anatomically or functionally, she doesn’t know if there are any negative results of the stomach, intestines, or the colon being overstretched. She doesn’t think any academic studies have been conducted on this sort of thing. Overall, she says that it all depends on caloric intake. If one only eats a huge number of calories sporadically—say, once a month—but eats healthfully and exercises regularly throughout the rest of the month, the body would likely be able to compensate.

  Through my girlfriend, who is attending medical school, I then interview an M.D. and a Ph.D., both of whom specialize in gastroenterology. I quiz them on the short- and long-term physiological effects of competitive eating. Immediately after a training session or eating competition, I’m told that the main impact would be on insulin maintenance and electrolyte maintenance. If one eats twenty-five hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes, for example, there’s a spike in insulin and the sodium levels soar. (Insulin is a hormone that regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats.) The insulin spike occurs because the body is gearing up the system to store as much nutrients as possible. In the short term, the body can compensate for this in the same way it compensates for the digestion of a large meal. But in the long term, the results can be, well, bad.

  I ask about the worst possible scenario—competitive eating over a decade, training frequently, and with a generally unhealthy lifestyle outside of competitions. Dr. Paul Black, a Senior Scientist and Professor at the Ordway Research Institute Center for Medical Science, says that the primary problems would come in the areas of electrolyte balance, fat metabolism, and glucose metabolism. If one engaged in dozens of contests over several years with foods high in trans fats and cholesterol, there would likely be an inflammatory response that could lead to conditions such as diabetes, coronary disease, and kidney disease.

  Another potential side effect could be lipotoxicity. What occurs, he explains (and I am paraphrasing here), is that even though one’s insulin levels are high, your body can no longer respond to it appropriately. Over time, the body starts storing lipids where it shouldn’t—the pancreas, the heart, even the skeletal muscle. “And it starts to impact negatively on metabolism in those cells,” Dr. Black says. He also adds that big weight fluctuations as part of training, especially for people with low body-mass indexes, aren’t generally a good idea. All this, he explains, is simply conjecture, and the fact remains that the body is resilient. If one is careful to maintain a healthy lifestyle outside of this aberrant behavior, the negative impact could be minimal.

  Regardless, considering my recent diagnosis, I am a little spooked. I decide to train with healthy foods. On my second day of training, I do water training—a gallon of water as fast as I can. (Keeping in mind warnings from Badlands and Dr. Black about hyponatremia, or water intoxication, I do some research to make sure this is relatively safe.) I throw on some hip-hop music and try to establish a rhythm as I gulp it down, but it’s too damn cold. I get serious brain freeze, then full-body freeze. At five minutes, I’ve got just over a half gallon. I try to establish a better rhythm and drink bigger gulps at once. It’s my first glimpse of what the Zone feels like—lug, lug, lug—but at eight minutes, I’ve still got only five-eighths of a gallon down. How pathetic am I? Cookie Jarvis polishes off a gallon in a minute. At ten minutes, when I finally finish, I feel that nauseous warning saliva in the back of my throat. I take a picture of my bloated belly and sink into the couch. A half hour later, I feel kind of good. Don Lerman said the first few times would feel like a cleansing—a reverse enema, as he called it—and that’s oddly appropriate.

  Day three, October 7, is grape training. I put down three pounds of grapes in ten minutes. Not terrible, but very mediocre by professional gurgitating standards. In competition, I’d be close to last place. Afterward, I’m a little stuffed, but decide that a beer will help my capacity. After polishing off a tall boy, I get this icky feeling. It’s a pressure that starts in the stomach and blossoms into the lower esophagus. There’s also a spine-ache rising into my neck, a weird pressure that suffuses my entire abdominal region.

  On the fourth day, I do the Orange Challenge. The plan is to peel and eat a dozen oranges in a half hour. Sure, it’s not that ambitious, but I’m thinking baby steps. While watching the Laci Peterson murder special on A&E, I start peeling and eating. The peeling takes time and the oranges have seeds, which slows me down considerably. At eight oranges, I show signs of fatigue, but it’s mainly just boredom with the same redundant flavor. By the time Scott Peterson is spying on
the Coast Guard while they troll San Francisco Bay, I’m done. Mission accomplished. A dozen peeled Valencia oranges in twenty-three minutes—definitely a personal record, and I’d venture to guess it’s a neighborhood record to boot. I decide that, despite my meager talents, the great thing about competitive eating is that each time I step up to the plate, I will achieve an all-time personal best.

  The author shows off his distended belly and discarded peels after completing the Orange Challenge.

