Good news. Science has just answered another one of life’s most pressing mysteries.
The age-old question of whether a human or a grizzly can eat more hot dogs in a hot dog eating contest has been answered.
Turns out, a person can win.
No word if Dr. James Smoliga, a veterinarian and an exercise scientist, will win a Nobel Peace Prize for figuring this out, but he should.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Smoliga had some spare time on his hands (because of the pandemic) and began to study the results of the annual Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, which has been held every July 4 over the last 39 years.
He found out that over 10 minutes, the world champion hot dog eater could down 7.5 hot dogs per minute.
A grizzly bear, on the other hand, could eat eight per minute but only for about six minutes.
Grizzlies don’t have the staying power, it turns out, to eat hot dogs — competitively — for the full 10 minutes.
“It’s a great paper,” Dr. Michael Joyner, a physician at the Mayo Clinic, told tbe newspaper.
Not all scientists are convinced, however, that the results are conclusive.
Annelies De Cuyper, an animal nutritionist at Ghent University in Belgium, said “…consumption numbers from wild animals come from studying their normal behavior, whereas human eating records are an example of abnormal eating patterns.”
“If you put them all together in a contest, I don’t know who would win,” she said.
