I’m not sure if you remember this, but there was a reasonably recent disaster in Myanmar ( I believe a cyclone), and the international community was lining up to help. But the ruling party was very slow to accept help from anyone, especially far off foriegners, and even then demanded that it control how the supplies were distributed. There were also rumors that they kept a number of the supplies and replaced them with inferior products to give to the disaster victims.

This is an example of the problem. That in places like Africa, you have rampant civil war where if you try to distribute food aid, you’ll be robbed by militias and war lords. Or in North Korea, where you have a ruler running his nation into the ground at the expense of his own citizens.

The hot dogs saved from not holding a eat off may have fed a few people, but on the large scale, wasting food isnt the issue.

We might as well open a Hostess factory and feed them Twinkies and Suzie-Qs instead.

CHESTNUT!!!!!!!!!!!! F*ck YEAH!

Perhaps Nathan’s should raise funds for world hunger along with hosting these events. Though maybe that is a bit more grotesque than holding these contests in the first place.

It’s sort of like hosting an event where people compete to heat empty banquet halls, while there are homeless people in Hokkaido and Northern China freezing to death under layers upon layers of dirty, old clothes.

It’s a pointless competition.

The playoff was bogus.

They should have been made to eat the same amount the next day in the shortest amount of time.

Does anybody know if Chestnut turned around and threw it all up in the bathroom 10 minutes later? Do they check for those kinds of things, to see if they can hold it down?

The contest was changed to 10 minutes from 12 minutes this year (Nathan’s cites a document they found that said way back when the contest was 10 minutes and blah blah blah I wasn’t really listening).

Chestnut and Kobayashi were tied at 59 each at the end of regulation forcing a five hot dog eat-off (first to eat the five is the winner) which Chestnut won.

59 might have been on pace for the world record. It was definitely the new 10 minute record.

In response to the question of if he’ll be back, Takeru said “Of course.”