  Within moments of finishing, I see an ad for Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating. Uncanny timing. The Gods of Gurgitation shine down upon me. In the hour after the Orange Record, I use the toilet—in a sitting position—three times. In the next hour and half, I make five more visits. Talk about reverse enema. The last five would all qualify as “loose stools” and take on a dull brownish orange hue.

  The fecal fun continues the next day. While watching Crazy Legs’ publicity stunt for the A&E premiere of his documentary, I start to get the rumbles. After Crazy Legs downs a dozen doughnuts while washing a downtown Manhattan window in a flame-print Speedo, I immediately scuttle to the subway. When I finally get home to Brooklyn, I drop the coolest poop of my life. There’s no actual poo substance; it’s just this big blob of orange skin, membrane, and pulp, and its shape looks like the Shmoo (a lovable blob of a cartoon character from the seventies). I take pictures but my camera doesn’t really capture the details.

  The next day, I talk to my literary agent about my feat, and he expresses disappointment that I didn’t tear the oranges open with my teeth and devour them, peels and all, like some craven varmint. I consider the possibility of becoming a poop artist. Surely I’m not the first to have this artistic breakthrough, but an Internet search results in surprisingly few poop artists. There’s one exhibition of bird-poop art, which consists of framed poop on paper with the corresponding bird pictured above. For the record, peregrine falcon dootie looks like amoeba. That said, the artist claims it was traveling at 45 mph at the time of poop, so maybe the splat was distorted.

  On October 13, 2004, I eat four pounds of seedless white grapes in fourteen minutes. Not terrible. For the first time, I experience the competitive-eating sensation of “catching a burp.” It occurs at the eleven-minute mark and opens up crucial space for the final stretch. On October 14, I eat thirteen bananas in thirteen minutes, which may or may not be a record for thirty-year-olds. I learn firsthand that you can drink too much water. Once over that hurdle, I get a technique going—two bites, sip, and swallow. Two bites, sip, and swallow. I stand the whole time, adding gravity to the down-the-pipe force and do my own snaky version of the Kobayashi shake. Overall, I consume 5,200 grams of potassium, which should hold me for a day or so. Aftereffects: one respectable poop and a symphony of belches.

  Departing briefly from my healthy training, I devote three days to Orange Training. And by orange I don’t mean the fruit; I mean the color. On day one, I put down a large bag of Doritos, a carton of Tropicana orange juice, and four peaches in a half hour. (I don’t recommend this combo.) On day two, I knock down two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese in twelve minutes. Volume-wise, this may be my best feat yet. On day three, I do a Carrot Challenge to work on jaw strength. It takes me thirty-seven minutes to put down two pounds, and afterward my jaw is sore. The use of veggie dip violates the all-orange-foods rule, but makes the process infinitely more enjoyable.

  On October 19, I have no intention of training because my Mexican Food Slam (MFS) from the day before is still whistling. The MFS included lots of beans, and as George Shea often points out, “Beans are a musical fruit.” Then, at 3:20 in the morning, I suddenly come to the disappointing conclusion that I haven’t been hard-core enough. I decide to rollerblade through the pouring rain to the nearest White Castle. At Crazy Legs’ stunt, I chatted with Tim Janus and he told me he downed a Crave Case—thirty burgers—in eight minutes. The late-night clientele at White Castle includes a chatty homeless guy who says he used to be a ringer with chitlins and wishes me luck with my training.

  Once home, I decide not to dunk the burgers. I do ten in eight minutes (amateur) and thirteen in eleven (sad), but, hey, at least I’m out there on the circuit, doin’ my thing. Later, I fall into a delirium not unlike the kind Krazy Kevin once described. I drink water and beer to capacity, then take pictures of my distended belly. Trying to sleep proves painful; I’m forced to sleep on my side. At 5:00 A.M., I awaken to a searing Dutch oven, the odor of which is a delicate blend of White Castles and raw sewage. (For those unaware of the Dutch oven, it’s what happens when flatulence becomes trapped beneath the covers, forming a temporary and malodorous prison cell.) The smell is potent enough to wake me up and keep me up for a good half hour. The next day, everything I am reeks of White Castles. Pee. Poop. Gas. Sweat. Breath.

  Though my competitive-eating issues are manifold, the most significant problem is swallowing. The thing is, I can’t swallow unchewed food. I just can’t. I do research on swallowing. The Internet has a single-minded approach to the subject that focuses on oral sex. Turns out that the skill I’m looking for is not unlike the “suppressible gag reflex” employed by Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat.

