Talk:Competitive eating

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Is this really considered a sport as the article states? Is that not up for debate?

Competitive eating takes training, discipline & is competitive, so it's similar, but the best way to deal with the controversy is to avoid the term sport. That's better than mentioning it and shooting it down.

Contents

[edit] Disciplines of Competive Eating

I deleted this because listing all types of foods would be like trying to eat a 10 pound steak. Previoussly there was just Nathans' (repeat), Matzo Balls, bananas & Krystals.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghosts&empties (talk • contribs)

That was a pretty good (and extensive) cleanup you did. And I wholeheartedly agree with the deep-sixing of the "disciplines" section; that could (if properly maintained, which it certainly wasn't) turn into "list of foods that people eat". Though now that I think about it, describing some of the major stops on the eating circuit (which could possibly be what that section was trying for in the first place) might be beneficial to the article.
The one thing this article really needs is some citations in the "criticisms" section. Citations for the medical paragraph should be findable, and the "you're debasing food" paragraph is full of weasel words, and frankly sounds like BS. I'll put cite-needed tags there in just a minute, and do some googling for citations. — Wwagner 00:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Deaths?

I remember reading in the early 1980's I think it was, of a French snail eater by the name of Marc Quincadon who died after eating 283 snails in 100 seconds or some such feat, but I have no reference. Can somebody help? Can someone also come up with a list of deaths?

[edit] 12 minutes?

Japanese competitive eating distinguishes between oogui (大食い), eating logs of food, and hayagui (早食い), eating food fast. When no distinction is made, oogui is used for both. But many Japanese competitions, especially the televised ones, are not 12-minute speed competitions. They are from 20 minutes to an hour up to the-first-to-finish style. The 12 minute thing is strictly a U.S. IFOCE custom. And let's seem some the U.S. guys try to compete in an hour-long competition in Japan. ;-)

[edit] Bias much?

The first paragraph reads: The activity is most popular in the USA. [...] This contest has recently been completely dominated by Takeru Kobayashi, who has won it every year since 2001. Doesn't anybody else see the bleeding inconsistancy that this article focuses on the American side of competitive eating, while it is much more well known (popular is never a good word to use) in Japan and the world champion is Japanese?  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  03:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is not only US-centric, but IFOCE-centric. This cuts both ways too, with non-U.S. citizens trying to draw fall-of-the-Roman-empire cultural conclusions from the perceived popularity of competitive eating in the U.S., not realizing it's popular in many other places.

[edit] Citations, or not

I actually found a decent citation with some stuff about possible medical complications of competitive eating, which I've added. It could be a stronger citation, but it's better than nothing. As for the "some people consider..." CE to debase food and eating, a few news articles contain vaguely similar offhand comments, but nothing I'd say is authoritative. That paragraph is unsupportably-vague, made-up filler. I'd suggest changing that paragraph to something along the lines of:

"With the levels of obesity in the US considered to be reaching almost epidemic levels(numbers should be findable), competitive eating can be seen to glorify overeating.(plenty of cites available) It is worth noting, however, that many of the world's top gurgitators are by no means obese, and the top two, as of this writing (Kobayashi and Thomas), are often described as 'petite'.(lots of cites for this)"

The IFOCE has weight stats for almost all their top ranked eaters. There are some big 'uns of course (Booker and Jarvis instantly come to mind, who both clock in at over 400), but a lot of those top folks sport a pretty average build.

I'll do a little cite finding, and put up something new in a day or two, unless there's objection. — Wwagner 05:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Please do. Any additons to this article would be great! Check out the new ref tag too. -Ravedave 05:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Hey, that ref tag is pretty groovy! So now we have references and a references section. Into the big times! :) I've also made the edit I suggested above. As for authoritativness, I know there are not many books about CE (and I don't have easy access to any of those that do exist), but abcnews.com seems authoritative enough, and a few of the other web articles I referenced were published on multiple news sites (same byline, same text). — Wwagner 02:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
ifoce should be a good place to look for references.-Ravedave 04:13, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] gluttony

User:Ghosts&empties, please stop adding the SAME christian/gluttony argument over and over until you can back it up with a legitimate source. I'm not the only one who has reverted these changes of yours. If you want to go on a religious crusade against competitive eating, fine. Wikipedia, however, is not the place to do it. — Wwagner 18:08, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I replaced the word overeating with gluttony, which I don't think is a grotesque distortion. I concede that the link to The Seven Deadly Sins was piling it on. My previous comment was that CE diminishes the inherent worth of food. Both criticisms are valid (but certainly not the same) and I have referenced them. Even if you're not open to criticism, my other edits improve the article and I ask you to put them back. Ghosts&empties 18:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, so you contend that CE diminishes the inherent worth of food; can you find some external, published articles or books which say that exact thing? Your arguments, valid or not, are worthless unless you can back them up with a legitimate source. You, regardless of who you might be, are not a legitimate source; adding your own unpublished ideas is considered original research, and Wikipedia is not the place for them. Find an authoritative source who says the same thing (not something vaguely similar, the same thing) that you've been adding, in print, and I've got no problem leaving it as-is. And frankly, your change of "overeating" to "gluttony" sounds rather biased to me, and Wikipedia isn't the place for that, either. — Wwagner 19:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
As far as religious morality, here's an article that specifically addresses CE. In short, "nearly all religions have strong injunctions against gluttony and overeating, and don't often make much distinction between the two."
Although not everyone may agree that eating 40 hotdogs is gluttony because the competitive eater is motivated by competition, not desire, CE does glorify glutttony among spectators. The average spectator may not be able to hit a 100 mph fastball or drive 200 mph, but he can emulate champions in indirect ways. Not that most spectators will try to set aa personal eating record, but CE does change attitudes about binge eating. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghosts&empties (talk • contribs)
Alrighty! Feel free to add that into the article without fear of my reverting the change; that's a pretty well-written article to cite. It would make a nice third paragraph in the criticisms section. The ref tag makes it darn easy to do the references. — Wwagner 21:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A bad joke, methinks

Still shaking my head. Note, that this "competitions" are not listed in teh Guiness Book of World Records any longer (since fifteen years or so). In other places people are starving, just to have mentioned that.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.173.145.229 (talk • contribs)

People are starving in other places because of poverty, warfare, and geographic isolation, not because there is a net shortage of food in the world.--Daveswagon 20:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Many people, especially children, drown every year--yet we glorify this tragedy by holding competitions where people repeatedly cross purpose-built artificial pools. For that matter, many more people die because they don't have access to clean water and we debase it by immersing competitors into the life-giving stuff made foul with chemical treatment. Tafinucane 18:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)