Eating contests: funny or gross? Or both?
Stuffing of the pie holes. (Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr)
Whenever I hear about an eating contest, I cannot help but think of the pie-eating contest scene in the movie “Stand By Me”, which concludes with… well, this blog is supposed to be about stimulating your appetite, not suppressing it. But if you really want to know or revisit that particular scene, click here.
Eating contests can fall into two categories: The kind where contestants end up eating an absurd amount of food in order to win the prize or the kind where the type of food is a challenge in itself (i.e. raw habanero peppers), so the contestants don’t eat until they bust but it’s still a difficult and uncomfortable task.
It is probably a rite of passage for any teenage boy to be involved, at some point, in an eating contest — even if it is an unofficial one which takes place at the school cafeteria table. Or should I say ESPECIALLY if it takes place at a school cafeteria table? I am here to admit that while I have never in my life been a teenage boy, even I took part in a pseudo eating contest, challenging myself in front of my friends to jam as many marshmallows into my mouth as possible.
It wasn’t very entertaining for my friends or myself.
While many eating contests have no real purpose, some are competitive sport or part of fundraising efforts. Big Lick BBQ (formerly Henry’s Memphis BBQ) is having an eating contest on May 26 to benefit OMNI (Orphan Medical Network International). Prizes will be awarded for eating the most slaw, potato salad or mixed beans (your choice of which side dish); for eating the most pulled pork sandwiches; and for eating the most ribs. Sounds messy, huh?
I’ll post the rules and other information for entering the contest at the bottom of this entry. Who among you is man or woman enough to go through a pile of ribs like Bugs Bunny goes through corn on the cob? Or risk the painful result of pouring whole beans down your gullet? I know you’re out there!
I’ll finish with a poll: How many of you enjoy watching or participating in food-eating contests? How many are disgusted by them?
Food-eating contest to benefit OMNI at Big Lick BBQ
677 Brandon Ave. SW, Roanoke
May 26, 7 p.m.
(540) 904-2727
How To Register?
Come by the restaurant and sign up for the event/s you wish to compete in or sign up at the door during the night of the event.
Event Rules:
Rules: The entry fee is $15 to compete in two events. There is one 10 minute round per event. The contestant who eats the most in the event wins $50.
Event Schedule:
7:15, Presentation by OMNI.
7:25, Famous slaw, potato salad, and mixed beans contest (your choice of item to eat).
7:45, Pulled pork sandwiches contest.
8:05, Ribs contest.
April 19, 2012 - 5:29 AM
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I vote for disgusting. It strikes me as fundamentally wrong to celebrate gross displays of gluttony, especially in a time of limited resources and rising obesity/diabetes/lifestyle-caused health problems. Yuck.
I don’t think my kids have done eating contests at school either, although my son and his friends did try (and fail) the cinnamon challenge.
OK, I’ll ask: What is the cinnamon challenge?
Lindsey, kids have been daring each other to eat spoonfuls of dry cinnamon powder. Some kids have ended up in the hospital after doing it.
I vote disgusting on the eating contests where they stuff the food in as fast as they can.
http://www.examiner.com/healthy-trends-in-atlanta/health-hazards-of-the-cinnamon-challenge
I’m with you, Lindsey – ever since “Stand By Me,” I can’t think about an eating contest without remembering that scene and getting queasy as a result (whenever my son decides to watch the movie agin, I have to leave the room and close the door between us for that scene). Even that image at the top of your post is nauseating.
While I’ve never seen an eating contest in person, I have, unfortunately, been witness to contests to see how much you can fit in your mouth at once – marshmallows in one, and an entire Big Mac in another – and those left lasting scars.
I’ll have to tell my (nearly) 14 year old brother about the contest.
My father was in a pie eating contest when he was about the same age. The “Stand by me” scene definitely comes to mind.. But I’d say “Stand FAR away from me”!
I vote disgusting, too. I don’t see anything funny or sporting about it. And that’s saying a lot because I am really hard to gross out or offend.
Definitely DISGUSTING!!!!
I’ve never understood the people who eat the hot peppers or food with the extremely hot peppers in it. It seems like they’re torturing themselves. I like spicy, but there’s hot and then there’s insane hot.
So, we’ve established females find vomiting in movies disgusting. Let’s make the leap to include belching and umm… ‘other bodily expellations of gas’ while we’re at it.
Yet, there are so many movies that feature those very actions. I’m thinking the ‘typical’ male audience would find them more amusing than not and be offended by watching many scenes from , ‘The Crying Game’, ‘The Piano’ or ‘Out Of Africa’, so to speak.
I found the vomit scenes in the clip above too unrealistic to be disgusting. I never watched the movie, as it was too much of a chick flick to interest me.
Eating contests? They’re amusing, not disgusting. I find them more interesting than ‘Dancing With The Stars’, for sure.
I think eating contests are gross and amusing at the same time. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let someone once challenge me to stuff my face with marshmallows -ha!
I think the vomit scene in “Stand by Me” is hilarious because, as abdnva points out, it’s absurdly unrealistic.
I know this is off-topic, but I disagree that “Stand by Me” is a chick flick. It’s about four teenage boys going on an odyssey to find a dead body, and it’s based on a Stephen King short story, “The Body”. You ought to watch the whole thing. It’s a great movie!
A personal eating contest that looks like it didn’t work out so well.
http://eater.com/archives/2012/04/19/heres-what-a-burger-with-1050-bacon-slices-looks-like.php
Disgusting! I don’t watch the contests on TV, or that Adam Richmond thing where he eats insane amounts of food. Just not appealing to me. I’ve never taken part in any contest, or seen one in person for that matter. Not for me but I’ll end w/ one of my mantras: to each his or her own!!
Like almost everything else “extreme” (except kindness) I find food eating contests (live or as the premise for a television show) disgusting and avoid them like the plague.