Memorial Day Lite: Why are the best competitor eaters so skinny?

No girth Takeru Kobayashi

Here's something to ponder as you grill away at your Memorial Day cookout...

Have you ever wonder how the eating contest winners are usually not the rotund ones that seem to have an excess of belly storage?

More and more these days, the top food contest eaters are skinny folks who appear to lack the physical necessities for the job.

For instance, this year's winner of the annual Philly Wing Bowl -- a wing eating contest held on Super Bowl weekend -- was the diminutive Takeru Kobayashi. Mr. Kobayashi, who is a six time winner of the Nathan Hot Dog eating contest, tips the scale at a mere128 pounds:



Renowned Japanese masticator Takeru Kobayashi polished off a record 337 chicken wings in 30 minutes Friday to be crowned champion of Wing Bowl 20.

Kobayashi swallowed the competition in Philadelphia's annual wing-eating contest, beating out reigning three-time champion Jonathan "Super" Squibb by 66 wings.

"I could probably eat another 100 wings or so," Kobayashi said afterward, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. "Not really fast, I'd have to take my time. But if you brought me 100 more, I could eat them."

The 128-pound (58 kg) Kobayashi — a six-time Nathan's hot dog eating champion — was competing in his first Wing Bowl. The 33-year-old attended the event in 2011 as a spectator, taking time to wow the crowd by eating an entire cheesesteak in 24 seconds.  source

Well, wonder no more. There is an explanation for this counter-intuitive phenomenon:

In 2011, Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas won the first-ever Women’s Division of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest by downing 40 dogs in one sitting. That’s 12,360 calories consumed in 10 minutes … not to mention 800 grams of fat, 1,400 milligrams of cholesterol, and 920 grams of carbohydrates! When you’re putting away a feast like that two or three times a month, watching your diet and getting plenty of exercise are keys to avoiding diabetes, heart disease, and other serious health problems.

To counter life on the eating circuit, Thomas’s everyday diet consists of lots of fruits, vegetables, seafood, and chicken. She also puts in 10 hours of cardio exercise each week. The combination works—since Thomas began eating competitively, doctors haven’t discovered any changes in her health. Oddly enough, staying trim actually gives the 105-pound Black Widow a competitive edge. That’s because the stomach expands as food gets shoveled into it, and skinny eaters have less fat in the abdomen for the expanding stomach to push against. The result—a skinny competitive eater will have a little more room to stuff in an extra hot dog or 10.  Read entire article

Once last note: Let us not forget the brave, heroic soldiers and their families on Memorial weekend. To them I extend a heartfelt thank you.