FYI: Do Competitive Eaters Have Unusual Stomachs?
Competitive Eaters David Handschuh/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images Yes. Marc Levine, the chief of gastrointestinal radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has found that a competitive eater's stomach works more like an expanding balloon than a squeezing sac. For his study, Levine recruited a professional eater, then ranked among the top 10 in the world, and a man who was 45 pounds heavier and four inches taller. He pitted the two against each other in a hot-dog-eating contest and used fluoroscopy, a real-time x-ray, to watch the two men's stomachs. Levine immediately noticed something odd. Even when empty, our stomach-our entire digestive tract, in fact-makes a wavelike muscular contraction called peristalsis that helps move food through the body (scientists also call this anal propagation). The competitive eater displayed almost no peristalsis. The regular guy stopped eating after just seven dogs-his stomach was full. The pro,...