TOn Independence Day, contestants in the Nathan’s Famous hot dog-eating contest can devour about 76 hot dogs in the time it takes to read this article. Like ultramarathoners running 50 miles or football players recovering from major impacts, “speed eating” involves natural endurance, dedicated training, and serious risks to health.
Some might see the annual Coney Island, N.Y., competition as an act of defiance, a capture of the holiday spirit. When the British taxed our sugar, we fought for independence. When today’s doctors tell us to eat fewer carbs, which quickly convert to blood sugar, we eat as many as possible on ESPN and emerge seemingly unscathed.
However, this stomach rebellion can be detrimental to the body, both during competition and in the long term.
A dangerous journey through the body
Mouth
Miki Sudo, the winningest female champion in the history of the sport, who has nine Nathan titles in the women’s category, says competitors usually fast before the event. “You want your stomach to be empty and hungry,” she says on the day of the match.
After a rousing national anthem, a horn signals the participants to eat as many hot dogs as possible in a breezy 10 minutes. And so begins the blur of chewing and swallowing, with physicality that is half-shark, half-snake. According to the ESPN documentary series 30 out of 30Competitors train to strengthen their jaws so they can tear apart food with tooth-like efficiency, and to desensitize their gag reflexes to swallow large pieces so the rest of humanity can vomit.
Esophagus
Just five seconds into the self-proclaimed “Super Bowl of Competitive Eating” competition, the sausage pieces reach the esophagus, the tube leading to the stomach. But because they are not chewed enough, the pieces can slide into the airway, which can cause choking. Paramedics are on hand to help, but choking is the biggest risk in any fast-eating competition and can result in death.
Read more: Why Your Diet Needs More Fermented Pickles
The more sausages accumulate in the body, the greater the risk. The stomach can’t accept food as quickly as it comes in, so it backs up in the lower esophagus. This traffic jam can cause food to come back up forcefully, which can lead to choking, tears in the esophagus, and surgery to fix them, says Dr. David Metz, a professor emeritus of gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the effects of fast eating.
Your wife
In just two minutes, some participants may have stuffed ten sausages into their stomachs. To accommodate the onslaught, the stomach begins to expand. Normally, our stomachs expand like a balloon, building up more pressure as the meal progresses, signaling to our brains that we’re full. But fast eaters have been trained to increase the elasticity of their stomachs with increasingly larger amounts of food, so that they stretch further, like spider silk. Without the same buildup of pressure, their brains don’t get the “put down your sausage” message—they just get the crowd roaring to keep gorging.
Small intestine
Seven minutes into the competition, some of the pioneer sausage pieces have already begun to travel through the stomach and explore the small intestine, an organ responsible for further digesting food and absorbing nutrients. But when you’re tackling up to 22,800 calories in a single meal, this important work can be sabotaged.
One problem, Metz explains, is that too much glucose (especially in the form of whole sausages that have been broken down into their bread) can be dumped into the small intestine. This rush can send the body into panic mode as it tries to avoid organ damage. This stress response, known as “dumping syndrome,” includes intense sweating, rapid heartbeat, nausea, and diarrhea.
Metz says more research is needed on dumping syndrome. For his study, Metz took X-ray images of a fast eater in action and found that the rapid feasting was made possible by “remarkable” stomach expansion. Negative This suggests that dumping syndrome may not be a risk, although some competitive eaters report symptoms of the syndrome, such as excessive sweating.
Read more: Why Do You Sweat So Much at Night and What Should You Do About It?
Another problem is that many sausage pieces remain largely undigested even after the stomach is churned, says Kathleen Melanson, a professor of nutrition and director of the Energy Balance Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island. These pieces can be fermented by bacteria in the small intestine, which can cause bacterial overgrowth, which can lead to other symptoms such as abdominal pain and diarrhea, Melanson says.
There have been rare documented instances of debilitating symptoms, such as severe pain that required a five-day hospitalization. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t more,” Metz says. To make matters worse, the treat can linger in the digestive tract for several days before eventually being expelled.
Doomed to be swallowed
Thinking you can eat a bunch of hot dogs because you saw it on TV is like trying to climb El Capitan without a rope, because you saw it on TV. Free Solo“No one should try this at home,” Metz says.
Professional gorgers gradually increase their food intake over long periods of time. (They don’t practice by drinking water, which can lead to brain swelling.) “There’s clearly a training effect,” says James Smoliga, a sports medicine researcher at Tufts University. He has found that elite competitive eaters reliably improve their performance over years of practice, so that their gorging rates resemble grizzly bears.
