Cooking a hot dog on a grill is a summer tradition (even in the time of Covid-19). And nothing says “over-the-top summer tradition” like the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.
You know the drill, it’s an annual event that challenges eaters to shove as many dogs and buns down their throats as possible in just 10 minutes.
It sounds insane but according to the Nathan’s website, the contest attracts over 40,000 fans each year and is broadcast on ESPN to nearly two million viewers. Competitive eater Joey Chestnut has won it for several years. In 2020 he gobbled up the competition by snarfing down 75 hot dogs in buns over the course of ten minutes. Miki Sudo, the champ in the women’s division, put away 48.5 hot dogs.
Dr. James Smoliga, a High Point University physiology and sports medicine specialist, combined the data from 39 years of the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest with mathematical models of human performance that take into account the potential for extreme athletic feats.
Smoliga used all of that, along with the body mass and height of the winners as well as average mass of a Nathan’s hot dog, to create a mathematical model that estimates a theoretical maximum active consumption rate (ACR) for humans. The findings were published in the journal Biology Letters.
"Through nonlinear modeling and generalized extreme value analysis, I show that humans are theoretically capable of achieving an ACR of approximately 832 g/min fresh matter over 10 min duration," Smoliga writes in the article.
That works out to roughly 83-84 hot dogs in ten minutes.
And like any sport, the study also finds that maximal ACR significantly increases over time in ‘elite’ competitive eaters. That’s why the number of hot dogs eaten in the competition gradually increases. In fact, the pattern is very similar to how world records in running have progressed over the years. It’s a combination of your body’s physical limits and training.
"For many of these eaters, what they've discovered over the years is that by ingesting large amounts of food or liquid in very quick time periods, that can help stretch out the stomach and improve eating performance," Smoliga said.
Smoliga admits that while studying the limits of human performance is a topic that is of constant interest in science, digestive system capacity isn’t a topic that receives much interest. That’s despite the fact that the ability to consume and digest large amounts of food is important if food supplies are lost. Yes, carnivores that eat prey larger than their gut capacity can take a break from the energy-intensive task of hunting.
But that’s another discussion. I’m going to go outside and grill a hot dog. Maybe two.