You know the name, but how well do you know his story? Just how did competitive eater
Joey "Jaws" Chestnut go from a college kid with a big appetite to the world's top dog
in hot dogs? Here's everything you need to know.
Long before he earned the nickname "Jaws" from fellow competitive eater Sonya "Black
Widow" Thomas, a woman capable of putting away 11 pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes,
Joey Chestnut was just a hungry kid who loved his food.
During an interview with GQ in which he described his parents as "super hippies," Chestnut recalled
fond memories of his mother's home cooking. Chestnut told the magazine,
"She would make a ton of pasta, and I would just eat so much of her pasta when I got home
on Friday, and then we would go out to eat."
After that, the future competitive eating champion said he would usually head to a burger
restaurant right next to his parents' house with his little brother for another course
or two.
Chestnut's supportive younger brother, Willy, was the first to notice that Joey had a talent
for finishing his food at an astonishing pace. In 2005, Willy took it upon himself to enter
his older brother into a lobster eating contest, and the rest is history.
"My little brother signed me up for my first contest when I was 21, and it just kind of
snowballed. I was like, 'Oh my god, they're paying me to eat.'"
Chestnut's breakout performance came later that year when he blew away the competition
at California's World Deep-Fried Asparagus Eating Championship, a prestigious event in
the world of competitive eating. According to ESPN, he put away a whopping six pounds
of asparagus in just 11 minutes to claim the title.
Joey Chestnut has been open about the fact that competitive eating wasn't exactly his
dream field of work growing up. The world record breaker simply discovered something
he excelled at and went with it, which ultimately led to fame and fortune: You might not think
it, but there's actually a lot of money to be made in the competitive eating game.
He's far from the richest guy living in California, but Chestnut made a cool $230,000 in 2014,
according to Major League Eating co-founder George Shea, and his wallet has reportedly
only been getting heavier in the years since.
Dropping out of university to pursue a career in competitive eating proved to be a lucrative
move, but Chestnut does sometimes wonder about what might have been. He was studying at San
Jose State when he decided to make a radical career change, trading in his life as a civil
engineering student for a more appetizing kind of grind as a world-famous eater. He
told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2017,
"If I wasn't doing this, I'd be working in construction management or be a project manager
for a general contractor. It was a hard decision to give up a normal job. I worked hard to
get through school. You go from building a fire station to an eating contest. [But] when
I made people happy, I became addicted to that. It's been a fun, fun ride."
A lot has been written about the dark side of competitive eating. Participants have been
known to develop arthritis of the jaw, and internal bleeding is a very real possibility.
But Joey Chestnut doesn't lose any sleep over that. The American food star claims his body
was built to eat hot dogs at lightning speed, but his vocation has unsurprisingly drawn
criticism from medical professionals. Chestnut told GQ,
"Some doctors are very close-minded. They're like, 'Oh, it's really unhealthy,' and this
and that. Well, alright, I know it's not healthy. Running marathons isn't healthy."
After parting ways with several wary doctors, Chestnut came across one who actually believed
that his unusual job wasn't going to kill him. According to Chestnut, his doctor told
him that as long as he sticks with a natural approach in his competitive endeavors, and
doesn't try to push his limits with performance-enhancing drugs, his stomach won't rupture. As he put
it to GQ,
"I really appreciated his confidence. A couple of times I think he could be wrong. But hopefully
he's right."
Thirty-one U.S. States have an obesity rate of 30 percent or higher, and the problem has
been described as an epidemic by some news outlets, statistics that are often thrown
in Joey Chestnut's face by those who oppose the idea of competitive eating.
In July 2017, activists set up a stand outside that year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest
to give away free vegan hot dogs. Five people were taken into custody by police after attempting
to unveil a large banner protesting the event. Regardless, the contest went ahead as planned,
with hundreds of hot dogs being consumed by both competitors and attendees over the course
of the day.
If you ask Chestnut about those who oppose the event, he'll tell you that we all have
the right to enjoy our food. As he put it to Vanity Fair in 2011, quote, "There's nothing
pretty about competitive eating. It might be uncouth, but it is fun and it is lighthearted."
He went on to wax philosophical about the topic to the magazine, saying,
"When you narrow it down, how many real pleasures are there in life?...There's eating, there's
laughing, there's making love and there's the accomplishment of achievement and feeling
proud. Maybe in America there's more of an emphasis on food than there should be. But
when I look out at the audience during a competition, some people are shocked, but most people are
smiling."
According to the official Major League Eating website, which describes Joey Chestnut as
"an American hero and a national treasure," this world-famous eater weighs just 230 pounds.
How does a person consume such insane amounts of food on a regular basis and still manage
to fit through their front door?
Chestnut has developed his own diet that allows him to continually work his stomach in preparation
for competitions while also maintaining a reasonable overall weight, and you might be
surprised to learn that it's pretty straightforward. As he told GQ,
"It's hot dogs, protein supplements, water. After every practice, I can feel when I'm
pretty much digested. And during that time, I'm just taking protein supplements. And then
I'm drinking tons of lemon water, pretty much just do a cleanse...Even though I'm digesting
a MASSIVE amount of food, I'll actually lose weight while I'm doing that."
He takes his training schedule so seriously that he refused to eat a S'mores covered hot
dog during an awkward radio interview with CBS Sports in 2016, referring to his strict
training regimen as his reason to decline. But he's not strict about what he eats all
the time; after competitions, he'll let himself indulge, especially if the competition food
is relatively light. He told GQ,
"If it’s like chicken wings, where I only did like four pounds of meat, oh yeah, you
know I’m going to be eating."
Chestnut is also strategic about what he drinks. Even though he could probably put away more
pitchers of beer than the average bear, he says his preferred drink is Jameson whiskey.
As he put it to GQ, quote, "You got to get something that's going to penetrate after
all that food."
In 2017, ESPN declared Joey Chestnut one of the all-time greats, listing him alongside
legends of basketball, baseball, and ice hockey in a tweet recognizing athletes who have accumulated
the most title wins in their field.
Even in the world of competitive eating, success means attention, and Chestnut has been top
dog for quite some time now. As his exposure and net worth continue to increase, so does
his standing with some members of the opposite sex. He told GQ, quote, "Women like winners,"
revealing that he often notices the same faces at various competitions he competes in. He
went on to say,
"I wouldn't call them groupies, but there's definitely been...Yeah, there's fans. I'll
leave it at that."
Chestnut appears to have plenty of options when it comes to romance, but he doesn't seem
to be interested in hooking up with fans. After he claimed victory at Nathan's Famous
Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2014, he got down on one knee and proposed to fellow competitive
eater Neslie Ricasa, who accepted.
They had been dating for a while, with the relationship being the source of much gossip
in the competitive eating community, with some linking Ricasa's rise through the ranks
to Chestnut's advice. They looked set to become the power couple of Major League Eating, but
it wasn't meant to be, they split up in 2015, just weeks before their wedding date.
When Joey Chestnut's relationship went sideways, he did what most people do in that situation,
eat for comfort. Speaking to the New York Post, the newly single hot dog king revealed
that he was throwing himself head first into his training following the breakup, which
he said, quote, "gave me more reason to focus on this competition." Ahead of Nathan's Famous
Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2015, he told the publication,
"Competitive eating is something I can control. I know I can control and if I push hard, I
can win."
He would go on to lose that year's contest to Matt Stonie, bringing his 8-year winning
streak to an end. But in a sign that you can't keep him down for long, he returned to reclaim
the Mustard Yellow Belt the following year.
Joey Chestnut's name will forever be associated with the hot dog, but he's actually taken
on a variety of foods during his competitive eating career to date. The San Josean has
broken world records for eating everything from Taco Bell and glazed donuts to jalapeno
poppers and Twinkies, but what's the weirdest thing he's ever had to chow down on?
In 2013, Chestnut took part in a zombie-themed contest in Minneapolis, gobbling his way through
dozens of tacos filled with, you guessed it, brains.
He recalled to the San Diego Union-Tribune that the cow brain tacos were veiny and gelatinous
with a lingering taste of metal, but he still managed to put away 54 of the things in eight
minutes anyway, edging out an unlucky Matt Stonie by just half a taco.
The victorious Chestnut gave his compliments to the chef, but admitted that he was more
than a little grossed out by the whole thing. He told Shout Out Minnesota,
"It was disgusting. [The tacos] actually didn't taste too bad, but the whole thought of eating
brain, I had a couple of big gags."
Before Joey Chestnut became the undisputed king of hot dogs, the crown belonged to a
Japanese competitive eater by the name of Takeru Kobayashi.
The Nagano native had won six Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contests when Chestnut dethroned
him in 2007, taking the famous title just two years after competing in his first-ever
eating contest.
Chestnut told CBS Sacramento in 2019,
"It's the only time in my life where I did something where the big majority of people
thought was impossible. The other competitive eaters thought it was impossible to beat him...Even
people close to me thought he was unbeatable. It was an amazing feeling."
The rivalry between Chestnut and Kobayashi was explored in detail during 2019's The Good,
The Bad, The Hungry, which chronicled both men's adventures in the competitive eating
world. Chestnut told TV Insider that he was happy with how the ESPN documentary turned
out, but he had issues with some of Kobayashi's comments. Chestnut claimed,
"We've had many opportunities to compete against each other, and he won't do it. He was signing
the same contract for nine years in a row, and [for] six years he was winning. It was
only when he started losing that he started complaining."
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill in early 2020, making most major
gatherings and sporting events impossible. There were fears that Nathan's Famous Hot
Dog Eating Contest, a 4th of July tradition that, legend has it, dates back to 1916, would
not be able to go ahead.
Thankfully for Joey Chestnut and his fans, organizers tweaked the event with social distancing
in mind, allowing only five competitors to enter. The returning champ removed his protective
face mask and gobbled down 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes to retain his crown, breaking the
world record he set in 2018.
Chestnut knew that the new indoor, air-conditioned setting would work to his advantage, but he
was wary about the lack of spectators. Afterward, Chestnut told ESPN,
"Minute six is where I really missed the crowd. I hit a wall, and it took me a little bit
more work to get through it. This is a crazy year, and I'm happy I was able to get a record."
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