The Health Impact of a Hot Dog Eating Contest

Every year, on the 4th of July, Americans eat hot dogs, a lot of hot dogs. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, 150 million of them.  That equates to less than one hot dog per American, but there are some people who eat a whole lot more hot dogs than the rest of us on July 4th. They are the contestants of Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, an annual competition held in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York that attracts 40,000 fans and will be broadcast on ESPN at noon, with the Women's Championship at 11:30 AM.  There will be about two million viewers nationwide.

According to nutrition facts listed on the Nathan's website, each hot dog packs 290 calories, 17 grams of fat and 710 milligrams of sodium. That means that consuming 69 hot dogs provides:

1.  20,010 calories!  That is enough calories for as someone on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet would to last ten days.

2.  1,173 grams of fat = A little over 2 pounds, 9 ounces of fat!

3.  48,990 milligrams of sodium.  Sodium intake should be about 1,000 mg a day and should not exceed 3,000 mg/day.  That exceeds the maximum recommended sodium intake for 16 days!

It isn't talked about much, but I speculate that these competitive eaters can't actually digest all of that food.  There simply isn't enough gastric acid and digestive enzymes in the human body to do that job.  The food would putrefy in the stomach before it could be broken down and digested.  The only logical survival strategy for these contestants would be to vomit and purge the contents of their stomachs after these competitions.    

Very little research exists surrounding the effects of competitive eating on the body, mainly because so few people do it.  There was one study by a team of radiologists and gastroenterologists published the study in 2007 in the American Journal of Roentgenology.  They had 29-year-old competitive eater, Tim Janus (as part of a National Geographic special) and a 35-year-old male control eater eat as many hot dogs as they could in 12 minutes and then performed a series of stomach scans to see how both men handled all those dogs.

The regular eater finished seven hot dogs before he tapped out; the competitive eater ate 36 before the researchers said he could stop. His abdomen, which had appeared flat before the eating began, now "protruded enough to create the distinct impression of a developing intrauterine pregnancy," the researchers wrote, while the average eater's stomach appeared just as it had before.

The majority of the successful eaters on the professional circuit aren't morbidly obese.  The thinking goes that thinner people have the advantage because their stomachs can expand with less fat pushing against the stomach.

"The new generation of eaters is interested in weight lifting, running," Jason Fagone, who followed competitive eaters to write "Horseman of the Esophagus" told CNN. "They have more athletic body types than the old generation." He said competitive eaters liken an annual hot dog eating competition to running a marathon -- yes, both are stresses to the body as it is pushed to the extreme, but they are occasional ones.

Chestnut himself detailed some of what goes into this training to WebMD, saying about once a week he eats a whole bunch of whatever food is up next on his competitive circuit to "slowly make my body adapt to my goal." He'll also drink a gallon of milk in one sitting to train his stomach to expand.

There are significant risks associated with stuffing the stomach to its capacity, even just one time, such as rupturing the stomach.  Does the glory of winning the Mustard Belt outweigh those serious health risks?

For More Information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/hot-dog-eating-contest-health_n_1647284.html