Starters - Gastro Nerd
Ten fastest eaters
1. Former New York bread-shop owner Don Lerman trains every day to keep in shape for eating contests by drinking a gallon of water at a time to stretch his stomach. Lerman won a burger-eating contest last year after eating 11 quarter-pounders in just 10 minutes.
2. Japan's Takeru Kobayashi set a new world record for hot-dog eating at the 2002 world championship. Kobayashi downed 50 of the little fellas in 12 minutes to beat his own record.
3. Ken Edwards set the world record for eating cockroaches on the US TV game show Fear Factor. Edwards ate 24 cockroaches in a minute.
4. New Yorker Kevin Lipsitz is the king of pickle eating. He secured the US title after eating 21/2 pounds of sour pickles in five minutes. He trains by holding hot-dog eating races with his two dogs.
5. American Charles "Hungry" Hardy became a celebrity in Japan through his prize-winning sushi-eating prowess. He started his serious eating career in 1998 when asked by his union to enter a hot-dog eating competition at the World Trade Center.
6. Eating contests are big news in the US, and in one of the latest, Sonya Thomas of Philadelphia won the annual Wing Bowl for eating chicken wings. Despite weighing a mere 7 stone, she ate 167 wings.
7. There is even a US-based International Federation of Competitive Eating, which has an annual circuit of eating events. Tours include fish eating in Scotland and chip munching in London.
8. The Guinness Book of Records dropped its section for gluttony in 1990, but the nation's hero in 1986 was Peter Dowdeswell who held 279 separate world eating records, including one for downing 13 raw eggs in a second.
9. Dowdeswell's son Tony was world cockle-eating champion and world ice-cream eating champion.
10. Donna Maiello ate 100 yards of spaghetti in 27.75 seconds.
