Joey Chestnut has updated his YardBarker blog with a report on his macaroni and cheese record he set at halftime of the San Jose Stealth game. He announces that he will run in Pat’s Run, a 4.2 mile race held in Tempe, Arizona on April 18 and hopes to finish in 35 minutes or less. The race will honor the memory of Pat Tillman, former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger.

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A list of eating challenges associated with famous athletes follows:

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KCRA has an interview with former Sacramento King Chris Webber in the kitchen of his restaurant, Center Court. The chef is preparing a 44 ounce “Fab Five” burger which Webber says is free to a customer who can finish it.

It is not mentioned if the burger challenge has a time limit and if time outs are allowed if there is a maximum duration.

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The TV Funhouse clip in which Takeru Kobayashi dunked his hot dog buns to avert a flood was not shown on last night’s compilation of sports themed segments from Saturday Night Live, but a fake commercial in which John Belushi plays a champion decathlete who attributes his success to his diet was broadcast and the captured clip is attached below

belushidecathlon.mp4 (2.4 MB)

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Actor Ryan Reynolds, author of an anti-competitive eating blog entry for the Huffington Post, is apparently not equally opposed to all activities which consume calories which could be redirected to the starving poor of the world. The website for People Magazine reports that the husband of Scarlett Johannson claimed on an episode of the Rachael Ray show that he ate almost 10,000 calories after finishing the New York City marathon.

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The Dayton Daily News has an article about Cincinnati Bengals field goal kicker Shayne Graham, who is regarded as the team trencherman despite being one of the smaller players on the roster at a weight of 205 pounds. Graham has eaten 14 chili dogs and 18 tacos on separate occasions. Today he will host approximately 15 of his teammates for a Thanksgiving dinner. 48 pounds of turkey will be cooked for that meal.

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• Nacho Mountain trailer, probably not safe for work
• Ian Hickman’s page on videojug.com. He is listed as the competitive eating expert on that website and has at least 9 interview clips.
• Michael Phelps to appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday. He says his actual calorie consumption during training is 8,000-10,000 and not the reported 12,000
• Kielbasa eating contest in New Orleans Saturday
• Kevin Carr is attempting to start his own religion
• Pumpkin pie eating contest tonight in New Oxford (York area), PA
• Article about Tiffany Kuhne, who was awarded a Volvo used in the movie Twilight after winning a pie eating contest on the Tyra Banks show

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Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps appeared on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live and starred in a fake ad promoting his diet which featured items such as a pitcher of hollandaise sauce. Jared Fogle from the Subway commercials makes a cameo.

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Michael Phelps devotes several pages of his 2004 autobiography, Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface, to his eating exploits, which can be read online on Google Books. After mentioning his typical breakfast at Pete’s Grille: three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions and mayonnaise, an omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast with powdered sugar and three chocolate chip pancakes, Phelps describes his competitive eating history, which includes living food items:

My friends and I used to make bets about eating food. At an all-you-can-eat buffet one day, we decided to eat all we could. Our table tried to eat the place out of everything, and we nearly did. Of all my friends, Matt is the one who is usually up for a good eating challenge. And when teenage guys get together, some of the challenges can be kind of . . . teenage. Matt made $30 from me once by mixing wasabi paste with soy sauce and inhaling it through his nose. He won a DVD from me one night after we ate dinner and then went for burgers. There was no way we were ready for more food, but at the drop of a challenge, Matt added a quarter pound burger for dessert. Three years ago, we were at my old girlfriend’s house, watching a guy on TV trying to swallow some small fish whole. He couldn’t so Matt and I figured we could. Swimming really came in handy, because I was able to hold my breath during the full swallow. Goldfish aren’t that big, but they start flopping around in there and they can gross you out. The money is never an issue during these challenges. If you win a penny, you feel you’ve accomplished something, though I’m not really sure what it is. I only won a dollar for downing my 50th chicken wing at Bill Bateman’s in Towson, but just think, with that dollar, I could buy another chicken wing. Believe it or not, there is really something I don’t like to eat: angel hair pasta. I don’t like the texture of it.