Smoliga says the improvement is likely due to the physiology inherent in fast eating. Sudo thinks he’s always had “natural stomach flexibility,” and Melanson notes that twin studies have shown that some people are biologically more likely to eat faster than others. This innate “talent” may provide some protection against harm.
Unknown long-term damages
Far from being overweight, many fast eaters appear healthy. “Physical examples,” Metz says. “I haven’t had any physical side effects from doing this yet,” says Nick Wehry, a competitive eater ranked fourth in the world (and Sudo’s husband). “Most of us have a love for fitness,” Sudo says, adding that it’s a passion fueled by a desire to reduce the risks of competitive eating.
Whether this strategy will result in healthy aging remains to be seen, because the “sport” (and the studies on it) are relatively new. (Major League Eating, the organization that oversees professional competitions, including Nathan’s, did not respond to a request for comment on whether they track the long-term effects of competitive eating.)
One long-term concern is that their stomachs will become permanently distended and will never feel full again, no matter how much they consume. “We don’t know if or how you can retrain it after you’re done competing,” Melanson says. To prevent obesity, former competitors can remind themselves to stop eating without relying on their stomach’s signals. But this “is challenging and takes practice,” Melanson explains. Melanson has studied people who have tried to slow down their eating pace, and it can help with weight loss and overall health.
Eating champion Takeru Kobayashi may have disabled his stomach’s signals after decades of competing, according to latest documentary Hack Your Health“I overeat because I’m a competitive eater,” she says in the film. “When you eat too much, you can’t really enjoy the food or savor the smell of it. You ignore your body’s signals, like when you’re full.”
But Sudo and Wehry say their appetites are still normal despite competing for so many years.
Read more: How Much Sleep Do You Need at a Minimum?
A permanently distended stomach can also cause gastroparesis, which is when the stomach takes too long to empty, leading to chronic nausea, pain, and vomiting.
Tim Janus, a 47-year-old former competitive eater whom Metz studied in the scientific study, quit the sport in 2016 after 11 years out of “an abundance of caution,” partly based on Metz’s findings about the risks. He also worried about the harms of vomiting after competition, a practice he described as common. “When you eat that much food, you can’t digest it all,” he says. “Your stomach is too full to move things along. Vomiting after competition is a necessary part of the sport.”
Janus tried to collaborate with other professional eaters to better understand the effects of competition and to share and track their health, but he couldn’t get them to pay attention. He’s now a healthy foreign service officer in Mexico City. Many of his former competitors say they’re healthy too, but “they didn’t want to continue, and I realized I made a mistake.”
Fast eaters can develop other diseases associated with unhealthy diets, such as heart disease and diabetes. The American Medical Association has deemed fast eating an unhealthy practice. But Sudo and Wehry are lean and muscular. They gain weight during competitions, but they eat less than usual afterward to regain their health. (Another bonus of fasting before or after: Belly fat can prevent the stomach from expanding, some competitive eaters have found.) Wehry says he lost about 20 pounds in just a few days after competition. He says he avoids throwing up food after competitions. Many other professional competitors do the same.
Outside of competition, Sudo and Wehry exercise daily and eat a nutritious diet. Wehry estimates that 70% of his annual calories are from very high-calorie foods, with training and competitions accounting for only 30%. His blood pressure is a little high, but his cholesterol has actually improved Since she started competing, she says. Sudo’s doctor gave her a clean bill of health. She gave birth at age 35 without any complications. Despite the competitions, “we still have a healthier lifestyle than 95% of the population,” says Wehry, a former competitive bodybuilder.
Another fast-eating couple, Rich and Carlene LeFevre, are role models of longevity. The LeFevres, who have been racing since the mid-’80s, have reached old age in good health, Sudo said. (Rich is 80.)
Can these speedsters eat their 9.25 pie in eight minutes and stay healthy? Perhaps with the right genetics and behavioral strategies, Melanson says. “You can’t assume it’s going to work for the general population.” Studies show that other extreme competitors, ultramarathoners, are doing better than some scientists expected, with many living into their mid-80s, Smoliga says.
In addition to training to be a dental hygienist, Sudo enjoys eating fast food for the thrill of competition and to put on a “good show.” At the same time, she and Wehry want long lives to watch their sons grow up and meet their grandchildren. “I’m going to do everything I can to stick around for a while longer,” Sudo says.