Dig in!
For those who don’t know, poutine is a French-Canadian dish consisting of french fries covered in cheese curds and gravy. This past weekend the World Poutine Eating Championship was held in Toronto, an event sanctioned by Major League Eating (yeah, I’d never heard of it either) and sponsored by Smoke’s Poutine at their annual Smoke-a-Palooza festival.
Two years ago the contest was won by a guy who ate 20.4 pounds of poutine in 10 minutes. That number was crushed the next year though by competitive-eating legend Joey Chestnut, who swallowed 28 pounds of the stuff in the same time. This year Mr. Chestnut won again but only ate 26.5 pounds. Maybe he pulled up seeing how far ahead he was.
Needless to say, I couldn’t imagine eating 28 (or 26, or 20) pounds of anything in ten minutes. I will say that Mr. Chestnut is very good at what he does, and he trains hard for these events (yes, training is involved). This is a guy who can (and has) eaten 76 hot dogs in twelve minutes. But this kind of thing, in addition to looking gross, isn’t healthy. Most deaths from these stunts occur due to choking, but even assuming you get everything down it seems to me like you’re ravaging your body. I think you could get clogged arteries just from watching this amount of poutine being consumed.
Still . . . 28 pounds. Disgusting, sure. But you have to be impressed, just a little.
Alex Good 
Nope, not even a little.
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Well perhaps a lot then.
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Don’t they get their stomachs pumped after these events? There is no way a stomach can digest that much unchewed food after all.
I’ve seen poutine, but it just never appealed to me. I don’t know why, because it is the kind of food that normally would 🙂
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I’m not sure if they have to use a pump. I read up a bit and apparently after an event contestants have to deal with “delayed gastric emptying” due to the “intestinal traffic jam” caused in the small intestine. The stomach can expand remarkably, and contestants usually fast before a contest, but the small intestine is a narrow opening so what follows is days of “unpredictable and unpleasant” bowel movements caused by the “gastric distress.” The heart is also severely stressed and there are blood pressure spikes. It’s just not healthy at all.
I think I only tried poutine once. Never appealed to me much either. Maybe as a side, but not as a meal in itself.
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Wow, more than I ever wanted to know. Why would someone do that to themselves? It sounds like hell on earth to be honest…
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Probably just the combination of two human drives: competition and the demand for attention. What else can any of these people do that they might possibly be the best in the world at, or that anyone would care about? A lot of life is a freakshow now.
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I’ve already mentioned that I don’t like playing with food, didn’t like the Meaning of Life skit, and I can add that competitive eating just disgusts me. If you’re gonna be impressed by this, might as well be impressed by Bonnie Blue, too.
You, on the other hand, have already mentioned poutine, and I had to look it up. Except for the “curds” part of the cheese (that’s a word that doesn’t appeal to me, whereas “cheese” itself is great), I was intrigued. So I tried making my own version, substituting mild cheddar cubes. I had high hopes, but it didn’t really work out very well. Two-and-a-half stars at best. : -)
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Yeah, competitive eating is unsafe and off-putting. As are the sex marathons. But one can be impressed by something and not think it’s a good thing. This happened to me in the gym a couple of weeks ago when I was talking to a girl who was just shredded. She must have been down to 5-7% body fat and had lines of muscle criss-crossing all over her legs. I told her she was impressive. Was she healthy? I don’t think so. But she was impressive.
I think the gravy really makes the poutine. But that combination is something you don’t want to eat a lot of. I think 80 hot dogs would be healthier.
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