MADreads

Hungry?

September 29th, 2007 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

Earlier this year I stopped at my brother’s house and he greeted me with a very odd sentence:

“Have you ever seen Kobayashi eat hot dogs?  It’s a wild scene, man.”

He was referring, of course, to Takeru Kobayashi, the Japanese competitive eating champ who once ate 53 hot dogs in 12 minutes at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Championship in New York City.  (Evidently my brother, who has cable TV, had caught part of the competition live.)  I do not have cable, and had not seen the carnage, but I went one better: I read Jason Fagone’s book Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream.

Over the course of researching his book, Fagone went to 27 competitive eating contests worldwide, and watched contestants force down everything from hot dogs to hamburgers to chicken wings.  He interviewed some of the biggest–and I do mean biggest–names in the “sport.”  He actually attended the 2004 Wing Bowl in Philadelphia.  If you want to know what goes on at a “Wing Bowl,” I’d highly recommend you read this book.

My brother was right about one thing: it is a wild scene, man.  And it probably won’t make you hungry for hot dogs, but you never know…

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction