Our News is Written in Stone™
Saturday, May 10, 2008
It took Patrick Bertoletti 10 minutes to eat 41 hot dogs -- with buns -- on Saturday, a gastronomical feat he pulled off in a Cub Foods parking lot to the tune of "Teenage Wasteland" by the Who.
Standing before a few dozen onlookers and flanked by 14 other contestants, some of them novices who had never entered a speed-eating contest, Bertoletti, 22, dipped the hot dogs into warm fruit punch before stuffing them into his mouth two at a time as the clock ticked to zero.
Afterward, recounting his victory, he said he could eat more, with a little training.
"I don't feel full," said Bertoletti.
His journey to the boundaries of gluttony and beyond came courtesy of Nathan's Famous, the Coney Island hot dog company that for the past 92 years has sponsored a hot dog eating contest on July 4th. Saturday's contest at a Cub Foods in Apple Valley was a preliminary round for the upcoming national competition.
The spectacle of competitive eating landed in the Twin Cities on the same day that local residents were asked to help those who go without: the National Association of Letter Carriers annual food drive, the largest single-day food drive in the country. On Saturday, letter carriers across the nation collected nonperishable items and distributed them to area food shelves on behalf of the 4 percent of Americans who don't get enough to eat every day, many of them children.
"We have a goal for 1.2 million pounds in one day," said Heidi Stennis, a spokeswoman for Second Harvest, the local food bank distributing the food collected Saturday by metro area postal carriers. She said early results appeared promising.
Whatever contradictions the events might have suggested were lost on the crowd at the Cub Foods parking lot.
Children were invited to finger-paint with ketchup, mustard and relish. Families at another table were challenged to make the most creative hot dog sculptures they could imagine
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