Competitive Eating Is Not a Sport

Competitive eating is not a Sport.

As many of you have seen on TV or read about in magazine articles or even news papers, competitive eating is growing, becoming an ever so popular "sport." Can you classify eating as a sport? Being a Division one athlete, seeing and participating in gut wrenching hard work, I would hardly call gut stretching a sport.

Sure you have seen the small Chinese guy on TV, even ESPN. You know the one who can eat fifty two hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes? With obesity being one of the United States biggest problems we are encouraging more and more people to eat by hosting this on TV. Not to give you the speech your mother gave you when you were seven and didn't finish all of your food on your plate. However, there really are millions of starving people in Africa and throughout the world.

Now we are so bored in the United States we result to watching other people eat? Don't stop there, let's call it a sport. Sorry I didn't know that when I went to a buffet and saw people who can barely fit in booths I was surrounded by such great athletes. You and I both know that these "athletes" have been training hard in 90 degree weather dripping sweat, exhausted. WaitÐ'... Oh yeah, that's right they don't. I for one get up at 5:30 every day to lift and run before school and practice right after. I do believe I can call myself an athlete and that we two are not alike.

If I am amongst these greats, weighing 300 pounds and over, why are so many people getting surgeries. Surgeries such as tummy tucks and gastric bypass operations. People are not supposed to be this way. At least now we have a sport that fat kids can be good at, other than video games. Now there is even less motivation to get out and do something because they see a new light.

You shouldn't be able to unroll the fat from your ankles up over your shoes. This just gives obese people the right to keep on eating. Except now when they are shoving their hands in their face sitting on the couch, they can have some ambition and say "I am a professional eater in training." For this matter they should make professional couch sitting and see who can sit there the longest. This takes a little less skill, less stomach and a lot more patients. Maybe we could start competitive drinking, at least now you're giving alcoholics something they can be proud of too.

I'm not here to criticize obese people, let's face it; many people are born that way and can't help how they are! What I am saying is many of obese people sit there and feel sorry for themselves, doing nothing about it. I do on the other hand