• Kristy Spurlock profile in the Salisbury Post
• Dale Boone wins Chattahoochee Mountain Fair chili dog contest
• “Feel the Heat” Chicago jalapeno eating contest information
• Interview with Jo “Gavonne” Rose at the cannoli contest
• Entrants list for todays Knoxville Krystal qualifier

Erica Pierson, a DJ at Love 96.1 FM, attempted Tumbleweed’s 2 pound burger challenge last October. The owner of Tumbleweed’s donated $500 to the Spinal Cord Injury Project after she successfully completed the burger.

Galleries of the recent Nathan’s qualifiers held in Las Vegas and Apple Valley, Minnesota are now available. Captions for the Las Vegas gallery report that Rich LeFevre ate 32 hot dogs and not the 31 in the official report.

The Las Vegas Sun has an article containing a picture of Rich LeFevre and Sarah Jane from one of the galleries. Sarah Jane was the only female competitor and previously auditioned for “American Idol”. Like Ron Koch, she works as a casino photographer. She finished with 8.5 hot dogs, which puts her in the company of 8 females who are known to have broken the 8 HDB mark:

39 Sonya Thomas, 2007, 12 minutes
28 Juliet Lee, 2007, 12 minutes
25 Carlene LeFevre, 2005, 12 minutes
22.25 Takako Akasaka, 2000, 12 minutes
18 Miyuki Iwata, 2004, 12 minutes
12 Melody Andorfer, 1972, 5 minutes
9.5 Birgit Felden, 1984, 10 minutes
8.5 Sarah Jane, 2008, 10 minutes

Reflector.com has a page dedicated to Kristin Day’s recent attempt at Andy’s Big “A” 50 ounce burger challenge. The page has 5 videos, a slideshow along with an article by Kristin, probably making Kristin’s meal the best documented burger challenge by a female since Kate Stelnick completed the 96er in January 2005.

OCMexFood has a report on Monday’s taco eating contest held at Tacos & Co. in Irvine, California. Karina Muniz won the contest by eating 8 California tacos in 4 minutes. Muniz was the only female in the field of 23 and entered the contest at the last minute. Jeff Fong came in second. Most of the competitors were students from UC Irvine, which Justin Mih attended.

See also Fast Food Maven

The Kestrel Inn offers a 200+ ounce steak on it’s menu, which is reportedly the world’s largest commercially available steak. The BBC has an article about a 2005 contest in which diners attempted to complete that steak. Sara Manifold of Wigan was declared the winner in that contest after eating 100 ounces of steak over five hours. The article also says that the landlady of the restaurant claims her son in law ate 120 ounces of the steak.

In the comments to a video of a Pointersaurus attempt, “socca4u” announced that she and her sister became the first all female team to complete the 12+ pound pizza and win $500, but their feat had yet to be recorded on Pointer’s web site. The finishers list has now been updated to include Pam and Jennifer Cooney of Katy, Texas. Another comment says the two women finished in 20 minutes (I believe one of the two IFOCE teams took 14 minutes).

“socca4u” is most likely Pam Cooney because she was a member of University of Alamaba at Birmingham soccer team. She competed in the Maccabiah Games in Israel and was named both all-American by the Jewish Sports Review and to the first team of the 2005 NSCAA/adidas College Women Scholar All-South Region after posting a 3.77 gpa.
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A high definition video of the french fry eating contest between Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Canady and Hatsuyo Sugawara has been uploaded to stage6. The video begins with Ms. Canady showing how thin the skin on her stomach is. She is then examined in a device which apparently shows her stomach is larger than normal. The french fry contest is interrupted for footage of “Rubber Gut” at a diner. Her tab is apparently $539.26.

Video captures from the clip are below:

The blog for the Princeton Oyster Bowl reports that two time defending champion Kristina Costa will not be able to defend her crown because she will be in South Africa during the contest. The website claims that the current favorites are 2005 winner Roy Cherris and Barbara Devaney, who lost to Kristina Costa in overtime in 2006. Last year’s first prize was a 42 inch plasma TV, this year’s prize has not been listed.

