Foundations Reading 2A

Chap 3

Reading 2A THE WORLD OF SPEED EATING Competitive eating—or speed eating—is exactly what its name suggests. Contestants eat as much as they can, usually within a time limit. Eating competitions can involve various foods—pizza, pies, ice cream, chili peppers. They can also offer large prizes to the winners. The Biggest Competition The world's largest competitive eating event is Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. The event is held every Fourth of July in Brooklyn, New York. According to legend, this tradition began over a hundred years ago. Four immigrants were arguing about who loved their new country the most. Finally, they worked out a way to decide. They would see who could eat the most of a famous American food—the hot dog. James Mullen, an Irish immigrant, won by eating 13 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Nathan's Fourth of July tradition was born.

Eating Champions The current champion of the contest is Joey Chestnut. Chestnut—an American—also holds the world record for hot dog eating—74 in less than 10 minutes. That's just over 8 seconds per hot dog. For many years, the Nathan's Contest champion was Takeru Kobayashi from Japan. He is smaller and lighter than Chestnut, and doesn't look like an eating champion. However, he holds many world records for eating different types of food. Bad Taste or Just Sport? Not everybody thinks competitive eating is a good thing. It can be unhealthy for the contestants, and many people in the world are going hungry. Kobayashi first won the event in 2001 when he was 23 years old. So are eating competitions in bad taste? For competitive eaters, it's a sport like any other. As Kobayashi says, "Food fighters… think of themselves as athletes."

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