[NYT] Scientists Have Finally Calculated How Many Hot Dogs a Person Can Eat at Once

"Scientists Have Finally Calculated How Many Hot Dogs a Person Can Eat at Once":

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/science/hotdog-eating-contests.html

excerpt:

Over the Fourth of July weekend, with streams of sweat pouring down his face, Joey Chestnut broke his own world record for hot dog eating, by downing 75 hot dogs (with buns) in 10 minutes at the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. It was his 13th win at the annual contest. And Miki Sudo set a women’s record, 48.5 hot dogs, to grab her seventh straight Nathan’s win.

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the event was held virtually this year, and Dr. James Smoliga was glued to his screen, rooting for new records. For the past few months, Dr. Smoliga, a veterinarian and exercise scientist, had been working on a mathematical analysis of the maximum number of hot dogs that a human could theoretically consume in 10 minutes.

“The answer is 83,” said Dr. Smoliga, a professor at High Point University in North Carolina.

He has now published the full analysis, which calculated this number based on 39 years of historical data from the Nathan’s contest, as well as on mathematical models of human performance that consider the potential for extreme athletic feats.

“It’s a great paper,” said Dr. Michael Joyner, a physician at the Mayo Clinic who studies human performance, adding that the analysis shows the classic fast rise in performance followed by more gradual improvements that happen when an event becomes professionalized. The best part, he said, is that Dr. Smoliga wrote it with a straight face.

up to 75 percent of its body weight in a single meal. That would be like the 132-pound Ms. Sudo eating 99 pounds of hot dogs in one sitting, said James Hicks, an evolutionary biologist who has studied snake physiology at the University of California, Irvine. (How many hot dogs a python can ingest in 10 minutes hasn’t been scientifically tested.)

In fact, simply sorting these animals by known eating speed and capacity may not be the best way to predict their performance in an eating contest.

“It’s nice to make a comparison amongst species, but I don’t know if it’s exactly the same,” said Annelies De Cuyper, an animal nutritionist at Ghent University in Belgium. The consumption numbers from wild animals come from studying their normal behavior, whereas human eating records are an example of abnormal eating patterns. “If you put them all together in a contest, I don’t know who would win,” she said. (Dr. Smoliga acknowledged that he had not looked at pacing strategy. “I think it is possible that a top eater, like Joey Chestnut, may be able to eat at a similar rate to a wolf for a shorter duration,” he said.)
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more at the link

 

Kobayashi is "the godfather of competitive eating"

can't believe you didn't mention ESPN

 

I'd like to see you and @DaDakota square off. Who do you think would win?