Being a professional eating champion may not result in a pulled hamstring or a torn ACL,
but that's not to say it isn't dangerous. Here's a
look at the ways in which some of your favorite professional eating
champions were seriously injured doing the perilous work of wolfing down food.
In 2001, Takeru Kobayashi ate a whopping 50 hot dogs in 10 minutes to set a new record
at the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island. Before him,
no one had been able to choke down more than 25 hot dogs at the contest.
Watching Kobayashi eat is not for the weak of stomach. A hot dog in his hands loses all its
integrity. He separates the buns, dips them in water, and squeezes them before gulping
them down. For the Japanese eater, the act of eating in a contest is pure competition.
After every contest, he told People, his stomach expands so much
that it actually shifts his lungs upward, leaving him short of breath.
Kobayashi still managed to place second, after Joey Chestnut, at the Nathan's contest in 2007,
mere days after he announced on his blog that he was suffering from arthritis of the jaw as a
result of strength training. He couldn't even open his mouth comfortably. Slate reported,
"Rather than the sudden trauma of an amateur, the Japanese eater's jaw distress seems to be a form
of temporomandibular joint disorder either caused or exacerbated by sheer overuse of the jaw."
Outside of the Marvel Universe, Sonya Thomas holds the Black Widow title. The eating champ
compares herself to the venomous spider because it devours the males of its species — a metaphor
to express her desire, quote, "to eat more or faster than the men." In 2003,
she shocked the professional eating circuit when she beat the four-time
Wing Bowl champion Bill "El Wingador" Simmons, The Atlantic reported.
In Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit, Thomas
opened up to author Ryan Nerz about the pain that accompanies the thrill of a competition. In 2004,
after a glorious victory in the Bacci Pizza Eating Championship, Thomas was left with a tired jaw and
a cut on the roof of her mouth. She had eaten six and a half slices of pizza in 15 minutes.
In a shrimp eating contest, Thomas suffered yet another cut, this time to her throat.
She somehow still won by swallowing six and a half pounds of shrimp in just ten minutes.
But her injury, called pharyngeal abrasion, is a serious issue: Every swallow causes severe pain.
"My stomach aches. I've got the chills. My mouth tastes weird. It hurts to swallow."
According to Major League Eating,
Edward "Cookie" Jarvis holds more titles than any other professional eater in the world.
Between 2001 and 2006, he collected trophies and gained weight. There came a point when Jarvis was
unable to bend to tie his shoes. That's when he decided to retire, according to Deadspin.
In Eat This Book, author Ryan Nerz describes a sweet corn eating contest in 2004 where Jarvis
suffered a debilitating setback: lockjaw in the middle of a speed-eating contest.
Nerz explains that Jarvis had participated in a deep-fried asparagus eating contest a
day before he appeared in West Palm Beach, Florida, to chomp down a load of sweet corn.
Sometime after the 10th ear, his jaw locked up. He began biting smaller rows off the cob
and eventually used his fingers to rip the kernels off and pop them into his mouth.
Despite the impediment, though, he still managed to win the contest.
Dominick "The Doginator" Cardo ate more than three pounds of pickled beef tongue in under 12
minutes at the nationally broadcast Glutton Bowl in 2002. That remains the highlight of his career,
though he has proven his prowess in gluttony by eating a gallon of ice cream in 10 minutes
and devouring nearly 20 hot dogs at Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, according to the Post-Gazette.
Cardo geared up for contests with an odd diet. The week leading up to an
event included eating four pounds of food and drinking more than a gallon of water daily.
All that eating naturally doubled his weight, and he was often tired and out of breath.
Cardo also suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease where the body's immune
system starts damaging healthy tissue. He retired in 2006. CNN Health reported,
"His arteries were halfway clogged, triggering chest pains.
His stomach ached, and his doctor warned him to stop."
A lot can go wrong when you eat the infamously hot Carolina Reaper chili pepper. Competitive
eater Wayne Algenio, fueled by the desire to set a new world record, swallowed 22 of the dangerously
hot chilies in less than one minute. Yes, he set the record. Algenio told The New York Post that
while he ate, the rush of adrenaline helped block out the pain. It didn't last. He said,
"But once I stopped eating, a horrible burning in my throat started. I started screaming because
it helped alleviate the pain in my throat. Then the stomach cramps started kicking in."
The Queens native had it easy compared to some of the others who have had life-threatening
experiences with the pepper. According to one study, a man who participated in a hot pepper
contest had to be rushed to the emergency room after having a series of thunderclap headaches,
a result of narrowed arteries from eating the peppers.
As host of the Travel Channel series Man v. Food,
Adam Richman's popularity rose with every food challenge he took up — like a 190-pound
burger or a two-pound dessert with eight scoops of ice cream.
The challenges Richman faced were sometimes more risky than entertaining, though. A hot
wings challenge in Sarasota, Florida, "almost killed him," The AV Club revealed. The challenge
seemed simple enough: eat 10 wings in 20 minutes without drinking milk. But Richman only ate two
before he ran away from the cameras and guzzled milk. The host, according to the AV Club,
"Remembers lying on a bathroom floor, his tongue and nasal passages dangerously swollen."
"The heat hits me immediately." "Whoa." "And it's more than excruciating.
It's the hottest thing I've ever eaten."
Apparently, the hot sauce had a good amount of additional ghost chili extract some kitchen
pranksters decided to put in the mix. Ghost peppers can cause upset stomach, nausea, vomiting,
numbness and restricted breathing, according to Health. The scariest part? When you overeat ghost
peppers, there is a chance that you'll burn a hole in your esophagus. Luckily, Richman recovered.
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