Everyyear on July 4, a group of elite men and women gather to push themselves mentally and physically, in hopes of securing a place in history. On Independence Day, an announcer counts down to zero and a feast begins, an event unique to the world on this day or any other.
How hot dog eating went from pastime to profession at Coney Island on the Fourth of July
The Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest at Coney Island has risen from obscurity to a modern-day carnival sideshow of big personalities and bigger appetites, with techniques and methods that would humble the average person, all in pursuit of becoming the next hot dog eating champion.
Joey Chestnut currently holds the record for eating 75 hotdogs and buns in 10 minutes. He has competed in and dominated The Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog-Eating Contest as it has grown ever more popular, now in its 18th year on ESPN. But the contest itself has a longer history, with vague origin stories and varying rules and time limits evolving over the years. The event settled into a relatively stable 10-minute time limit in 1980 and the world has watched as the number of hot dogs consumed has grown steadily ever since.
Hot Dog History:
Nathan’s Famous July 4th competition
A little perspective. .
75 hot dogs is not a number normally encountered in daily life, much less eaten, so it may be difficult to imagine the size and scope of such a vast quantity of sausage. But there are a few ways to bring such an astronomical number down to earth.
Weight
75 hot dogs comes to around 16.4 pounds, which is about the same weight as a vacuum cleaner, a fancy road bike or a 40-inch television.
Length
75 hot dogs lined up end to end would be just a few feet longer than a telephone poll is tall.
Length
75 hot dogs lined up end to end would be just a few feet longer than a telephone poll is tall.
Calories
75 of Nathan’s Famous hot dogs is around 21,000 calories. The average person would need to walk from the Coney Island contest site in Brooklyn, New York, to Baltimore, Maryland (about 200 miles) to walk off that many calories. That would show up as around 400,000 steps on a pedometer.
How do they do it?
Competitors training for the contest will employ techniques over months and years by eating or drinking liquids in quantities that will stretch their stomachs to handle ever greater quantities. The training has been said to require the same level of “. . .will power, self discipline and commitment as any professional athletes honing their skills…,” according to a study on competitive eating published in the American Journal of Roentgenology.
Most also aim to stay fit as a popular theory among competitors is that less abdominal fat allows a midsection to expand more. Eaters also train jaw muscles by chewing several sticks of gum at a time to increase endurance.
Training precedes the event, but when the clock is counting, there are a few dog day techniques that have been adopted by top-level competitors to help get as much down as possible-
Divide and conquer
A critical innovation from Takeru Kobayashi was to remove the dog from the bun and eat them separately. Different textures allow for strategic chewing. Kobayashi would also snap the dogs in half to eat them quicker. These techniques led to a quantum leap in hot dog eating scores and allowed him to double the world record in 2001.
Find a rhythm
Ambidexterity is key and the ability to use two hands at the same time (hot dog in one hand, bun in the other) can speed up the strategic delivery of food to the mouth.
Dunk it!
Dunking the buns in liquid both makes the bun much easier to ingest and can reduce the need to drink water during the competition, though there is a maximum 5 second dunking time to limit potential bun disintegration.
Shimmy, shake and bounce
You can see competitors performing all manner of gyrations while eating to help settle the enormous amounts of food all the way down the esophagus into the stomach.
Chipmunking
The rules say if you can get the food into your mouth by the end of the contest, you have 30 seconds to get it down for it to count.
Man vs bear vs wolf
Comparisons between species are challenging, but eating rates have been observed and studied by scientists for a number of species. When viewed through the lens of elite level hot dog eating competitors, pound for pound, humans rank pretty respectably in between bears and wolves.
Consumption rates by body weight
Active consumption rates (ACR) are found by dividing the weight of food consumed by time. ACR varies widely by species and food type; these values can be compared when normalized for body mass.
0
5
10
15
20 g/min. per kg .
24.78
10
2.8
Note: ACR of wolves and bears was procured from feeding
observations between .5 - 6 min, while the human hot dog
eating competition has a 10 min duration.
