By Jason Fagone
“To be up on level, shoving nutrition on your face, beats daily life for many people.” —David “Coondog” O’Karma, aggressive eater
“Hungry” Charles Hardy. Ed “Cookie” Jarvis. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas. Joey “Jaws” Chestnut. Will such names someday be seemed again upon because the pioneers of a brand new manifestation of the irrepressible American urge for food for festival, cash, popularity, and self-transformation? they are going to if the promoters of the newly rising game of aggressive consuming have their approach. In
Horsemen of the Esophagus, Jason Fagone stories at the yr he spent within the abdominal of this awakening beast.
Fagone’s trek takes him to 27 consuming contests on continents, from the area Grilled Cheese consuming Championship in Venice seashore, California, to Nagoya, Japan, the place he pursues an interview with the mythical Takeru Kobayashi, possibly the main prodigious eater on the earth this present day, and to the Nathan’s recognized sizzling puppy consuming Contest at Coney Island, the sport’s annual grand finale, the place Kobayashi has eaten greater than 50 canine in 12 mins. alongside the way in which, Fagone discovers an absurd, occasionally troubling tradition at the make, able to bust out of its county reasonable and neighborhood-fat-guys area of interest and seize a juicy piece of the big-time tv sports/Vegas spectacle jackpot.
Fagone meets promoters like George Shea, the P. T. Barnum of the overseas Federation of aggressive consuming (aka IFOCE, “the governing physique of all stomach-centric sport”) and enters the lives of 3 “gurgitators”: David “Coondog” O’Karma, a fiftyish, six-two residence painter from Ohio who’s “not able to turn into invisible”; invoice “El Wingador” Simmons, the Philly Wing Bowl legend who's taking pictures for a 5th chicken-eating championship even though it can be killing him; and Tim “Eater X” Janus, a lean younger Wall highway dealer who takes a heavily medical and athletic method of the pursuit of consuming mountains of foodstuff in record-breaking instances. every one in his personal means feels as though he has misplaced or now not but came across anything crucial in existence, and every is pushed by way of the determined wish that via intake he may perhaps but locate redemption, that even within the junkiest of America’s junk tradition, real nourishment could be chanced on. in any case, because it says at the respectable IFOCE seal: In Voro Veritas (In Gorging, Truth).
With forays into the gastrointestinal mechanics of the alimentary canal (“it’s what unbuilds the area to construct you,” yet, good day, you could pass that half in the event you like), the recommendations and methods of the skilled gurgitators (pouring a bit membership soda on most sensible of high-carb meals makes them more straightforward to swallow), and the ancient roots of the aggressive consuming phenomenon,
Horsemen of the Esophagus offers the French anything else to dislike approximately the US. And it provides the remainder of us nutrients for considered the unusual and not likely areas the yankee Dream can occasionally lead.
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