  I learn that swallowing is a series of actions, several of which involve the brain. Seeing, smelling, or thinking about food causes the body to prepare for eating. The mouth coats with saliva. Waves of contractions called peristalsis begin to flow from the base of the throat, down the esophagus, and through the stomach. The stomach enlarges. The first three processes are voluntary—introduction of food, chewing, and swallowing. The first checkpoint is the pharynx, wherein lies the gag reflex. The gag reflex can be suppressed but not controlled. It’s not a simple skill to learn. It took a sword swallower named Roderick Russell a full year to learn how to suspend his gag reflex. If it takes such intensive gag-reflex training to develop my gurgitating skills, forget it.

  The esophagus has another sphincter known as the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). The antiquated term for this is the “cardiac sphincter,” which Don Lerman once told me was extremely important to competitive-eating training. (Of the three medical authorities I interviewed, only one had heard of the cardiac sphincter.) The LES is located at the bottom of the esophagus, where it joins the top of the stomach. It prevents food and stomach acid from backing up into the esophagus and into the trachea, or windpipe. For gurgitators to avoid a reversal during a contest, he or she must learn to control both esophageal sphincters.

  Realizing that my lack of courage and control in swallowing is my greatest flaw as a gurgitator, I do more research on the subject. The most fearless swallower of all time, it turns out, is a Frenchman named Michel Lotito. He is known as Monsieur Mangetout, or Mr. Eat Everything. At age seven, while drinking a glass of water, Lotito’s glass broke. He’d heard of eating glass before, so naturally he ate it. When he told his friends, they didn’t believe him. The next time he tried it, he cut himself, so he decided to focus on getting the technique down.

  Before long, Monsieur Mangetout was putting down beer bottles, and then champagne bottles. At a county fair, he ate a bicycle. Using a pair of snips, he cut the bicycle into bite-sized chunks and ingested it. It was smooth sailing until he got to the chain. “Fortunately, the doctor was able to extract the chain from my rectum,” Lotito explained afterward. He’s eaten eighteen bicycles and as many TV sets, supermarket trolleys, razor blades, and a coffin. The feat that got him into the Guinness Book of World Records was his ingestion, over a two-year period, of a Cessna airplane. Besides an extrathick stomach lining and some serious dental issues, doctors say Lotito is totally normal.

  I’ll never be as hard-core as Lotito, but I’m willing to take the Milk Challenge. There’s an urban myth that says it’s impossible to down a gallon of milk without booting, but Badlands tells me this isn’t true. Online, I discover entire chat rooms devoted to this topic, one in particular on cyberdorks.com. Most of the testimonials result in failure, and about 75 percent en
d with a stream of ivory-colored vomit. I ask Dr. Girlfriend’s Dad about it, and he says that milk is a powerful base and that lactose (the sugar in milk) is an irritant. My research shows that, though lactose intolerance is particularly bad with those who have inadequate amounts of the enzyme lactase, most humans have some degree of lactose intolerance. In many areas of the world where drinking milk after infancy is uncommon, lactase deficiency among adults is widespread.

  On October 20, 2004, I try the Milk Challenge with a gallon of skim while watching game five of the Yankees–Red Sox AL Championship. Forty minutes in, the pain starts, and I’m freezing. Fifty minutes in, I feel pain everywhere—shoulders, head, stomach, bowels. At an hour, I’m almost there, just a couple cups of milk left, but it doesn’t feel right. I go to the bathroom and retch. I decide to throw in the towel, not so much out of a fear of puking as the fact that my body really really doesn’t want any more milk. Later, I ward off intense stomach pain and finally fall asleep. When I awaken, I’m beset by the most penetrating gas I’ve ever experienced.

  On Monday, October 18, I had called up Dave Baer at IFOCE HQ and challenged him to a White Castle competition that Friday. He agreed and immediately started showering my cell phone with smack-talking text messages. “Prepare to be dominated,” one message said. On October 22, I buy forty White Castles in Brooklyn and smuggle them onto the subway in my backpack. On the long ride to the Upper East Side, I notice fellow passengers sniffing and looking around suspiciously.

  At Dave’s Upper East Side apartment, we’re all business. Dave’s wearing a Rangers jersey, and I’ve got on a Reggie Miller Pacers jersey with Pacers tear-away sweatpants, a hat with BAD ASS embroidered on it, and two wristbands. In preparation for the big show, we both down a glass of red wine. Dave hands me an IFOCE waiver. We both complete them and sign at the bottom. Under “type of employment,” Dave writes, “Poorly chosen.”