(from Carey Poehlmann) The Times of London reports on yesterday’s breakfast eating contest sponsored by Premier Travel Inn that was held in London, England:

The meal — one sausage, one slice of bacon, one egg, four mushrooms and one croissant — pitted big figures in British eating such as the national champion Rob “Baby Face” Burns against newcomers such as Sir Scoffsalot and Laura Strachan.

The winner was Lup Fan Yau, whose 5¾ meals equated to two days’ worth of calories before lunch.

Lup Fan Yau works for The Sun newspaper.

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Reuters has an article and video about the Nettles Eating Championship held at the Bottle Inn in Dorset, England last weekend.

As part of the ‘World nettle Eating Championship’ competitors had to munch their way through the leaves in one hour. Mouth numbing substances were not permitted, but a swig of beer between bites was allowed.

Although cooked nettles lose their sting, eating raw nettles can turn the tongue black and make the lips swell, but that did not stop the participants from munching on their greens in order to become champion and win a crate of beer.

The winners were 28-year-old graphic designer Paul Collins who managed to eat 58 feet of nettles and 23-year-old Sonia Fewkes who got through 30 feet.

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The Sun reports that spaces are still available in the breakfast eating championship which will be held in London, England on Tuesday. The contest will last 12 minutes and 35 seconds, which is claimed to be the average breakfast time. Sun employee, Lup Fun Yau, recognized by Guinness as the record holder for jam doughnuts, will participate.

The winner is the person who devours the most breakfast trays in the time allowed, each of which contains a mammoth 1,300 calories.

It contains 1 sausage; 1 fried egg; 1 rasher bacon; 1 tomato; 1 tbsp baked beans; 1 slice white toast with butter; 1 bowl Cornflakes with 200ml milk; 1 pot organic strawberry yoghurt; 1 croissant; 1 blueberry muffin.

And if you’re out in front, you’ll walk away (or maybe waddle away) with a £500 prize and the title of Britain’s Best Biggest Breakfast Eater.

To take part, call 08701 977346 and leave your details.

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(From GizmoCafe) After a woman died following a water drinking contest in which the prize was a Nitendo Wii, another ill considered eating contest held in conjunction with a video game has taken place. The Daily Mail reports on a contest to promote the launch of “Gods of War II” for the Sony PlayStation 2:

Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

…

At the event, guests competed to see who could eat the most offal – procured elsewhere and intended to resemble the goat’s intestines – from its stomach.

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LateNightPictures.com has some pictures of a competitor in the (London UK) All You Can Eat Breakfast Championship with two “breakfast-ettes” (Katie Downes and Malene Espensen) No results or other details are provided.

update The event was to announce the contest which will take place on May 29. Premier Travel Inns has a page about the contest. First place is 500 pounds.

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Bordeaux Undiscovered reports that the wine societies of Oxford and Cambridge Universities want to have wine tasting classified as an official collegiate sport. The wine contests will be judged by how many questions about the wine a taster gets correct and not volume or speed of consumption.

Food falls into the sport category – so why not wine? Competitive Eating is considered a sport. This is a sport which involves the consumption of large quantities of food in a short time period – typically 12 minutes or less. I think the rules can be stretched to include wine tasting – don’t you?

As usual it boils down to tradition – and this is a difficult thing to break in our ancient educational establishments. Awarding colours for sporting achievements dates back to the early 19th century when Oxford and Cambridge staged their first rowing races.

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The British tabloid, The Sun, has a contest writeup of last month’s mince pie contest won by Sonya Thomas at Wookey Hole Caves. The author competed and finished with 9 pies.

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) BBC reports that Richard Townshend of Exeter, England failed to break the sprout eating record of 43 in one minute. Mr Townshend finished with 36 sprouts. The record attempt raised £250 for charity. See also: icWales, Daily Record

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This is London reports that Brendan Brockbank, an 18 year old, won the World (Single) Pie Eating Contest at Harry’s Bar in Wigan, England. After winning by finishing his meat pie in 78 seconds, he won the vegetarian pie contest by eating a smaller pie in 34 seconds. (Sonya Thomas ate one pie every 13 seconds over 10 minutes at the mince pie contest last month)

BBC article

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) The BBC blog has an entry about whether they should have covered last month’s mince pie eating contest. The entry currently has 19 comments one of which reads:

By covering it, you endorse it? Rubbish. All this worrying and fussing is silly. I have a very hard time indeed believing that, after seeing the piece, any child would think “I know! I’ll try shoving several packs of mince pies in my mouth, too!” Kids aren’t going to get fat because of coverage of mince pie eating competitions. It’s the equivalent of suggesting that, after watching a football match, a fat child will suddenly be inspired to lose all their excess weight and go and play football. If that was the case, all we’d have to do is shove fat children in front of “Sky Sports” and the problem would be solved.

