Yesterday while plying up some yarn on the spinning wheel I turned on TLC and watched a show called "Diets From Hell". It was clearly a British show imported and voiced over with an American actor since all the stories except one featured British citizens. The one story at the end that did not featured an American man. The subject of this story was competitive eating. The man featured had won many competitive eating competitions and called himself an athlete while evangelizing the reasons why one who participates in these can legitimately call himself an athlete. I suspect that the reason why this one person featured on the show was American and not British is because competitive eating is a uniquely American thing.

The existence of competitive eating -- beyond the small pie-eating contests at local fairs that have been going on for ages -- actually angers me. I completely lose the non-judgemental, calm, and composed nature that regular yoga practice instills in someone. Competitive eating is representative of everything that's wrong with American society: excess, sometimes harmful, for the sake of excess.

People who participate in competitive eating should be ashamed of themselves, and while I know how morally high-horse this all sounds, I don't care. These people aren't athletes -- they're pigs. Plain and simple. Competitive eating is disgusting on multiple levels. First, it's disgusting that there are people stressing their bodies to extreme levels, gorging themselves and harming their digestive systems in this way, purposefully. This isn't like body building; there's no muscle gain or endurance gain, things that actually help the human body function better. This is slovenly shoving tens of hot dogs into your gorging, stressing stomach.

Second, and more importantly, it's disgusting because we have people starving in our own country, probably even down the street from these competitions, and these people are shoving this food into their faces for the sake of a competition. When I see something like this featured, I can't begin to fathom how these people don't realize how disgusting they appear, both physically doing this and because of the sheer appalling waste of food being gorged.

I thought that the International Federation of Competitive Eating was a joke when I first saw it. I don't think it is. The best part is the list of eating competitions. Notice the sponsorships? The Entenmanns' Pie Invitational. Harrah's World Toasted Ravioli Eating Championship. Krystal Square Off World Hamburger-Eating Championship. They may as well be named "The Artery-Clogging Mostly-Artificial-Ingredients High-Cholesterol High-Fat And-Do-You-Even-Know-What's-In-This-Crap? Gorging Competition". The winners should have their resulting future hospital bills paid by Entenmann's and Krystals.

If I were a millionaire, I would set up and heavily promote an eating competition. I'd prepare the competition by laying out all the hot dogs, hamburgers, or whatever the food of choice is on the table in enormous quantities, a place setting for each competitor. I'd get all the media attention I could possibly buy. I'd invite all the top eaters to come. And then, just as they're seated and ready to go, I'd announce that the competition isn't going to happen. And then I'd tell them that they're each going to march the plates of food in front of them down to the local food bank while the cameras roll, and they're each going to serve what they would have eaten to the local homeless and poor, and they're going to serve it with a smile and an apology.