How Hot Dog Eating Contests can affect your gut health, experts reveal

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Since competitive eating contests are relatively new, the long-term consequences on health are not well known, Debbie Petitpain, spokesperson of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told CBS. As a result of such eating, the stomach that contracts eating could be permanently stretched out instead, Dr Rajeev Jain of Texas Digestive Disease Consultants told CBS. Moreover, it could impact gastric emptying, the process by which food moves from the stomach into the duodenum. A 2007 University of Pennsylvania published a study in the American Journal of Roentgenology on the topic, wherein a control subject and a competitive speed eater were asked to eat maximum hot dogs in 12 minutes. The study used only hot dogs and no buns. Before the contest began, the participants' stomachs were studied, and later each was asked to ingest an effervescent agent and high-density barium before starting to eat the hot dogs. This was done so that the researchers could see the food moving through the participants' bodies.

Researchers concluded that the competitive eater's stomach was capable of expanding to adjust significantly extra food consumed during the contest. Meanwhile, the control subject ate just seven hot dogs and felt sick, so he stopped. Ten minutes into the contest, the competitive speed eater had ingested 36 hot dogs, when the researchers asked him to stop. The study concluded that the competitive speed eater’s abdomen expanded enough «to create the distinct impression of a developing intrauterine pregnancy». Dr David Metz, former professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, was one of the authors of the study. He said speed eaters have the