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Happy Chanukah to the Jewish readership of this site. TotallyJewish.com has an article about a party in which the largest menorah in London, England was assembled from legos. (It is not clear if it is the largest menorah in London overall or just the largest menorah made of legos 😉 ) During the party, a doughnut eating contest was held. The winner ate 10 doughnuts, a better showing than Hank “the Tank” had in his Wing Bowl stunt today.

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) From The Evening Telegraph:

Poppadom lovers guzzled as many of the Indian wafers as they could today in a bid to break the world record. A parliamentary aide, solicitors, rugby players and students were among competitors vying for the title in The Balaka, St Andrews. The winner was reigning champion, Dundee businessman Tim Stobbs, who scoffed 15 in five minutes, beating his previous 12.

See also: whichfranchise.com, Daily Record & Ananova

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Reuters has a video of the mince pie contest in England last week.

Red Orbit has a first person account by a participant in the contest

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A brief video clip of the mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves won by Sonya Thomas is available on youtube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=EIomf4Tjmno

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from Wookey Hole Caves Big Eat web page

Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas 46 mince pies £1000
Shane Bridle – Sign Maker, Somerset 15 £500
Gary Harrison – Chef, Wells 13 £250
Simon Davies – Wells Town Mayor 10
Roberto Mendez – Brazil 10
Terry Harrison – Chef, Wells 9
Nick Francis – The Sun, London 9
“Fat Kenny” – Circus Director, Devon 8
Paris Troy – GWR Radio, Bristol 7.5
Jayne Fryer – The Daily Mail, London 7
Andy Bush – DJ, Bristol 7
Mattie Andrew – Chef, Wellls 6
A D Tree Pirate – Pirate, Somerset 6
Ellie West – Wildlife Worker, Somerset 5
Lisa Knights – South West Tonight 1

The IFOCE.com results apparently get 3rd place wrong

updated metro.co.uk has a picture and brief article

updated #2
Independent article
Daily Mail article

updated #3
BBC article

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Slashfood has a post on the two main formats for eating contests, fixed duration and fixed amount, focusing on the decision of the “World” Pie Eating contest to change from a three minute duration to awarding victory to the eater who can eat a single pie in the shortest amount of time.

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Channel 4 has a video clip of an on site interview Sonya Thomas did to promote Wednesday’s mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves.

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from timesonline.co.uk:

With the news that the Wigan-based World Pie Eating Championship has changed its rules to join the fight against obesity — and introduced a vegetarian option — sport in the town needed to regain its credibility, and were it not for a nightmarish 90 seconds shortly before half-time, this might have been Wigan Athletic’s fifth win in six matches.

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The Manchester Evening news reports that the “World Pie Eating Championship”, held at Harry’s Bar in Wallgate has altered its rules to appease the health lobby. The contest format was originally an eat all you can in 3 minutes, but now the winner will be the eater who can eat a single meat pie in the fastest amount of time. A vegetarian pie eating contest was also added.

This is a different contest from the IFOCE endorsed mince pie eating contest that will be held a week from now.

updated this is London and metro.co.uk also have articles

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(from iht.com) The web page for the mince pie eating contest to be held at Wookey Hole Caves can be found at http://www.wookey.co.uk/bigeat/ Sonya Thomas is definitely an expected entrant.

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The Guardian reports that a mince pie eating contest sanctioned by the IFOCE will be held at Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset on November 29. Sonya Thomas is expected to compete for the £1,000 ($1890) first prize.

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UPI reports on the peperoncino eating contest in Albese in northern Italy. The winner, Franco Rotunno, managed 19.5 ounces of peppers in 30 minutes. Drinking water and wine and eating bread and potatos were allowed. The women’s division winner, Mariella Andreani, ate 8.8 ounces. Three Thais participated, making this contest perhaps the first with international representation in which the winner failed to eat more than an ounce per minute.

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Blogcritics.org has a review of the Hungarian film Taxidermia which is playing at the London Film Festival. The review summarizes the movie’s competitive eating scenes. It appears unlikely that IFOCE will give its seal of approval to this motion picture.

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Yahoo news has a slideshow of a salo (pig’s fat) festival in Lutsk, Ukraine. A salo eating contest was held in which Volodymur Stregalin ate a kilogram of salo in 25 minutes. A 141 foot long salo sandwich was also assembled during the festival.

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The Times of London has a column about the lack of success by eaters from the United Kingdom.

Obviously, cultural objections to competitive eating might include the fact that it is vulgar, mindless, upsetting to watch and, in a world in which people are starving, morally obscene. You could say the same about Formula One, though, and that still has its UK-based participants.

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