Freakonomics Radio - 173. A Better Way to Eat

Episode Date: July 3, 2014

Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the sport of competitive eating. What can the rest of us learn from his breakthrough?

Kobe, can you just like count to 10 in your microphone? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Maggie, do the same or say anything you want. He just needs to get a level. Just keep talking. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I'd like you to meet Takeru Kobayashi, known as Kobe, and his translator, Maggie James.

I was asking Kobe about his favorite foods. Yogurt and tofu? You mean like yogurt and tofu? Yogurt and tofu. What kind of tofu? Yeah, you know, soft one. What's your favorite kind of steak? Filet.

Filet? You like filet. No fat. You like lean. Lean. What's your favorite fish? Fish? Salmon. You like the skin or no? Yeah. What's your favorite fruit?

Strawberry. Strawberries? Strawberries. How do you feel about hot dogs? During this time, it's actually a time that I don't want to think about hot dogs that much. From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dupner. Takeru Kobayashi doesn't like to think about hot dogs much right now because he's preparing to eat a very large pile of them.

Not for pleasure. This is what he does for a living. In the world of competitive eating, as the sport is known, Kobe is the biggest star that has ever been. Maybe. Yeah. It began back in Japan. He was a college student at the time, studying economics.

A friend signed him up for a televised eating contest. I was really shocked because at that time I really didn't think that I could eat that much more than a normal person. But he gave it a try, largely because of the prize money. $5,000 for first place. It was a four-stage eating contest, starting with boiled potatoes and then a seafood bowl, Mongolian mutton barbecue, finishing up with noodles. Your competitors were also amateurs, right? They weren't professionals? Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So did you think you had a chance? Yes. Yeah. So did you think you had a chance? Yes. Because why? What did you think that you could do better than the other amateurs? Was it mental or physical or strategic? Total, I thought I could. Somewhere in between.

There were players that were much bigger than I was physically, even in Japan. So I didn't think that it could be, you know, just a physical thing. It had to be total mental and physical. Kobe studied earlier contests like this one with qualifying stages. He saw that most people went so hard in the early rounds that even if they did advance, they didn't have the energy or the stomach capacity to finish strong. So he decided to eat just enough at each stage to qualify for the next. And when it came time for the final round, he blasted past the others and he won. Having tasted victory as an amateur competitive eater, Kobe immediately thought about turning pro. Now, the World Cup of Competitive Eating, as you probably know, is held every summer in New York City.

And only one location at the corner of Surf and Stilwell Avenues at Nathan's Famous. And why do they come? They come for the Nathan's Famous 4th of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest! At home in Japan, Kobe began to train for Coney Island. American-style hot dogs were not available where he lived, so he used sausages made of minced fish. No hot dog buns either, so he cut bread down to size. He took his training seriously, very seriously. He began a long series of experiments. For instance, ripping the hot dog and bun in half

before eating it, a move that would come to be known as the Solomon Method, after the biblical story of King Solomon, who threatened to settle a maternity dispute by slicing a baby in two pieces. The Solomon had been done before or no? No. No. He found another way to speed things up. Separating the sausage from the bun. Also eating hot dogs two at a time.

I don't mean two sticks at the same time. I mean breaking one in half and eating two halves. The sausage itself being slick and dense actually went down pretty easy. But eating a hot dog bun on its own without the meat, it's harder than you'd think. How hard? You may have heard of the saltine challenge. Well, next time you want to win a bar bet, try the hot dog bun challenge. See if you can get somebody to try to eat two hot dog buns in one minute with no beverage.

Here, listen to our Freakonomics Radio production team try it. This is David Herman doing the eating with Greta Cohn, Susie Lechtenberg, and Greg Rosalski providing commentary. Okay, I'm ready. And go. Oh yeah yeah i guess so he's got half of a half of a bun in his mouth 35 seconds to go swallow it i was so confident four three, three, two, one. Put down the bun. Not even one. I feel like, yeah, not even one. Wow.

I am ashamed. So, to fight the dry bun problem, Kobe came up with a novel solution. Dunking. Dunking? That's right, dunking. As he fed himself the bunless, broken hot dogs with one hand, he used the other hand to dunk the bun in water. Then he'd squeeze out the excess water and smush the bun into his mouth, kind of like a bun ball.

Not only did this make eating faster, but now he didn't have to take time out between dogs to drink water. So breaking, separating, dunking. What about the shake? I've never seen that before. I think that was my thing. Maybe somebody was shaking, but I didn't. I had never seen that. This became known as the Kobayashi Shake. Kobe videotaped his training sessions.

He charted all his data and analyzed it. He wanted to find out what worked and just as important what didn't work. At one point, he thought he should chew each dog very vigorously. But he realized this not only took too long, but it was also bad for his jaw. He was tireless in his experimentation. Why do you think others before you hadn't experimented so much? Maybe because they're not as serious as I am? Maybe that's the only honest answer.

