‘I feel awful’: Welcome to the life of a competitive eater

STEVIE has just won her latest competition by downing 10 hotdogs in 10 minutes and she feels awful. Welcome to the life of a competitive eater.

Stevie Palmer looks diminutive, but she just won a competitive hotdog eating title.

EIGHT contestants line the stage in Louisville, Kentucky. Limbering up like athletes, they jump, shake, and strut.

Seasoned veterans meticulously arrange their multiple cups of fluid; one contestant opens sachets of ketchup into water.

The master of ceremonies, Australian expat Sam Barclay, revs up the thousands here to watch “the sport of the people,” rolling through puns as he introduces the “weapons of mass consumption”: Competitive eaters who will try and consume as many hotdogs as possible in 10 minutes.

Among the three female contestants is the diminutive Stevie Palmer, 20, a college student from Nashville, Tennessee, who is participating in her first competitive eating event after some challenges with friends uncovered her talent.

The clock starts, and the competitors begin to shove handfuls into their mouths, most opting for the tried-and-true method of two dogs at a time, followed by dunking the buns in water to aid the swallowing process.

Palmer jumps up and down with her head cocked back to try to speed up the process. Every gag, every cough, sends a frisson through a crowd that is baying for vomit.

A radiant Palmer raises her arms as the crowd counts down the final seconds. She knows that she is off to Coney Island, her 10 dogs in 10 minutes easily defeating veteran Liz “Sweet Cheeks” McLurg.

Elated but exhausted, Stevie Palmer knows that the competition is a dangerous spectacle.

“The final in July will be the last time I’ll ever do it,” she says. “I’ve put on 10 pounds (4.5kg) in two weeks, and my face has broken out. I feel awful.”

Competitive eating champions Stevie Palmer (left) and Matthew Cohen. Picture: Elle Hardy

If it’s so awful, why are Americans obsessed with eating competitions? “Americans in general just love to eat big portions, and we’re so fast-food oriented,” she posits. “The entire idea leads to something as ridiculous and outrageous as this.”

Still clutching his trophy backstage, men’s winner Matthew “Sweet Tooth” Cohen waits anxiously for the lone portaloo to become free.

Despite an easy victory — 22 dogs, six ahead of his nearest rival — he’s disappointed in the result. “I was aiming for 25, I just couldn’t get my rhythm. I’m rhythmical in all my contests,” said the 38-year-old, ranked 21st in the world but best known as a “sweets and candy specialist”.

Matthew ‘sweet tooth’ Cohen (right) shoves in two dogs at once. Picture: Elle Hardy

Cohen lags well behind the current world record of 73 and a half hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, held by 33-year-old Californian professional Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, who has been in a Federer-Nadal style rivalry with slender Japanese star Takeru Kobayashi over the past decade.

The female record of 45 is held by Korean-American Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas.

“You feel like shit for days,” Cohen said. “There’s so much sodium, they really stick in you.”

Training for Major League Eating is remarkably sophisticated, with competitors using intermittent fasting and stomach stretching tricks like eating a head of cabbage and then drinking 4-8 litres of water.

“I did a lot of research on Joey Chestnut and the other guys,” said Stevie Palmer. “I tried with the hot dogs, then dunked the bun and I puked immediately. I puked five times that day until I got down a technique.”

“There’s this incredible kick of adrenaline for 15-20 minutes afterwards,” she added, “but then all I want to do is sleep.”

Earlier this month, the world of competitive eating found itself in an unwelcome spotlight after a 20-year-old female student and a 42-year-old man died on the same weekend, both choking to death in amateur events.

Their deaths have prompted calls for tighter regulation of the sport, although Major League Eating events, such as Nathan’s, keep paramedics on site.

It’s not only death that competitors need to worry about — unsurprisingly, there are long-term health consequences too.

A 2007 study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that high-level competitive eaters have a freakish ability to expand their stomachs and incorporate the rapid intake of large amounts of food, and that training helps them overcome the body’s usual checks and balances that would see most people stop.

The study’s author, Professor Marc Levine, warned that the sport is a “potentially self-destructive form of behaviour that over time could lead to morbid obesity, intractable nausea and vomiting, and even the need for gastric surgery.”