As American As American Can Be, Without Being American

You may have heard the name Takeru Kobayashi before. There is a good reason for that because he has won the last several Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contests held every July 4th. Well, he’s at it again as Takeru won this weekend’s Krystal hamburger eating contest for the third year in a row. His winning total: 97 hamburgers. That makes Popeye’s buddy Wimpy look well, wimpy by comparison.

Now I don’t want to be a flag-waving idiot, but its one thing for no American to win the hot dog eating contest on the 4th of July for the last few years, but now we’ve lost the hamburger title too? Ask anyone to name two quintessential American foods, and quoting Richard Dawson here, survey says: hot dogs and hamburgers! When you stop to think about it, the setting should be perfect for us to dominate these food competitions. They involve eating a lot of food (which as a country we are undeniably good at) and involve eating a lot of two of our most favorite foods. Have I made my point yet? Oh well, there’s always next year. In fact, we are not without hope since America’s Joey Chestnut finished second just as he did at Coney Island on July 4th.

We need to get behind this guy and fund him through donations like we do with our Olympic hopefuls. If we can’t get him to win, we need to find someone else who will. I’d be more than willing to bite the bullet and enter both competitions, but I get indigestion easily…and I prefer to fit into the clothes I already own. Besides, after 50+ hot dogs and almost 100 hamburgers at one sitting, it might affect my affinity for them, which would be kind of sad. At BBQs, I’d then have to eat fruit or vegetables and at that point, for me personally, death begins to look like a pretty good option.

Our being a global sporting juggernaut is quickly diminishing. We no longer have worldwide dominance in the very sports we invented like baseball and basketball as we keep getting beat in international competition. We also probably won’t ever again experience the 1980 hockey miracle on ice and Formula 1 drivers are starting to join NASCAR. That’s all fine and dandy, but really people, losing food competitions. We need to band together as a nation and prove that we can eat as voraciously as everyone else already says we do.

Is there a performance-enhancing drug for competitive eating? Not that I want to cheat, but we’ve got to do something to bring these titles back home or we’ll become international sporting’s version of Goliath or the turtle who lost to the hare. Maybe all those recently banned dietary metabolism-boosting products with ephedrine can be used to help our competitors process their food more quickly during these competitions to give us an edge.

After all, if we can’t win when it comes to hot dogs and burgers, what’s next? Will we start losing soccer titles to South American countries or cricket matches to the British? Oh wait, never mind, we already have. Sorry, have a good day.