Competitive eaters show off at the Oregon coast

Joey Chestnut hops up and down in the steamy New York summer, his face sunburn-red, one hand pressing hard against cheeks swollen to Dizzy Gillespie proportions by a soggy, balled-up hot dog.

It's his 33rd dog in five minutes. He's only half done.

"There's definitely pain involved in these contests," says Chestnut, the world's top-ranked competitive eater, who beat Japan's glorious glutton, Takeru Kobayashi, in a sudden-death dog-off at Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

Chestnut followed that meal with another title defense Sunday in Oregon, when he downed 8.05 pounds of pork ribs in 12 minutes at Chinook Winds Casino's Smokin' at the Ocean festival.

"The critics who say it's gluttony or unhealthy, I agree," Chestnut says. "I know it's not healthy what we're doing. But it sure is fun."

Healthy would be a stretch. But as competitive eaters regularly prove, the human body has an amazing capacity to hold a massive amount of food, process it and return for more, with surprisingly little damage.

"The stomach is really just a very stretchy organ," says Dr. Emma Patterson, medical director of the Legacy Good Samaritan Obesity Institute. "If you think back to the caveman days, we'd probably take down some sort of big animal, pig out and not eat for a few days."

Patterson knows bellies like Chestnut knows franks. She performs bariatric surgeries, drastically reducing the size of obese patients' stomachs to limit their food intake. She grabs a 20-ounce bottle of iced tea from her desk. The human stomach is normally about twice this big, Patterson says. Then she grabs the small plastic cap: She tries to make to make it twice that big.

Patterson's a fan of competitive eating. "I find those things fascinating to watch, actually," she says. And gurgitators -- competitive eaters' chosen moniker -- may have a healthier relationship with food than many jockeys, gymnasts and wrestlers, who can become anorexic or bulimic trying to keep their weight down.

Eating for contests is not a disorder, or "in any way contributory to any eating disorders," says Dr. James Hancey, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University -- though "to my mind, it's the height of stupidity."

posted by Don "Moses" Lerman  # 4:02 AM