Competitive Eating Has a New No. 1 Prospect

This isn’t a sports story, per se, but the article mentions the word marathon, and competitive eating is all the rage these days, so we’re gonna post about it. Plus, it’s totally freakin amazing. The story I speak of comes from -- where else? -- Western Pennsylvania where 21-year-old Brad Sciullo took down a 20-pound cheeseburger this week in under five hours.

The burger itself was 15 pounds of meat, plus five pounds of toppings. Let’s run some of the numbers here. That’s about 550 grams of fat, 200 grams of saturated fat, over 10,000 calories, and 4100 milligrams of cholesterol (about 15 times what your daily intake should be). And that’s just in the meat alone. This bad boy also had an unknown amount of cheese on it (based on the photo above, it was a lot), plus an entire cup of mayo. I’m no nutritionist, but that’s a recipe for intestinal disaster.

Brad’s reward for taking about eight years off his life and finishing the burger challenge in under the allotted five-hour time limit? $400, three T-shirts and a certificate. Dude! That’s like $85 an hour! Or $20 per pound! Totally worth it. Plus, he won’t have to eat for about three weeks, which should save him some money.

(Thanks to Sarah for the tip)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.