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active
consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives
from hot dog eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
0
5
10
15
20 g/min. per kg .
24.78
Wolf
10
Man
2.8
Bear
Note: ACR of wolves and bears was procured from feeding observations between .5 - 6 min, while
the human hot dog eating competition has a 10 min duration.
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in
humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
0
5
10
15
20 g/min. per kg .
24.78
Wolf
10
Man
2.8
Bear
Note: ACR of wolves and bears was procured from feeding observations between .5 - 6 min, while the human hot dog eating
competition has a 10 min duration.
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog
eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
World record advances
Despite fluctuations in the time limit for the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest, the number of hot dogs and buns consumed has risen consistently and dramatically in the last four decades, from 9 in 1980 to 75 in 2020. When the record was at 50, David Metz, in his paper, “Competitive Speed Eating: Truth and Consequences,’’ compared the achievement to other sporting accomplishments — “In our opinion, average eaters have as much chance of ingesting 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes as executing a triple axel on the ice or running a 4-minute mile.”
The 733% increase is far more than in any other sport from the Olympics, which have been keeping world records for about a century, if not longer. The top 12 improvements in Olympic records have come in women’s events, which may indicate higher levels of inclusion in athletics over the past 100 years. The highest increase in a men’s Olympic sporting event is the 200m backstroke, which has seen a 65% increase in the world record since it was first set in 1909.
Percent change in record since inception, by sport
Men’s hot dog eating
733%
Women’s hot dog eating
411%
Women’s hammer throw
387%
Women’s pole vault
249%
Women’s triple jump
129%
Women’s skating (1000m)
91%
Women’s skating (1500m)
89%
Women’s swimming, freestyle (100m)
84%
Women’s skating (3000m)
78%
Women’s skating (5000m)
72%
Women’s skating (500m)
71%
0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
700%
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate
and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions.
Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
Men’s hot dog eating
733%
Women’s hot dog eating
411%
Women’s hammer throw
387%
Women’s pole vault
249%
Women’s triple jump
129%
Women’s skating (1000m)
91%
Women’s skating (1500m)
89%
Women’s swimming, freestyle (100m)
84%
Women’s skating (3000m)
78%
Women’s skating (5000m)
72%
Women’s skating (500m)
71%
0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
700%
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in
humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
Men’s hot dog eating
733%
Women’s hot dog eating
411%
Women’s hammer throw
387%
Women’s pole vault
249%
Women’s triple jump
129%
Women’s skating (1000m)
91%
Women’s skating (1500m)
89%
Women’s swimming, freestyle (100m)
84%
Women’s skating (3000m)
78%
Women’s skating (5000m)
72%
Women’s skating (500m)
71%
0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
700%
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog
eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
Men’s hot dog eating
733%
Women’s hot dog eating
411%
Women’s hammer throw
387%
Women’s pole vault
249%
Women’s triple jump
129%
Women’s skating (1000m)
91%
Women’s skating (1500m)
89%
Women’s swimming, freestyle (100m)
84%
Women’s skating (3000m)
78%
Women’s skating (5000m)
72%
Women’s skating (500m)
71%
0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
700%
Source: Smoliga JM. 2020 Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog
eating competitions. Biol. Lett. 16: 20200096.
Competitive eating is not an Olympic sport, but Major League Eating, the organization behind Nathan’s Famous hot dog contest and many others, has approached the IOC several times over the years to no avail. According to Major League Eating’s Richard Shea, it’s a perfect fit because, “Eating is as inherent to man as running or jumping and the roots of the early Olympic games were all based on survival.”
He describes the eaters as dedicated athletes that train diligently, study the game, watch footage and have a distinct approach to the competition.
Shea recognizes the contrast between the hype around the contest and the competition on stage every Fourth of July. “We may operate in hyperbole, but there is no nonsense when it comes to the actual 10 minutes of eating,” Shea said.
