Why You Shouldn’t Enter Hot Dog Eating Contests: What Happens to Eaters’ Stomachs

The prize pool is also usually small – or even non-existent. In general, everything seems like an ordinary pleasure – that’s why we decided to tell you why you can’t eat several sausages in a bun in five minutes, and what happens if you try to do it.

The mouth is the first to be involved in the work – as Miki Sudo says, the jaws must be specifically trained to be able to quickly tear food into pieces. Those who do not prepare themselves are at great risk – their joints can simply get stuck, and such pinching is not very pleasant.

After about five seconds, the first hot dog is in the esophagus, the tube that connects the mouth and stomach. Since the food is not chewed properly, its fragments can enter the airways and cause suffocation. This is why paramedics are always on duty at championships.

The more sausages a person eats, the higher the risk: the stomach cannot absorb the food as quickly and so it accumulates in the lower esophagus, which can try to “push” it back. At this point, the organ can simply rupture; it can only be restored by surgery.

Experienced “athletes” can stuff a dozen hot dogs in two minutes – this means that their stomachs have a phenomenal ability to stretch. This also changes over time – all participants have their own training technologies.

Most of them follow a simple path: they regularly eat the same hot dogs that they have to absorb for a certain time. But there are also those who prefer to drink huge amounts of water – this method was chosen, for example, by Matt Stoney, who became the winner in 2015.

Of course, all this does not go unnoticed: most professional hot dog eaters lose the ability to feel full. In order not to gain weight, they constantly count calories – this becomes the only way to understand how much they need to eat.

After seven minutes, the first pieces of buns and sausages reach the small intestine, intended for further digestion of food and absorption of nutrients. This, too, is not without problems: evolution has not even imagined that in the blink of an eye there could be 22,000 kilocalories.

The main difficulty is that food passes through the gastrointestinal tract in huge pieces – the attempts of bacteria to ferment them are delayed, which leads to severe abdominal pain. There is a documented case when a man had to spend five days in the hospital – he simply could not empty his stomach and intestines without the help of doctors.

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Trying to eat a dozen hot dogs in a competition without preparation is the same as climbing Mount Ciula Grande after watching the movie Touching the Void. Neither you nor your family should participate in such competitions, especially those organized “on your knees” – without doctors on duty nearby.

Professional “gluttons” are able to gobble down dozens of hot dogs for a reason: they put a lot of effort into cultivating this ability. So don’t try to repeat their trick: it was done by professionals who have been preparing for championships for more than a year or two.

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