The online video site stage6.com has clips from several Japanese competitive eating programs I have not seen before. In one program, Tomoko Miyake’s buffet club goes to a restaurant and is weighed on a large group scale before they start eating. The inital weight of the five diners is 226.8 kg (499 lb). After they complete their meal, the new combined weight is 249.6 kg (549 lb), a weight gain of about 50 pounds, or 10 pounds per person.

Other videos include:

Sakura Takahashi eating more than 15 pounds of noodles

Kana Kanisawa completing several eating challenges

Tomoko Miyake defeating a pajama clad oppenent in a karaoke duel

Takuya Yamamoto finishing a large bowl of noodles.

Parkstone, England resident Louisa Tyrrell turned 109 in April. An article in the Daily Echo last year provides an unexpected theory for her longevity:

Each morning Louisa, who is believed to be the oldest person in the area, breakfasts on porridge with honey and toast with chocolate spread at her home in Wessex Lodge Private Retirement Home, in Munster Road, Parkstone.

But her favourite treat, which she has been promised for her birthday party along with cake, ice cream and chocolates, is jam and bread.

The home’s manager Julie Dayman, said: “She eats like a horse, but she particularly likes sweet things. Sometimes she’ll eat two dinners and two puddings.”

The claim that a 90 pound woman was the only person to ever finish the Niner Diner’s challenge of a three pound burger with five pounds of fries adds another entry in the list of unnamed women who have reportedly done well in restaurants’ eating challenges which also includes:

The first person to finish the 9 pound Barrick Burger at the Plaza Casino in Las Vegas.

A yelp expedition to Spike’s Junkyard Dogs in Boston took a picture of the wall of fame in that establishment. A closeup of the “top dogs”, both females, on that wall follows after the jump. The hot dogs at Spike’s are reportedly larger than a typical hot dog.

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Chie “the Nurse” Kakazu competing in the Okayama wanko soba eating contest appears on the cover of the October issue of the magazine published by the government of the city of Niimi in Okayama prefecture.

Greene County (Indiana) Daily reports that Jessica Beall has repeated as winner of the pizza eating contest held at the Apple Festival. She has won a division of the pizza contest at the Apple Festival for four of the past five years. The year she did not win, she was ineligible due to being an employee of the restaurant sponsoring the pizza contest.

2006 contest report, 2005 contest report

In her debut competition, Samantha Begoun wins Chicago area hot dog eating contest by eating 9 hot dogs in 10 minutes, defeating the male runner up by half a hot dog
Asian food eating contest for New Jersey college students
Joey Chestnut article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, requires payment to read whole article
Forum thread on running message board about the McDonald’s Dollar Menu Challenge
Slideshow of hot dog eating contest at the Southern Illinois University
Kalamazoo restaurant brings back the “Bomb Burger”, one pound with one pound of fries
Austin TX pizza contest November 17

A wing eating contest with a $5000 first prize is being sponsored by The Rock FM . Qualifiers are being held on Sunday during football games at the Wing Shack in Whitby, Ontario. The application form has the country fixed at “Canada”, so the contest is probably restricted to Canadian citizens.

The winner of the previous contest, held during the Super Bowl, was Jade Dozentroth. A video from that event can be seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q_WoRQ3ANNo She ate 60 wings (and had 20 rejected for improper cleaning)

Sakura Takahashi has the following apology (automatically translated) on her blog:

“Originator! Gluttonous king decisive game”
You participated the case where method of my eating,
“It is ugly.”
With it received the comment which is pointed out.

With new this game advance, there is no room,
Clean of method of eating to, the air did not turn.
With this, we apologize to the person who is harmed feeling, from heart.
In addition, also the image for gluttony makes bad,
With that, to we applied annoyance also the gluttonous authorized personnel and TV station.

