On the one hand, I am impressed and fascinated by people like Crazy Legs Conti and the Black Widow who have arguably elevated competitive eating from state fair pie-offs to a high art, themselves becoming celebrities worthy of segments on morning shows and New York Magazine profiles. Their rituals and stamina are as highly tuned as the most disciplined athletes, except that instead of pushing through that fifteenth mile or benching that extra twenty-five pounds, their regimen is more along the line of finishing off that sixteenth New York strip.

Then again, competitive eating seems to be the type of over-indulgent "sport" that could only be the product of our Western psyche -- we have so much, so many resources at our disposal that it's not enough to merely let a refrigerator full of food go bad before we deign to eat it; we go so far as to award people whose sole achievements are stretching their stomachs beyond normal capacity and filling them rapaciously a place in the firmament of celebrity. Not to sound like your grandma, but isn't that a little vulgar when you think of all the starving children in Africa?

Perhaps the universe's system of checks and balances will eventually make these hot dog-devouring freaks obsolete: According to a study published by the American Institute for Cancer Research, eating hot dogs increases your likelihood of developing colo-rectal cancer. Ewsome? Eh. Just ew.