The messy history of competitive eating in America: NPR

Festive hot dogs await their impending doom.

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David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Festive hot dogs await their impending doom.

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On a sunny June weekend at the National Mall in Washington, DC, nine contestants sit down at a table filled with paper plates. Every plate is full of hot dogs, and in a few moments these brave folks will be shoving as many as they can down their throats, for a chance at what could be the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Cup. of the world of competitive eating. , all wrapped up in one bun – Nathan’s famous annual International 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, at Coney Island in New York.

At the DC event, the stage sits next to the stately neoclassical facade of the National Gallery of Art, and there’s a plastic “splatter zone” set up between the competitive eaters and the crowd, to protect the spectators of any liquid that is directed towards them. (By the way, there’s no ketchup, mustard or relish on the table – just cups full of water, which some contestants will dip their hot dogs and buns into, for easier consumption. )

The clock starts and a 10 minute countdown begins. The contestants open wide, shoving hot dogs into their mouths to a soundtrack of frenzied techno music. Some of the contestants look uncomfortable, and as a straw hat announcer gives a play-by-play, he observes “that’s what makes a patriot, ladies and gentlemen.”

The decisive winner today – with 35 francs in the belly – is Gideon Oji, who is 31 years old and comes from Nigeria. His victory here means he will soon be competing live on ESPN against reigning hot dog champion Joey Chestnut in the Nathan event on July 4, vying for the walleye.”mustard belt.”

This year will be the eighth time that Oji has returned to the grand ball at Nathan’s house. He moved to America in 2008, just as Chestnut began his almost unbroken decade-plus winning streak, knocking down up to 76 hot dogs at once. Oji says he thought “I could do that”, and although he hasn’t outpaced Chestnut in hot dog consumption yet, he To ate 10 pounds of baked beans in less than two minutes and swallowed over a gallon of green chili stew in six minutes, among other stomach-defying accomplishments.

Oji towers over most of his competition, at 6-foot-9, and he’s played college basketball before. But he calls competitive eating a “spiritual” experience, more difficult than shooting hoops. “Your body will be like ‘stop doing this to me’ but you have to keep going for the competition.”

A brief history of competitive eating

The urge to compete by stuffing your face is a tradition celebrated around the world today – and it’s a sport whose roots run much deeper than the founding of the United States. “There are many different cultures that invented eating contests independently at different times in history,” says author Jason Fagone. “In the Americas, you can go back to indigenous peoples and read tales of food contests that take place at potlatch feasts.”

Two young boys pause to catch their breath during an apple pie tasting contest on Big Apple Day in Ohio, circa 1947.

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Two young boys pause to catch their breath during an apple pie tasting contest on Big Apple Day in Ohio, circa 1947.

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In his 2006 book, Esophageal Horsemen: Competitive Eating and the Great American Dream, Fagone writes that eating contests also feature in Greek and Norse myths, and “there is historical evidence of rice contests in Japan, steak contests in Britain, mango contests in India.”

Want the full story on this beef? Listen to the consider this episode which dive even deeper into the history of competitive eating

Historical records also attest to a famous 17th century farmer named Nicholas Wood, aka The Great Eater of Kent, who, according to legend, ate seven dozen rabbits in one sitting.

Eric Grundhauser, who wrote about Wood for Atlas Obscura, says much of what we know about this famous glutton comes from English poet John Taylor, who walked into a pub and saw Wood enjoying a meal of “60 eggs, a good serving of a lamb and a handful of pies.”

Taylor became Wood’s de facto hype man and even hatched a plan to take Wood to London for paid shows:

Taylor’s plan would have had Wood performing daily supercharging feats in the city’s Bear Gardens, which at the time hosted animal fights. Among the meals suggested to give the “most exorbitant ruder” were a wheelbarrow full of tripe, as many puddings as it would take to cross the Thames and a whole fatted calf or mutton.

Taylor immortalized the farmer’s appetite with his pen, but as Grundhauser writes, the live shows never happened – Wood’s career ended when he “lost all but one of his teeth after trying to eat a whole sheep – shoulder bone included”.

An American tradition is made

Here in the United States, competitive eating has found a special place in the American zeitgeist – even intertwining with ideals like patriotism. (Remember the proclamation “that’s what makes a patriot, ladies and gentlemen.”)

“We make it wider and taller,” writes Fagone. “We unabashedly marry the impulse to binge on the public to our most sacred American rituals (the catching of the greased pig followed by the pie contest followed by the reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4).”

Within the professional eating community, there’s a long-standing myth that the 4th of July hot dog eating contest dates back to four immigrants who fought to prove who was more patriotic. Fagone says it’s apocryphal, “but I always thought there might be a bigger truth to it: you’re consuming a huge amount, and then it’s alright, you passed the test, Welcome to America .”

A performer waves an American flag during the 2022 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest.

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A performer waves an American flag during the 2022 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest.

Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images

Fagone argues that the sport, and its popularity, blends a number of American trends into one spectacle: a craving for large amounts of food, a passion for competitive sports, a love of risk and gambling.

“Eating is one of the great psychic preoccupations of our species – it’s on the same level as sex and death,” says Fagone. “I mean, eating is this animal act that we all participate in to some degree, and it’s the most animal version of it.”

For the nearly two million viewers who tune in to the Nathan’s Hot Dog competition, watching the action on a TV screen makes it possible to witness the indulgence from a safe distance – no splash zone necessary. It’s as if there was “a safety glass between you and danger”, says Fagone.

But if you step back from the show to think about what this chewing show might mean more broadly, he says, “it seems symbolic of America’s inordinate appetite for everything – and not just for food, but for resources, power, money, you name it. It’s kind of a Rorschach test of how people see us.”

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