(From SuperSized Meals) A video of an unknown woman (Suzie ?) attempting to eat 25 hot dogs & buns in 15 minutes at the Alumni Grill in Wildwood, NJ has been posted to youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6IFtYAwzM The spectators report that she finishes 15 HDB. Embedded video follows the jump.

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The list of expected entrants in today’s Jacksonville Krystal qualifier has been posted. Ranked eaters expected to participate are Hall Hunt (9), Juliet Lee(10), Tim Brown(15) and Richard Foley(50). Bryan Miller has been

Elizabeth Canady set the women’s 2 minute record to qualify by eating 13 Krystals in 2 minutes. The Lee/Canady pairing will probably be the first notable matchup between females in IFOCE history that does not involve Sonya Thomas.

The Kent County Times has an article about the pumpkin contest in Rhode Island between mixed gender pairs from the United States and Japan which describes the origin of the event:

Emi Umeda, who works with the production crew, said the name of the show translates to “Anything is possible,” and she said the point of the show is to take a topic, find who’s best in the world at it and challenge them to a contest against Japan.

One of the topics is a pumpkin-eating contest, she said, which will pit two professional American eaters against two professional Japanese eaters, making their way through five different pumpkin dishes.

In order to get started, the show wanted to find who held the record for growing the largest pumpkin in the world, which happened to be Coventry resident Ron Wallace, who owns a farm at 860 Plainfield Pike.

The American female made her competitive debut according to the article:

The Japanese contestants are Tomoko Miyake and Nobuyuki Shirota and the American contestants are “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti of Wallingford, Conn., and Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Kennedy from Florida.

“This is my first time doing this,” Kennedy said. “I made some inquiries on the Internet just out of curiosity and interest and they gave me a call.”

The article verifies reports of a US victory:

Since it may be difficult for American viewers to tune into the show to see the results, St. Jean said the American team ended up easily outpacing the team from Japan.

update BigPumpkins.com has some pictures of the contest (bottom of page) One of the pictures is captioned:

At the Wallaces on August 21, 2007, Gentleman Joe, urges his teamate to down more Pumpkin Lobster and Pumpkin pizza. She ate an entire Large Pumpkin Pizza and 2 lb Pumpkin Lobster in 3 minutes. But that was just the appetizer.

update #2 The BigPumpkins.com message board has some threads about the contest: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3

update #3 Dec 26, 2007 The quoted article spelled Elizabeth’s last name incorrectly. The correct spelling is Canady.

A video of women attempting a dessert eating challenge from Japanese TV can be viewed at http://youtube.com/watch?v=K1R0d8fg7-0 20 desserts were on a conveyor belt and a competitor would win $10,000 if she ate all the items before they reached the end. The winning challenger (who I am not familiar with) claims she can also drink a gallon of beer.

From AICE news:

As predicted by Chairman Chowhound Chapman, Gentleman Joe Menchetti and Elizabeth “Rubber-Gut” Cassidy defeated the great Shirota and Miyake in decisive fashion at the Wallace Pumpkin Farm in Rhode Island. It seems that Gentleman Joe Menchetti who cannot be beaten by man or beast in the pumpkin disciplines and the unknown “Queen Guttress” (stay tuned America, you will be finding out more about this amazing female Eater in the near future) put down the proverbial hammer as they won four of the five contests.

LJWorld reports that Sonja Frevele won the handless pie eating contest at the Leavenworth County Fair. She has won all of the pie eating contests held at that site since they began in 2002 (no contest was held in 2004)

AsiaWeek has an article about Sunday’s Chef One Dumpling Eating Contest in Flushing, Queens, on Sunday. The third place finishers are not mentioned.

CheapAssFood.com has a video from the women’s and men’s dumpling eating contest at the Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, NY Sunday. Floria Lee’s technique is quite impressive.