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Following up on last week’s post about Michael Phelps’ 12,000 calorie a day diet, here are some other male athletes who reportedly ate over 10,000 calories a day (I will try to have a post up about female athletes sometime this weekend.)

• Michigan State offensive lineman Tony Mandarich, 12000-15000 cal/day from a 1989 Sports Illustrated article, a list of Mandarich’s weekly grocery shopping is also available (Mandarich’s diet may or may not have been steroid assisted)
• Judo competitor Myles Porter, up to 12,000 cal/day, from a MSNBC article and video about Olympians diets (1984 Nathan’s champion Birgit Felden was a member of the West German judo team)
• 1976 Olympics swimmer Gordon Downie, 13,000 – 18,000 cal / day
• Icelandic strongman Jón Páll Sigmarsson (now deceased), 10,000-20,000 cal / day from a caption from a youtube documentary
• Ultramarathon swimmer Skip Storch, who attempted to swim from Albany to New York City, 17,000 cal / day from a NY Times article
• Bodybuilder Victor Richards, 30,000 calories a day, reportedly from a daily diet consisting of:
  

  3 pounds of brown rice.
  25-30 chicken breasts.
  75-120 egg whites.
  10-12 cans of corn.
  5-6 cans of pineapple

• A Sports Illustrated article from 1981 about pro wrestler “Andre the Giant” lists a daily calorie consumption of 7,000 calories a day, but that figure comes solely from alcohol and does not include food and non-alcoholic drinks. (quote is from part 6)
  

  Like most people who drink because they enjoy it rather than because they have to, Andre isn’t bothered overmuch by the occasional dry period. Last year, for example, after an extended trip to Japan and Australia , he found that his weight had reached the unacceptably high figure of 540 pounds, whereupon he put himself on a strict diet—no alcohol, and only one meal a day. In four weeks he dropped 80 pounds, which becomes less surprising with the realization that he consumes approximately 7,000 calories in alcohol a day.

  As for his efforts at table, Andre seems to eat less than might be expected, though, of course, far more than the average person. Four eggs, bacon, hash browns, four pieces of whole wheat toast, a pint of orange juice and two iced coffees suffice to break his nightly fast, and his evening meal, generally taken several hours before his match, will depend on where he is in the world, although the quantity will be about twice that consumed by your garden variety gourmand. Occasionally, however, he will hold back on the alcohol and give full play to his appetite. He recently recounted an evening spent in a small, second-rate restaurant. “I was tired, boss, and I only wanted to have a quick bite and go to bed, but this waitress, she kept pointing at me and talking about me to the other customers. Then she asked me in a loud voice if a cup of soup and a cracker would be enough. And she laughed. I told her no, that I was hungry, and wished the entire menu to be brought, one dish at a time. It took me four hours to eat it all.”

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• Paul Barlow wins Six Flags Eating Triathlon (video file)
• Its eating challenges week at Two Bites in Suburbia
• Orlando columnist attempts Michael Phelps’ diet
• Wiki listing big eaters and extreme omnivores in popular culture
• Gal Sone samples and ranks all the items at an Italian restaurant and the pudding she chose for #1 becomes sold out

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The New York Post has an article about the diet of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps which consists of 3 meals containing 4,000 calories each for a total of approximately 12,000 calories. Phelps’ typical breakfast:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog and Bleacher Report have entries about Phelps’ food consumption. The eight gold medal hopeful is a regular patron of Pete’s Grill in Baltimore according to a MyFoxDC article, so perhaps he could enter that restaurant’s annual pancake eating contest.

The New York Times has a slideshow of Olympians which lists their daily calorie consumption:

• Christian Cantwell, shotput, 335 lbs., 5000 calories
• Deena Kastor, marathon, 103 lbs., 4000 calories
• Cheryl Haworth, weightlifting, 300 lbs., 3000 – 4000 calories
• Brett Newlin, rowing, 225 lbs., 6000 calories
• Sarah Hammer, cycling, 135 lbs., 4500 calories

Rower Jamie Schroeder estimates he consumes 8,000 – 10,000 calories a day.

