Competitive eating, or speed eating, is a sport in which participants compete against each other to consume large quantities of food in a short time period. Contests are typically less than 15 minutes in length, with the person consuming the most food being declared the winner. Competitive eating is most popular in the United States and Japan, where organized professional eating contests often offer $10,000 or more in prize money. Competitive eaters are sometimes known as "gurgitators," a word used by those close to the sport and an assumed opposite of regurgitation.
Read more about Competitive Eating: History, Contest Structure, Training and Preparation, Televised Contests, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words competitive and/or eating:
“Women of my age in America are at the mercy of two powerful and antagonistic traditions. The first is the ultradomestic fifties with its powerful cult of motherhood; the other is the strident feminism of the seventies with its attempt to clone the male competitive model.... Only in America are these ideologies pushed to extremes.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“Hail, hail, plump paunch, O the founder of taste
For fresh meats, or powdered, or pickle, or paste;
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod,
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd;
All which have now made thee so wide i’ the waist
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break’st all thy girdles, and break’st forth a god.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)