Prepare to enter the world of competitive eating. Word of caution: You may want to do so on an empty stomach.
12 Surprising Facts About Competitive Eaters
Updated on Apr. 14, 2025
Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest reigns supreme
Even people who know little to nothing about competitive eating have heard of this famous contest. It’s held annually on the Fourth of July at Coney Island, outside New York City, where participants have 10 minutes to eat as many hot dogs and buns as they can. “It is by far the favorite among all eaters and fans,” says George Shea, chair of Major League Eating (MLE), the world body that oversees professional eating contests. Indeed, MLE holds events throughout the year, all around the country. The foods eaten in contests are often tied to the city where the contest is held, such as the Wing It On! USA Chicken Wing Eating Championship in Buffalo, NY, or The Trenton Thunder World Famous Case’s Pork Roll Eating Championship in Trenton, NJ.
The eating speed will make your head spin
Ever read about competitive eaters and think, “I really like eating wings or hot dogs—I bet I could do that”? Eating contests have strict time limits to intensify their challenges. Most MLE contests are somewhere between 8 and 12 minutes long, with competitors vying to eat the most before the time is up. Joey Chestnut holds the all-time record for the Nathan’s hot dog contest, having eaten 76 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes in 2021—that’s just over 7.5 hot dogs per minute. Patrick Bertoletti won the 2024 event with 58 hot dogs and buns (Chestnut wasn’t allowed to compete because of a partnership with Impossible Foods, deemed a competitor of Nathan’s). If that doesn’t sound outrageous enough, James Webb holds the world record for the Wings for Wishes Professional Wing Eating Championship, having downed 224 chicken wings in 10 minutes each of the last two years.
Jaw training is important
There are two main components of training for competitive eating contests, the first of which is working out the jaw. While eaters certainly aren’t chewing their food as much as you would when sitting down for a meal, they do need to chew a lot of food for 8 to 12 minutes straight, depending on the contest. “Training can differ by person, but for me personally, it involves jaw training by chewing on different implements to increase endurance and prevent fatigue at contests,” shares Nick Wehry, the sixth-ranked MLE competitor and one half of The Hungry Couple with his partner (and fifth-ranked eater), Miki Sudo. Some eaters chew on silicon tubing used by people recovering from jaw surgery, or they use gum, chewing up to 20 pieces at once.
Contest practice is key too
“I like to ‘practice like I play’ in the sense of emulating contest conditions at home,” Wehry says about how he likes to prepare ahead of a competition. “I’ll fast and prepare as I would the day before a contest, prepare the food as close as I can get it and put the time on the clock and have a 5- to 10-minute practice run. I’ll record it to watch back and see what I was doing well or what I need to work on and go from there.”
Liquids are an eater’s secret weapon
Competitive eaters swallow huge bites of food, so the possibility of choking is a real issue. Likewise, consuming tons of one type of food very quickly can induce flavor fatigue, or a phenomenon in which you start to experience a decreased appetite for that particular flavor that makes it difficult to keep going. Liquids combat both of these issues. “Drink of choice can be very important during a contest,” says Wehry. “Whether that be coffee or something bitter and hot during fudge or doughnut eating contests to aid in melting it down to swallow and avoid flavor fatigue, or something sweet to aid in preventing flavor fatigue for savory foods.” He goes on to note that this is a person-to-person and contest-dependent preference.
Some contests, like Nathan’s, prohibit drinking but allow competitors to moisten their food with water. For his part, Wehry likes to drink water mixed with a citrusy hydration powder.
Eaters need excellent hand-eye coordination and a strategic mind
When a contest is 5 or 10 minutes, every second matters, so if a competitor can move food to their mouth even a little bit faster than opponents, they’ll have an edge. “Eaters will strategize to determine how best to eat a specific food,” adds Shea. “A hot dog requires different handling than a chicken wing or donut.” Eaters usually compete standing up so that their stomachs are not compressed and are able to hold the maximum amount. And as they eat, some periodically jump up and down to help move the food down and prevent blockages or choking.
