5 days worth of saturated fat

Despite the irony of it, I'm going to follow up my post about moderation and obese people with one about me and my friends using no moderation in a race for fatness. The weekend before last, I and 7 others found each other staring down what can only be described as a massive brick of Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes, preparing to see who could cram the most in their mouth in an 8 minute period. Now this was all made possible by a friend of mine who has, for years, claimed after every meal we eat together that he can eat faster and more than anyone we know. So finally, when he turned 29, his birthday request was that his friends join in on some fattening festivities and gorge ourselves on a product that we decide on. He chose Krispy Kreme doughnuts, not what I would have gone with, but it was decided that they had the most broad appeal and delicious taste combination to maximize our eating desire and efficiency. Now I brought with me my friend and roommate, Justin, who has a bad habit of challenging people at all-you-can eat buffets and then spending the rest of the night throwing up or moaning about how full he is.

Now my first reaction upon seeing the brick of doughnut boxes (it worked out to be 3 dozen doughnuts per person, so 24 boxes in total) was laughter at the absurd thought that any one of us could down 36 doughnuts in an 8 minute period. For those of you not so hot on math, that is averaging 4 and a half doughnuts every minute. But Nathan, who had bought the doughnuts, assured me that he bought them as a precaution so nobody would run out of ammo, but that he thought it was entirely possible to eat close to the full amount. Now I have been trying to get back in shape recently, so my game plan was to gauge what kind of chances I had and then eat accordingly.

We all sat down around the table, microwaved the doughnuts, and prepared to cram as much fried, sugar coated dough as we could down our throats. The bell rang, and we began to eat. I got about one bite into my doughnut and burst into uncontrollable laughter. I knew as I felt the sugar sloshing around my mouth and tasted the heaviness of the fried dough that there was no fucking way in hell that I was going to win, and just the thought of what lengths the others would have to go to made me crack up for about a minute. Now my laughter was contagious and pissing off the would-be competitors, because my infectious laughter was impeding their ability to cram doughnuts at an optimum rate. After my giggle fit died down, I slowly and calmly ate doughnuts as I watched the real competition take place between my friend Justin and Nathan's roommate, Whit. I won't tell you how many I ate, only that it was paltry compared to the winners and that due to my performance, they discussed instituting a rule at the next contest to penalize the first to bow out.

Now Whit had the strategy of taking four doughnuts, smashing them down to the size of one, and eating them 4 at a time. Justin, on the other hand was just taking one at a time as fast as he could. The rules stated that when time ended, the eater could stuff his mouth full, as long as he finished every bite that was in his mouth when the buzzer went off. So as the last minute approached, everybody had backed out, save for Whit and Justin. There was a $100 prize for first place and a $50 prize for second, so if you weren't in the running, you were just getting fatter. Then, in the last minute, both of them began to eat like demons. They were very close to each other, though it was hard to determine accurately due to Whit's doughnut smashing technique. In the last ten seconds, both eaters were furiously stuffing their face for was they hoped would be enough to best the other. Justin had wads of chewed up doughnut hanging out of his mouth as he crammed more in. The buzzer rang, and both had a mouth full. We looked down to determine the winner and found that if Justin could indeed finish what was in his mouth, then he would claim victory by about 1/2 a doughnut. It took him about 3 minutes to finish everything while fighting the urge to vomit, but he did indeed come out on top after eating 16 1/2 doughnuts.

So even though he ate 2 days worth of calories, 3 days worth of fat, and 5 days worth of saturated fat, Justin walked away the victor and $100 richer for his efforts. In the coming days, his described state of health would remind me of the guy in "Super Size Me" that talked about how shitty he felt after eating all that McDonald's food. But in the end, I found that not only had Nathan's claims of being the fastest and biggest eater been false for the 20 years I have known him, but that Justin could pretty much eat anybody I know under the table. I look forward to testing him against other worthy competitors. They are working on posting the video of the contest, and I'll put that up as soon as they do, I'll be the guy laughing for 3 minutes at the beginning of the contest.

Tom Pain