Obesity critics blast eating competitions: Kiwi News Service
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3771874a7144,00.html
SHEBOYGAN: Jeremiah Jimenez had just wolfed down his 11th bratwurst at
an eat-off earlier this month when he began to experience what is
politely known in the competitive eating world as a "reversal in
fortune".
It was a crisis moment and the 29-year-old, who competes on the eating
circuit as "El Toro", decided to try to play through, swallowing hard
and reaching for another sausage.
"But when my hand touched the 12th brat," Jimenez says, "I just gagged.
The greasiness just sent a message to my brain to stop ... I was really
disappointed. My capacity is double that."
But even that would not have put him in the money. Takeru Kobayashi, a
27-year-old eating phenomenon from Japan, took first place in the
event, swallowing 58 brats in 10 minutes and smashing the 35-brat world
record set last year by American Sonya Thomas.
ESPN, the US cable network that began covering the sport in 2004 and
aired a three-day US Open of Competitive Eating in 2005, says the
eat-offs draw the same number of viewers as regular season men's
college basketball.
"There's clearly an audience with an interest in these events," says
network spokesman Nate Smeltz.
But this popularity has touched off a debate in a country where
one-third of the population is obese, according to the government.
The competitors themselves are not generally overweight; former brat
record holder Thomas weighs a mere 47.6kg.
Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Centre for Science in
the Public Interest, a US nutrition advocacy group, blasts the food
companies that sponsor the events for encouraging consumers to equate
"pigging out" with legitimate sports and warns the competitors are
risking their health.
Jimenez, who finished 13th in a field of 16 in Sheboygan in Wisconsin,
thinks the risks are overblown. "I talked to my doctor before I
started," he says, "and he just shook his head and told me to watch my
cholesterol."
George Shea, the founder and chairman of the International Federation
of Competitive Eating, the sport's leading organising body, refuses to
get pulled into the debate. "America has an obesity crisis, which has
nothing to do with competitive eating," he says.
Since it was founded in 1997, IFOCE has propelled competitive eating
from the fringes of county fairs and church picnics to the centre of
popular culture. In the process eaters like Kobayashi and Thomas have
been turned into celebrities.
Among the IFOCE's key rules: One reversal of fortune and your eating
career is over - after you clean up the mess.
Shea, an Ivy League-educated marketing executive, admits the IFOCE was
originally simply a way to promote the food industry clients, like
Nathan's Famous and Krystal hamburgers, whose products the contestants
were inhaling.
"It was kitschy, campy fun," he says.
It became a sport, says Jason Fagone, the author of Horsemen of the
Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream, because
the contestants took it seriously.
"The eaters decided that they would prefer it not be a joke and that it
really mattered," Fagone says.
Fagone, who spent a year researching his book, says he's of two minds
whether the eaters are athletes. "It's not a sport in the classical
sense of being a way to showcase the human form at its most poised and
graceful," he says. "But it's skilled physical work that ... takes
discipline and training and mental focus."
One thing he's sure of: Only five of the top eaters actually make a
living on the circuit - though that could grow if its popularity grows.
The companies that tend to sponsor IFOCE events - there will be 100
this year, up from less than 10 a few years ago - tend to be smaller,
regional companies attracted by Shea's guerrilla marketing pitch. "It
generates media you couldn't buy," Fagone says.
The bigger companies have stayed away - for good reason says Jacobson.
Watching contestants struggling to keep down the pounds of food they've
ingested isn't everybody's idea of ace product placement. "It's
difficult to believe this does much for the sale of hotdogs," he says.
As the sport grows, it's turning even local events like Brat Days, a
53-year-old fund-raiser for a Sheboygan charity, into just another
marketing and merchandising opportunity for big business.
When Tom Wolff, then a new marketing director with Johnsonville
Sausage, first learned of this city's annual bratfest, he remembers
thinking to himself, "We need to be here."
They now sponsor the event. This year, the contest - rechristened the
Johnsonville Brat-Eating World Championship - aired on ESPN and drew
contestants from all over the United States with its $US20,000
($NZ32,000) prize purse.
Among those who turned up to this city, the self-styled Bratwurst
Capital of the World, to watch was Charlie Pountain, a 53-year-old
retiree from Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
But Pountain - who wore a T-shirt that read "Live. Work. Play. Eat
Brats." - said asking whether the eaters are athletes obscures the real
issue confronting the sport.
"The question is when it finally makes it to the Olympics," Pountain
says, "will it be a summer or winter event
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