Volleyball player Stacy Sykora has the highest daily calorie consumption I could find for a current female Olympian at 5,000, with a sizeable percentage of that coming from McDonald’s burgers.

Canadian rower Heather Clarke might have set the all time record for female Olympians when she consumed 10,000 calories a day in preparing for the 1980 games.

update

MSNBC has a video of all the food listed in the New York Post article
An article and video about Michael Phelps’ visits to Michigan restaurants are available.
Youtube has a NBC commercial about Phelps
RushLimbaugh.com has a commentary on Phelps’ diet and the British left-wing newspaper The Guardian calls Phelps a “right greedy pig”
ABC news has an article on Olympians diets
According to a Saturday Night Live transcript, Diana Nyad ate 12,000 – 12,500 calories a day while training for ultramarathon swimming, which is not an Olympic sport.

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The top 2 finishers in yesterday’s beef patty eating contest at Meritone Family Festival in Connecticut can both be found in the bodybuilding.com forums. “Furious” Pete Czerwinski took first place by finishing 14 beef patties in 3 minutes and 14 seconds (video and pictures) and John Taylor, runner-up in the Nathan’s Hartford qualifier, was the only other competitor to finish his 14 patties in the 8 minute limit. Kara Walker won the amateur contest in her first competition.

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(From The Big Lead) Yahoo’s hockey blog, Puck Daddy, has an interview with Krista Lander about her preparations for competing against two members of the Odessa Jackalopes minor league hockey team in Fuddrucker’s one pound burger challenge. Ms. Lander is the sports anchor for CBS 7 and the contest will be a part of “Krista’s Sports Challenge” segments in which she competes against local athletes in various activities. The contest is expected to be televised on Thursday.

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Randy Thomas and Renaldo Wynn are not the only Washington Redskins to have participated in eating contests. In a post for the Yahoo! sports blog Shutdown Corner, Chris Cooley writes about his competitive eating experience:

The Ritz Carlton in St. Louis has the most unbelievable bacon I’ve ever tasted. Not only did I love the bacon, everyone on the team was blown away by the taste. Three or four of us decided to forget all other foods and have a bacon-eating contest. I won with 39 pieces and was was sick on the floor for the next hour in the visitor locker room. We tried to keep up with the contest, but no other bacon was up to par with St. Louis.

I’m not saying that someone can go on the McDonald’s “Super Size Me” diet and be a great athlete, but so much more goes into the sport than what goes into a player’s body. Someone might assume that a healthy eater would be a much better football player, especially at any skill position, and I would almost have to agree with him or her. But, as I finish up my sixth Mountain Dew for the day, I have proved to myself that my diet has continually worked for me. I eat what makes me happy, but I put in a tremendous amount of hard work as well. I’ve thought about trying to change, but there is something to be said about four consistent and healthy seasons in the NFL (I have never missed a practice), as well as going to the Pro Bowl.

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“Furious” Pete has started a forum thread on bodybuilding.com titled “Ask a Competitive Eater Anything” which has already reached 8 pages in about a day.

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Juris Shibayama has a page on IFOCE.com in which he describes his exercise regimen.

Hall Hunt announces that he is going to start training for a marathon and has a report on the 10k he ran last weekend.

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(Via Gazizza.net) Babe Ruth was not the only New York Yankee outfielder of the 1910s/1920s famed for his appetite. According to baseball-reference.com:

1919 – One of the most bizarre off-the-field incidents history takes place in Jacksonville, Florida. New York Yankees outfielder Ping Bodie competes against an ostrich named “Percy” in a spaghetti-eating contest! Bodie wins the competition when Percy passes out after his 11th plate of pasta.

Some accounts have “Percy” dying after the contest.

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The Sponichi Annex reports that Natsuko “Gal” Sone went to the Chiba Lotte Marines training camp and ate pancakes with Marines manager Bobby Valentine, who formerly managed the Texas Rangers and the New York Mets. Valentine won a pancake eating contest by eating 120 pancakes when he was in college.

See also Sanspo.com, The Mainichi Shimbun

Gal Sone also observed Valentine’s Day by going to the Godiva chocolate factory in Belgium.

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