Professional tricks to win you that pie eating contest
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
As we prepare for the coming summer months, we should also prepare for all those fun warm-weather sports they bring with them. But what do you do when water skiing or volleyball really isn’t your thing? Lucky for you, there’s something out there that’s competitive, satisfying, and appeals to nearly everyone: eating competitions!
Be they hot wings or hot dogs, these common outdoor festival events may not make you any friends but they will earn you the respect of a least a few drunk twenty-somethings. But as the old adage goes, if you’re going to do anything, you should do it right! So here’s a couple tricks the pros (yes, there are professional bulk eaters) use to ensure their plate is licked clean.
Number one: if you’re trying to take on something spicy like Mexican food or chicken wings, you may want consider keeping a beer close. Many people know that a glass of milk will cool a burning tongue, but milk contains a lot of fat and calories that will make you feel full faster. This isn’t helpful if your win depends on you eating the most, or reaching a certain number, so instead you should consider reaching for a beer. Though not as soothing as milk, beer will actually lessen that burning sensation in much the same way eating a slice of bread will. The benefit of beer over milk is that beer won’t fill you up, allowing you to consume to your heart’s content.
Next up: dissolving bread! Now I know this sounds gross, and believe me it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that this trick might lead you on to a path to victory. When dealing with foods with a lot of bread—hot dogs, sandwiches, pizza, etc.—in order to save space in your stomach, you’ll want to dip the bread in water in order to compress it. Doing so will stop the bread from expanding in your stomach the moment it hits your gastric juices. All that’s left is to take advantage of all that extra room in your tummy and cram more food in before your opponent does.
Lastly: speed matters! There are a couple different ways to trick your brain into not knowing how full your stomach is, one is to eat very quickly. How it works is that, when it has expanded to a certain point, your stomach will send a message to your brain via nerve endings that it is now full and you should stop eating. What eating quickly does is confuse that message by distracting your brain and stomach with a continuous influx of food, so you’ve already eaten way more than you should have long before your brain stops ringing the dinner bell.
Now that you’re armed with a couple tricks, I implore you to go forth and reap the benefits of this knowledge. At the very least, it should set you up nicely to win a couple bets at a bar.
