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Disrespectful to Food

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This article, about a prodigy at eating, offended a few people who wrote in to the Datebook section to complain:

Our rates of childhood obesity have tripled since 1980. Regular reminders from the California Department of Education inform us that about 75 percent of our kids flunk national fitness tests.

And yet, I don’t know any sixth-graders who enter eating contests–in fact, it’s pretty uncommon to gorge oneself in the way Chestnut does. Poor eating habits are different from “gluttony” in Chestnut terms. And Chestnut himself isn’t all that hefty.

The piece about eating contests filled me with disgust. You devoted many inches to something I and many others cannot comprehend. In today’s world, with millions starving and other millions suffering from obesity, holding competitions to eat lots of food drips with irony. And, as Julia Child would have said, it’s disrespectful to the food.

As opposed to the weekly segment in which food writers compare the eight different kinds of white truffle oil available in the Bay Area? Or the “Best Wedding Cake Ever” special on the Food Network last week? You know, the one that aired right after Rachel Ray toured a ceviche bar? Or maybe the mille fiumi cupcakes at Citizen Cake, or the fifteen-dollar polenta* appetizers at Hawthorne Alley? If having a consumptive attitude towards food is a bad thing, and if indulgence in the face of starvation is selfish, that holds true for gluttony and fetishization. And if hyperconsumption in the face of need is grotesque, that holds true for the guy who broke the world record for number of consecutive skydiving runs.

I have no interest in eating contests, and am not all that excited about Chestnut’s special skill. But why does he stand out? Bizarre, sure. But the symbol of all that’s wrong with our eating habits?

*You know, corn mush?

12 thoughts on Disrespectful to Food

  1. If you’ll remember correctly, David Blaine’s failed attempt to starve himself to death over the thames was met with people pointing out how him starving himself is an a front and a slap in the face to the millions who are dying of starvation in Otherstan.

    You can’t win for eating a nutritionally balanced diet.

  2. Eating competitions have always left a bad taste in my mouth. Definitely not my thing, as I am one of the uptights who can’t avoid thoughts of people who are in dire need of nutrition.

  3. I can’t see where shoveling food in so fast you can’t taste it is particularly respectful. Respecting food means enjoying it, and a large part of that enjoyment comes from savoring its aromas, tastes, textures, and appearance. I see food contests as the non-alcoholic version of binge drinking–bad for you, generally done with poor quality product, and makes you look in one way or another like an ass. Of course it could be argued that foodies are asses in their own way, but at their best they’re eating pretentiously for their own and the food’s sake and not to eat the most pretentiously of their pals on a night out to the bistro. Food competitions are just that. You don’t show up for the food. You show up to win.

  4. I don’t find eating competitions to be any more disrespectful of food – or people who don’t have it – than I find footraces to be disrespectful of the fact that there are so many who don’t have transportation other than their own two feet. There are plenty of things that keep people from getting the food, transportation, health care, and other necessities that better-off people (like me, for example) have, but contests involving them aren’t one of them.

    I love food. Love it. But I don’t feel any kind of moral obligation to properly enjoy or use my food. I have moral obligations to other people, and I think I can fulfill them easily even if I wolf down a Happy Meal for dinner on the drive home from work every day.

  5. This reminds me that it’s almost time for the annual Nathan’s hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island.

    For the past several years, it’s been won by a 135-pound Japanese man.

  6. Eating contests are offensive because they flaunt the unequal distribution of wealth&mash;not merely between the United States and the Third World, but between the strata of our own society.

    Food is so cheap, and so available, that we feel no qualms about wasting it for the sake of transient entertainment. It’s not even a competition of an admirable skill like speed or intelligence: it’s a competition to see who can waste the most, who can gorge on the most amount of food with no regard for its consequences.

    I’m not usually one to agree with prissy naysayers, but at the same time, it’s little wonder that childhood obesity is an epidemic in this country: not only is shitty food cheap and easy, but we laugh and give plaudits to people who glorify overconsumption as though it’s a championship.

    Even if eating contests aren’t disgusting for their unabashed excess (think SUVs, hip-hop videos, etc), they should be disgusting because they are a symptom of the cultural sickness that has made obesity one of the greatest health problems of the new century.

  7. It is impossible to disrespect food. Food has no interests. It cannot be harmed.

    It is possible, however, to be disrespectful to the opossums and racoons that were killed to make the platter of hotdogs you just shotgunned.

    Tofu dogs, on the other paw, are a-ok for gorging.

  8. Heliologue, why is running fast more admirable than eating fast? They both seem like pointless uses of calories to me.

  9. Eating contests are worse because they’re so horribly working class, don’t you know? Not Our Kind of People at all.

    Whereas comparisons of white truffle oil are all about the art of food, safely middle class with aspersions to upper class living.

  10. Heliologue, why is running fast more admirable than eating fast? They both seem like pointless uses of calories to me.

    If nothing else than because running is not self-destructive. Usually.

  12. Comparisons of truffle oil don’t waste food; eating contests do.

    I don’t think this is a settled question; there’s probably a lot of debris that goes into the manufacture of each bottle of refined white truffle oil, as well as the hyperconsumption involved in the mindset that seeks out the very best brand of white truffle oil. Why is it not wasteful to cook an eight-course meal for your friends, but wasteful to eat enough hot dogs for ten people?

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