If you heave, you leave

There was an interesting legal story in the International Herald Tribune this week, albeit 75 years old and recalled in the "back pages" feature. Datelined "Brussels, 1926", it concerned news from the Belgian Congo of a tribal king who sued one of the local hospitals.

The hospital had amputated his leg after an accident, but it was not a medical negligence case. The issue, as the report explained, was this: "The surgeons, aware that the king was a cannibal, had refused to give him his leg." In the event, the court found the hospital didn't have a precedent to stand on, and awarded the limb to the plaintiff. What he did with it, we don't know. But if we learn anything from the story, it is that we should not rush to judge other people's eating habits.

Belgium, which unleashed Brussels sprouts on the world, and presumably on the Congo, can't afford to talk. But we are all guilty. So it was with a genuine attempt at understanding that I read another report, from the Los Angeles Times, an nouncing the start of this year's "competitive eating season".

Competitive eating is big in the US. Events range from the famous hot dog contest at Coney Island, through Philadelphia's chicken "Wing Bowl", which fills a basketball arena with "20,000 screaming fans", to a recent "Jalapeno face-off" also attended by thousands, in Laredo, Texas. Whether it's matzo balls in New York or frogs in Louisiana, few disciplines are neglected. The only constant factor is the basic rule of competition: "If you heave, you leave".

Big as the "sport" is, some of its enthusiasts are even bigger. An example featured by the LAT is 335- lbs Ed (Cookie) Jarvis, a veteran hot-dog eater, currently in training for the regional finals. Sadly, success at Coney Island is only a distant dream for the likes of Ed, who finds even the smaller events becoming harder. "It used to be you could win these regional things by eating 12 to 13 dogs," he told the paper, "but now you have to put away 16 to 18. The competition is getting tougher every year."

And it's not just Ed who's finding it tough. Americans have traditionally led the world in competitive eating; partly because the French, perhaps the only European nation with the expertise to take them on, have been too far up themselves to try. But the dominance is now under threat, and Japan is leading the charge.

Bored with beating the US at manufacturing cars and hi-fi and mechanical pets, or perhaps trying to eat their way out of the economic slump, the Japanese sent a team to the hot dog championships at Coney Island last year and swept the boards. It was bad enough that they filled the first three places. But to add insult to injury, the Japanese competitors were all thin! Worse, the third-place finisher was a woman! Weighing only 104 lbs! For the New York-based International Federation of Competitive Eating, it was Pearl Harbour revisited. A spokesman said the result had stunned "the big men of competitive eating" and raised "questions of national honour".

I think we can all feel America's pain. One defeat doesn't mean the US is no longer a world eating power, of course. But the country has experienced a general downturn in consumer confidence lately, so it could be a long way back.

If all else fails, an elegant solution to its dilemma would be for the big men to gate-crash the next Sumo tournament in Tokyo and see if they can win there. On the other hand, last year may have been just an aberration. Either way, I look forward to seeing if Ed and his pals can bounce back this year. And prove, as the cannibal king probably loved saying to annoy Belgians, that you can't keep good men down.

THERE'S just time here to tell a story which P.J. O'Rourke says Ronald Reagan liked to use to illustrate his economic theories. It goes as follows: A travelling salesman visits a farm. Invited to stay for dinner, he is surprised to see the family also joined at the table by a pig wearing three medals and a wooden leg. The farmer notices his discomfort and explains that the pig is "very special".

"You see those medals?" he asks the salesman. "Well, the first is from the time our baby son fell in the pond, and the pig swam in and pulled him out. The second, that's from when our little daughter was trapped in a burning barn, and the pig ran inside and carried her to safety. And the third medal, that's from when our oldest boy was cornered in the stockyard by a bull, and the pig ran under the fence, bit the bull's tail and saved the boy's life." "Yes," said the impressed salesman, "I can see why you let him sit at the table. But how did he get the wooden leg?"

"Well," said the farmer, "a pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."

fmcnally@irish-times.ie