The ‘dangerous’ of competitive eating like those at Nathan’s hot dog contest

Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut won the 2023 Nathan’s hot dog contest held at Coney Island, but the win could have serious health consequences.

The 16-time winner consumed 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes, the equivalent of nearly 20,000 calories and up to four times the entire daily salt and fat recommendation for an adult in one sitting.

The real health effects of competitive eating are not well known – because it is such a new phenomenon and studying it in the general public would be considered unethical.

But the limited studies that exist show that gobbling down dozens of hot dogs in one go makes the stomach up to four times its normal size, turning it into “an enormously distended food-filled sac that holds most of occupies the upper abdomen’.

Experts warn that over time, this can cause the body to stop emptying solid food, leaving competitive eaters with persistent nausea and vomiting.

Competitive eaters also spend months stretching their stomachs using “dangerous” techniques such as “water loading,” or gulping down gallons of milk and eating mountains of cabbage and fibrous foods.

More than 30,000 spectators came to Coney Island, New York, today to watch people compete in Nathan’s famous annual hot dog eating contest that first began in the early 1970s.

For 10 minutes, men and women ate franks and sandwiches, hoping to take home $10,000 and the title of hot dog king or queen.

Chestnut won the 2023 crown with 62 hot dogs and Miki Sudo won the Women’s Championship with 39.5

According to the nutritional information on Nathan’s websiteone of the Original Coney Island beef hot dogs with natural casing contains 170 calories, 16 grams of fat (including 6 grams of saturated fat), and 480 milligrams of sodium.

This means that chestnut consumed 10,540 calories in 10 minutes, not counting the bun. Each of the sandwiches has 130 calories, bringing the number to 18,600, which is well above the daily and even weekly recommended amount.

A high sodium intake is enough to cause blood pressure to rise, which can cause a heart attack or stroke. The recommended sodium level is no more than 2,300 milligrams per day, just under five hot dogs.

And the high fat content can lead to nausea, diarrhea and gastrointestinal distress, said Debbie Petitpain, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. CBS news.

However, experts said that as long as these competitors eat normally again, their bodies should also return to normal.

Chestnut said he trains for three months straight before every Nathan game by doing mouth exercises to strengthen his mouth and throat. Insider reported.

“Every workout I take in and I try to push a little bit harder and figure out what I can do differently,” Chestnut said in 2021.

“You can only practice so much. If I exercise too much I start to gain weight, and when I gain weight I start to slow down. So it’s a weird double-edged sword. You have to love food, but you can’t eat so much that it becomes unhealthy.’

The first Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, held in 1972, was won by Jason Schechter, who ate just 14 sausages.

While it’s unclear why the amount eaten has changed over the decades, it was likely due to people exercising for months to expand their stomachs.

A 2007 study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania analyzed a 29-year-old man who ranked among the top 10 worldwide in competitive eating.

The man was asked to ingest a high-density effervescent and barium before eating hot dogs for 12 minutes, which allowed researchers to watch the food move through his body.

Another group of regular eaters consumed seven francs before reporting symptoms of illness.

After the study, the competitive eater’s stomach showed that it was able to expand as it consumed the food.

“The key to success in competitive fast eating is the ability to slowly train and adapt the stomach so that it can remarkably expand and dilate, allowing the fast eater to consume an extraordinary amount of food in an extremely short time (possibly on top of a congenital smooth stomach), “according to the published paper.

The team compared a competitive eater to “a predatory carnivore that periodically feasts on its prey, ingesting massive amounts of food to sustain itself until it catches another prey days or even weeks later.”

However, these eaters may also lose feelings of fullness and satisfaction if they eat regularly.

The researchers noted that there isn’t enough data to predict what will happen to competitive eaters.

The team wrote in the study that there is a potential risk that the dilated flaccid stomach could eventually decompensate and become a huge sac unable to shrink to its original size and empty solid food.

While Chestnut is the reigning champion for the 16th straight, Nathan’s event changed in 2001 when Takeru Kobayashi entered the scene.

Kobayashi won the competition by eating 50 hot dogs, double from last year.

He admitted in 2021 that he had health problems from competitive eating and almost quit altogether due to a sore and arthritic jaw.

Speaking to AFP, Kobayashi said: “When my stomach gets very full with that amount of food in it, the organs in my body start to shift.

“So my lungs, for example, are pushed up and unable to expand. They have no room to expand. So when I breathe, I get very short of breath.’