The purpose of the new poll is to see if there is any demand for a competitive eating / eating challenge get-together outside of New York and Pennsylvania. The choices in the list were based on known locations of readers/commenters. Other locations can be added to the poll if requested.

The new poll asks where you think “Furious” Pete Czerwinski should be ranked in a unified ranking of all North American competitive eaters.

The registration date for logged in commenters has been added to comment threads to encourage commenters to register and prevent spoofing of registered users.

The modified wordpress file wp-includes/comment-template.php is available. The function comment_author_registration_date() has been added to this file.

The new poll asks how you think contest slots should be allocated when the demand exceeds the supply.

The new poll asks who you think will win Sunday’s Krystal Square Off finals.

Paul Barlow predicts that Kobayashi will eat 110 burgers to edge Joey Chestnut by 3 in his myspace blog.

The new poll asks who you think should be in second place in the next IFOCE poll. Some people think that Kobayashi was the rightful winner of Nathan’s, which could put Joey Chestnut in the second place position.

Today is the official release date of Gal Sone’s autobiography. The new poll asks what autobiography by an eater who debuted in 2003 or earlier would you be most interested in reading.

The new poll asks who you think is currently leading the IFOCE Rookie of the Year race. Patrick Vandam was added to the choices from the 2008 Rookie of the Year poll from several months ago and Brad Sciullo and Tim Brown (due to being a candidate for the 2007 award) were removed.

The sidebar has been updated with finalists for the upcoming Nathan’s finals and the total cash winnings for this year. Joe Menchetti is currently the leader in cash prizes (Joey Chestnut’s Wing Bowl prizes would make him the overall winner in total value won)

I do not have the prize breakdown for the pig skin eating contest after first place. Please inform me of any incorrect or missing prizes. Here are the current top 10 cash winners for 2008:

$6200	“Gentleman” Joe Menchetti
$5250	Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti
$3000	Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas
$2500	Tim “Eater X” Janus
$2500	Joey “Jaws” Chestnut
$1000	Juliet Lee
$1000	J. D. Castile
$1000	Chris “The Big Cat”
$1000	“Furious” Pete Czerwinski
$1000	Erik “The Red” Denmark

The new poll asks what expansion pack containing additional characters would you most like to see for the upcoming Major League Eating Video game.

This blog has been upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. No differences should be visible in the main blog, but the login and user profile page are somewhat different.

The new poll asks what commenting policy you would like to see on eatfeats. The results will be non-binding. Automatic approval of unregistered comments will not be implemented regardless of the results. Over 200,000 spam comments have been received by this website.

A listing of the 10 eaters with the most results in the eatfeats database is listed below. A list of all eaters with 10 or more results is available after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

The new poll asks what member of the current IFOCE top 25 would you most like to see a song about on “Stick to Blogging”, Beautiful Brian’s new CD. The desired song could contain either praise or criticism.

A fragment of a song called “Let Me Tell Ya” has been added to the CD website. The song makes accusations of steroid use, but the clip does not provide enough details to determine the identity of the alleged steroid user.

The new poll asks how many members of the current IFOCE top 10 will not participate in this year’s Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. The participation of several members in that list is in doubt. Sonya Thomas has stated that she will no longer participate in contests allowing dunking, which will result in her missing Nathan’s if she adheres to that restriction. Joey Chestnut has stated he is not sure if he will defend his title, and an item in Beautiful Brian’s Bits & Pieces said that Chip Simpson will miss all IFOCE contests in 2008. Kobayashi claims to still be suffering the effects of “jawthritis”.

The 2008 Nathan’s qualifier schedule will hopefully be released soon; last year’s slate was made public on March 1.

A link to the list of eating challenges has been added to the blog header. There are now over 100 challenges in that list.

I have made a list of all the eating challenges listed in the database sorted by state at http://eatfeats.com/challenges.php There are now 96 challenges in that lists. I have included menu items that are abnormally large even if they do not have an award if they are finished in a certain time. I want to add the ability to search the list by food type.

The new poll asks who you think is the leading candidate to be named the IFOCE rookie of the year at the 2008 Nathan’s finals. I am defining rookie as someone who emerged in 2007.

The poll should now be accepting votes without hanging up. Thanks to the Hangman for the bug report.

The new poll asks what you think is the greatest “reversal of fortune” in competitive eating history. Here is more information about some of the choices:

“Sloth” at the Wing Bowl video

Pat Philbin “Baby Bird video after the 2006 Opie & Anthony Egg Nog contest

Dale Boone at the 2004 jambalaya contest - a picture of the after effects is available

Kobayashi near the end of the 2007 Nathan’s finals video

Choose whatever criteria you want in ranking: contest significance, fame of reverser, amount of reversal, etc.

The new poll asks who you think is the world’s best female competitive eater after Sonya Thomas.

There is so little going on in United States competitive eating, I have decided to declare this “International Week” (which actually started last Friday afternoon). Unless major news breaks, all posts will be about non-US contests or eaters until this weekend.

The links in the blog sidebar have been updated. If you have an unlisted competitive eating related link that you would like added, or if your link was removed and you would like it reinstalled, please email the URL. Only links which have been inactive for several months have been removed.

Megamunch has a blog entry requesting more prize money for lower finishers.

The new polls asks what fraction of a contest’s purse do you think should go to the top 3 finishers.

The new poll asks what is the most important factor in deciding whether or not you decide to participate in an eating contest.