How did you get so serious? Simply that when I tried it, I thought the physical action felt like this is a sport. A sport. And nobody had treated it like a sport before. And I simply wanted to be number one in the world at this. No offense, but you sound crazy. It sounds nuts. And I say that with all due

respect because you know how much I love you and respect what you've done. But what I mean by this is you were bringing a level of scientific inquiry to an activity that nobody had bothered before. That's what I mean by nuts. So did you think it was nuts

or did it make perfect sense to you? I guess I'm a little older and more mature now because now I can hear that and actually say like, oh, and laugh with you. But at that time, there was definitely not even a speck of me that would have thought that that was nonsense. It just made sense. Coming up on Freakonomics Radio, how does Kobe do at the Coney Island hot dog contest? The kid is incredible. A total beating of the Americans. He was like a

conveyor belt. He was just putting them in two at a time. And assuming that you are not interested in following Kobe's footsteps specifically, is there something more general that can be learned from his mastery of competitive eating? I think the thing about human beings is that they make a limit in their mind of what their potential is. And they decide that, well, I've been told this, or this is what society tells me, and this is what. Or they've just been made to believe something. And one more thing.

If you don't already subscribe to Freakonomics Radio, I think you should. It's free. Sign up at iTunes, and you will get the next episode in your sleep. From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. Today, we are telling the story of Takeru Kobayashi, who dreamed a dream of eating more hot dogs than any human being in history. This happens every 4th of July at Coney Island in New York City. Nathan's annual hot dog eating contest is an international event. Champions from all over the world converging on Coney Island.

The Coney Island contest had been going on for roughly four decades. The world record, 25 and one eighth hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. OK, 25 and one eighth hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. Just picture that for a minute. Now, there aren't many rules. The competitors can have as much of whatever beverage they want. They can put condiments on the dogs, but no self-respecting eater is going to waste time or stomach capacity on ketchup.

All the dogs and buns that enter your body must, well, they have to stay in your body. If not, this is known in the sport as a reversal of fortune. You can be disqualified. Okay, so it is July 4th, 2001. Kobe is 23 years old. It's only 5'8", 130 pounds. So when you showed up that first time to compete, did you feel that you belonged on the stage with the other competitors?

Did you feel you were justified to be there? I actually didn't think even about that. I wasn't thinking about that at all, but I was full of the feeling of, I've come here to win. So the bell rings. And you start to eat. And for 12 minutes you eat. And you break and you separate and you slurp and you dunk and you smush and you swallow and you shake and you do all that. And then the bell rings and then you see your number

yes is that did you were you paying attention to your number before that or did you only see your number at the very end i only saw it at the end i wasn't looking at all the number and what was the number 50 the americans just dropped their dogs in awe The clear-cut wiener Kobayashi, who inhaled 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes, shattering the world record. The kid is incredible. A total beating of the Americans. He was like a conveyor belt. He was just putting them in two at a time. I saw he was around 30 when I was at around 8.

I took my shirt off, started waving the white flag. I can't believe it. The record, new record. 50. And the previous record was 25 and 1 eighth, right? Yes. So you doubled the world record. So nobody doubles

any world record ever. And what did you think then? What did you think when you saw that number of 50? I was actually shocked. I was not imagining at all that I would eat double. So it was super surprising to me. Everyone was surprised.

And some people were skeptical. They wondered if Kobe was playing by the rules. They said that they took me to outer space and that some aliens had given the man two stomachs. Oh, he's taking muscle relaxers. That you were doping, yeah. Did you take muscle relaxers? No. Do you have two stomachs?

No. Oh, he thought about it. He won Coney Island six straight years. And a lot of other eating contests, too. 106 tacos! 347 wings. The new record for the most grilledinch pizza in one minute flat. Let's make some noise for the one and only, the culinary Houdini, the best eater on earth, Mr. Takeru Kobayashi!

Kobe was not, however, unbeatable. Tell me about the bear. And now introducing to my right, his opponent, the Beast. He descends from Kodiak Island, Alaska. Kobe tried to beat the bear in a contest that was taped for Fox TV. This beast stands over eight feet tall and weighs in tonight at 1,089 pounds. He can digest over 60 pounds of food in a 24-hour period. He possesses the ultimate appetite for destruction. Meet the beast, the Alaskan Cruncher!

Even against a bear, Kobe thought he'd win. Now again, the contest begins as soon as the bear eats the first hot dog. And it is underway. There we go, there we go. And in this case, the dogs had no buns, right? Why was that? Were the buns bad for the bear? I was told that the bear does not eat buns. Well, tough for the bear.

Okay, so the bear had a better lawyer than you had, apparently. Okay, so was there a rehearsal? Yes, there was a rehearsal. And what happened at the rehearsal? I won at the rehearsal. When the bear came out, I saw a flash of fear for a second in Kobayashi's eyes. And then in the contest itself, what happened? When the contest came out, I couldn't think of it as a rehearsal.