There are cash prizes
Winning an MLE event, or even coming in second, can come with a good-size payout. Nathan’s offers the largest prize purse, with each of the winners on the men’s and women’s sides taking home $10,000, with $5,000 going to each second-place finisher, $2,500 to third, $1,500 to fourth and $1,000 to fifth. After Nathan’s, there are a few events with a $10,000 total prize purse ($5,000 to the winner and down from there), while others offer purses in the $3,000 to $6,000 range, per the MLE event details.
Contests are judged one of two ways
“Major League Eating conducts two basic types of contests,” says Shea. “Most frequent is the timed event, when eaters have a certain time to eat as much as they can. We also run events with a certain quantity of food, and the winner is the first to finish.” In a timed event, the winner is usually the person who has eaten the highest number of “units,” such as hot dogs or bagels. “But some events, like chicken wings, are judged by weight,” Shea adds. “The trays of wings are weighed before and after the event to determine who ate the most meat off the bone.”
Puking does occur, although by a classier name
In the competitive eating world, vomiting is referred to as a “reversal” or a “Roman incident,” and buckets are thoughtfully stationed around the competitors. However, a reversal or Roman incident will get an eater immediately disqualified, but only if the food exits the eater’s mouth. If an eater is able to swallow it, they’re still in the running. However, eaters are not penalized if they hurl after they leave the contests.
Anyone can enter an event
Ever wondered how many chicken nuggets you could eat in eight minutes or how many pounds of poutine you could down in 10? “Anyone over the age of 18 can join our events, simply by signing up on the website to participate in a particular event,” shares Shea. Just know that there’s no amateur bracket—you’ll be competing against the big guns. “The eaters who study the game and are learning techniques and going out on the circuit to win prize money are considered pros,” Shea adds. MLE ranks the top 50 eaters on a regular basis based on their wins and the records they hold.
It’s unclear if there are any long-term negative health effects
Whether competitive eating causes any long-term health effects remains to be seen. The biggest existing danger is choking during an event, but Shea notes that MLE has emergency medical technicians on hand at every competition. While there have not been many studies done on the effects of eating so much so fast, a 2020 study published in Biology Letters suggests that the training the elite eaters undergo seems to adequately prepare them for the task, increasing their stomach capacity (the space the stomach has for receiving food) in a relatively healthy way. “Modeling individual performances across five years reveals that maximal ACR [active consumption rate] significantly increases over time in ‘elite’ competitive eaters, likely owing to training effects,” writes the author, James M. Smoliga, PhD, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. “Extreme digestive plasticity suggests that eating competition records are quite biologically impressive.”
Meanwhile, Wehry isn’t worried about potential side effects, mostly because of how he takes care of himself when he isn’t training or competing. “I get bloodwork done quarterly, and so far so good. My lifestyle 9/10 days is healthier than 99% of the general population,” he says. “When I’m not training my fridge is what most would consider incredibly boring. [It’s filled with] boneless skinless chicken, egg whites, lean beef, avocado, fruits and veggies.”
There’s a lot of money being raised for charity
“I think the charitable component of competitive eating is an amazing piece that rarely gets included in coverage,” says Wehry. “We were just a part of Wings for Wishes, which in the four years we’ve been doing it has raised over a million dollars for Make-A-Wish Southern Florida. There’s the 100,000 hot dogs Nathan’s donates every year to food banks or the thousands we raise for We Care Canada when we do the poutine contests.”
Additional reporting by Daryl Chen.
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Sources:
- George Shea, chair of Major League Eating; email interview, March 25, 2025
- Nick Wehry, sixth-ranked competitive eater; email interview, March 23, 2025
- Sports Illustrated: “What’s prize money for 2024 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest winner?”
- Major League Eating: “Eating Contests”
- Major League Eating: “Eating Rankings”
- Biology Letters: “Modeling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions”
