Now Official: Competitive Eating May Kill You

It certainly seemed like competitive eating could kill someone -- a stomach being stretched to its limits does not do good things to a human body. Competitive eaters deny any real danger, as they did in this timely segment from E:60 this week:↵

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↵It is a timely report in the tragically retroactive sense only: A fatality related to competitive eating happened Wednesday in Changhua, Taiwan. A 23-year-old graduate student participating in an annual student eating contest died after complaining of discomfort, vomiting, losing consciousness, and 90 minutes of resuscitative efforts by medics on the scene. Officials are still looking into what killed the student, who was one member of a student team competing for prize money against another team of students, though a doctor did speculate that choking may have been the cause.↵↵The odd and sad thing about this is the relative size of the fatal food: steamed buns. Bao zi are fluffy little meat and cheese buns no bigger than a large dinner roll. The student wasn’t attempting to cram down his 10th pound of wedding cake, or hork down his 35th hot dog. This was a random accident, one we’re sure an American will top in horrific fashion shortly by choking on a whole rolled up pizza or attempting to eat a pizzachilitacocrepe at Taco Town.↵

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