As men and women converge on Coney Island, NY in two days for the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, a newly available documentary shares the ins (not outs, never outs … that’ll get you disqualified) of competitive eating.
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I have a strange fascination with competitive eating. Only once have I ever eaten for speed, and that involved some pretty nasty hard shell tacos in college. Nevertheless, since I first witnessed a group of grown men eating from a vat of cow brains on Fox’s “Glutton Bowl” in 2002, I was hooked. My book shelves are lined with titles like Horsemen of the Espophagus by Jason Fagone, Eat This Book by Ryan Nerz, and, since I’m a former elementary school teacher, the little known title The Doughnut Dropout by E. Wallace Hildick.
As Independence Day approaches and the nation prepares to watch Joey Chestnut and Sonia “The Black Widow” Thomas down fistfuls of hot dogs and buns (Women’s Championships- 11:15 Eastern on ESPN3; Men’s Championships- 12:00 Eastern on ESPNews and WatchESPN), I have another guilty pleasure to add to my collection of competitive eating related print and visual media.
Now available for download through ITunes and Amazon.com, directors Jeff Cirulli and Barry Rothbart take a critical look at both sides of the industry–the individual eaters (or “gurgitators”) and the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). (Warning, it’s not pretty on either side) In fact, the tagline for the film says it all, “The battle for competitive eating will not be televised.”
For some, what you see may be hard to swallow. Me, I eat this stuff up.
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Image credit: Hello Turkey Toe/flickr