It is July 4th which means Independence Day in the US. Along with that comes a lot of picnics, races, fireworks, and a whole lot of fun. Oh, and hot dogs. Not just at your barbecue but the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition which has returned to Coney Island. How many hotdogs this year and who was the champion? Here we go!
The 2022 Hot Dog Eating Champion
In what some people call the most dominant champion of a competition of all-time, famed contestant Joey Chestnut is the 2022 Hot Dog Eating champion yet again – for an eye-popping 15 times now. This year, he was hobbled and on crutches but still managed to down 63 hot dogs and buns in the competition’s 10 minute timeframe to claim the title for 2022.
This was a reduction from 76 last year but, come on, it is still like 55-60 times the amount of hot dogs any one of us is going to eat today anyway!
This earned him $10,000 for the 10 minutes it took to eat them. Of course, his preparation started long before now, including a couple of day fast with just lemons and water to get his body ready. Oh, and a nap that will be happening in just a couple of hours before his body starts working on all of that food. He says because of his fast, it actually starts the process pretty quickly though he says that he does have sweat that smells like hot dogs for a bit after. 🙂
How Many Miles It Would Take to Burn the Calories from 63 Hot Dogs
While Joey Chestnut has said before that he does do a bit of running, I doubt he runs this much in a day or even a week (this is elite marathoner-kind of mileage!! Here are the numbers to see how many miles he would need to run to burn off the hot dogs from the 2022 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. These numbers are approximate based on nutritional information gained online regarding the hot dogs and buns as well as the weight and pace of Joey.
- 297 calories per hot dog and bun
- 63 hot dogs and buns eaten
- He weighs 235 pounds at this year’s weigh-in
- An average pace of 10 minutes per mile would yield 182 calories per mile
- He consumed (just in hot dogs and buns, not counting drinks) 18,711 calories in just 10 minutes!
- That works together for a total of roughly 102 miles!
For just 10 minutes of eating, if he kept all those down, it would take almost 102 miles of running to burn off all those calories! Wow! Of course, I am not saying he should run that many miles to burn those calories! After all, this guy does this for a living and maintains a pretty good weight so he has it figured out! I just thought it would be interesting to see how many miles it would take to run off that many hot dogs.
Also, on a numbers’ note, Nathan’s had prepared 115 plates for the 12:15PM timeframe (before the men’s competition) with 5 hot dogs per plate and another 1,000 hot dogs/85 more plates for the men’s competition. That’s a big cookout!
On that note, did anyone head out for one of the hundreds of races around the US this morning? July 4th races are some of my favorites!
Featured image from Nathan’s Hot Dog website
