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A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit
St. Martin's Griffin
April 2006
320 pages
ISBN: 0312339682
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Non-Fiction
Journalist Ryan Nerz spent a year penetrating the highest
echelons of international competitive eating. Eat This Book
is the fascinating and gut-bustingly hilarious account of
his journey. Nerz recounts the history of competitive eating, from its
origins as a clever Nathan's Famous promotion on a Coney
Island street corner in 1916 to the founding of the IFOCE
(International Federation of Competitive Eating) in 1997,
and its subsequent development into an international sport
and American cultural phenomenon. As an emcee for the IFOCE,
he takes us behind the scenes at dozens of competitions. He
divulges the eaters' training techniques, explains the
controversial Belt of Fat Theory (which helps explain why
the little guys often win), and dissects the corporate wars
for control over this exploding sport. He keeps the reader
turning the pages as we are swept up in the lives of Sonya
"The Black Widow" Thomas, Ed "Cookie" Jarvis, Eric
"Badlands" Booker, and many other top gurgitators whose egos
and secret agendas, hopes and dreams are revealed in
dramatic detail. As Nerz himself goes on a quest to become a top-flight
gurgitator, we become obsessed with him as he lies awake at
night in physical pain from downing dozens of burgers and
learning to chug gallons of water to expand his increasingly
abused stomach. His journey climaxes when he interviews and
then competes against Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, whose
dominance on the circuit rivals that of Lance Armstrong and
Tiger Woods in their sports. Sparing no one's appetite, Nerz reveals the training,
game-day strategies, and after-effects of competition in
this delectably shocking banquet of gorging and glory on the
competitive eating circuit.
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