It was fast. When the real time came for it, the bear was really quick, like very fast. I was so shocked. I suddenly kind of almost panicked a little bit. I don't see how he can beat this bear. And that is it. We have a winner. The bear, the beast, beast has won the alaskan

cruncher is our new champion yes and the bear beat you the bear won did you ever figure out how the bear did so well in the competition versus the practice? Yeah, that's something I have to ask. The owner didn't let me eat for a while. Of course, that was the first question that I thought I had to know. So I asked, and I was told that the bear keeper

had not given him anything to eat for like a day. Until coming in. So they had actually kind of made the bear very hungry, and when it came in, it was starving. 向こうは動物だからね、 やっぱりね、そのハングリーだとかね、 アプタイトで食うんだよね。

My competitor was a wild beast, and when animals, when they are hungry, they are different living things. 僕はね、お腹すいたから すごい食べれるわけではないから、 お腹すかしてもしょうがないんだけど。 I'm not a strong eater because I'm hungry whereas I was competing against a beast that was very hungry sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you

tonight the bear got Kobayashi how do you handle defeat? I always change my mentality very quickly. Simply said, sometimes you win because someone's having a bad day, and sometimes somebody beats you because you're having a bad day. Even winning or losing doesn't necessarily even mean really that you're the best. So when you look at the long run, you can't think about you and competing against a rival or rivals. That doesn't even really tell you 100% that you're the best. What you can only do is

compare yourself to yourself and try to see how that you're the best. What you can only do is compare yourself to yourself and try to see how far you can actually go. So what did Kobayashi do that was different than everyone before him? Here's one thing. He redefined the problem that he was trying to solve. The key to me was that I had to change the mentality that it was a sport. It wasn't having a meal. It was, to me, I had to think, this is a sport.

It has nothing to do with how you normally enjoy a meal. It's just a physical action. My honest opinion was that people were just eating as an extension of regular eating meals. And it looked like they were all like rushing to try to eat more than they normally could, just one more hot dog, just a little more. And I thought, well, if you just look at it as a way of trying to put something in instead of how much more can I eat than normal,

then it really just takes a few questions and a little research on my part and experimentation to see how far I could actually go. Here's what the other competitive eaters were asking themselves. How can I fit more hot dogs in my stomach? Colby asked a different question, only slightly different, perhaps, at least to a layperson. But it changed everything. His question was, how can I make one hot dog easier to eat? But it wasn't just that. If everyone before him was asking the wrong question, he thought, then maybe he shouldn't give much credence to the existing world record.

Maybe it was an artificial barrier that he should just bust right through. This contest had been going on for over 40 years. Why is it that it took until you to kind of change the mental and strategic approach to the sport? I think people have to have a reason to rethink what could be wrong. If a whole 40 something years or more, if people only see someone eating 25 as a limit, then someone who can eat 20 might think, wow, if I just eat five more, I could actually do that. And no one would ever think that anything else could be done. But if you see someone suddenly come and eat 50, then everyone knows that there must be a different approach to the problem. And until something

like that happens, people don't question. So maybe I was the reason, maybe I gave them a reason for everyone at the same could only rethink the problem, redefine the problem like you did, and not accept the limit of the old world record like you did, can you think of an instance where it might not be so hard to do that, where we'd all be better off if people could do that? I think it should be used for everything. I think the thing about human beings is that they make a limit in their mind of what their potential is, and they decide that, well, I've been told this, or this is what society tells me, or this is what,

or they've just been made to believe something. So if every human being actually threw away those thoughts, and they actually did use that method of thinking to everything, the potential of human beings, I think, is really great. I think it's huge compared to what they actually think of themselves. So that is a factor that should be... I mean, if everyone could use it for everything,

then everything could be much better. There's a good bit of evidence that Kobe is right about how artificial barriers can hold us back. He no longer laps the field in competitive eating contests. In fact, Kobe was beaten for several years at Coney Island by an eater named Joey Chestnut, who's still the reigning champion. And the guys who used to eat just 15 or 20 hot dogs now routinely eat 30 and 40. Some of them use Kobe's methods. All of them benefit from knowing that the old limits weren't real.

As for Kobe himself, he lives in New York now, but still travels the world eating for a living. But you won't find him in Coney Island on July 4th anymore. A few years back, he got into a contract dispute with the organizers. So he started his own hot dog eating contest, which also takes place in New York on July 4th. This year, he'll be eating at the rooftop of 235th Bar in Manhattan. These days, the hot dog eating contest runs only 10 minutes, but the numbers are even higher. How many do you think you'll eat this year? More than 72.

More than 72. More than 72. So more than six dozen hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes on 4th of July. What will you do then on the 5th of July? Just resting. I think just resting. How long does it take to recover? It depends on how I feel about it. I'd like to rest for at least half a day. Oh, that's it.

You must be a great athlete because most of us, if we eat even three hot dogs, we need to rest for a whole day. So not only are you better on the front end, you're better on the back end, too. Hey, podcast listeners, on next week's show, what do King Solomon and David Lee Roth have in common? He says to his servant, bring me a sword. And he says, now we'll cut the baby in half. Each mother will get half. Promoters frequently didn't agree in the contract, Ryder, and we would have structural fiscal issues because, hey, there wasn't the proper electricity, load bearing, stress, etc. Clever ways to sort the

guilty from the innocent. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalski, Greta Cohn, Beret Lam, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more.