The story at CNN.com began this way:
“It’s a question we’ve all considered at one point, whether among our respected academic peers or while zoning out in the shower. How many hot dogs do you think you could eat in one sitting?”
Raise a hand if anything in those two sentences was ever true of you.
Anything.
Right.
Still, the story is about something even crazier: A study to answer just that question.
A 3,250-word paper about the study appeared July 15 in a Royal Society of Publishing journal, titled “Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans – perspectives from hot dog eating competitions.”
The author, physiology professor James M. Smoliga of High Point University, based this load of mustard on decades of “data” from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. He wrote in impenetrable academic language, although I suspect he giggled all the while – and is laughing still.
“An elite competitive eater experiences a decreased resting gastric emptying rate and extreme gastric dilation,” professor Hot Dog wrote.
Some studies deserve accurate, no-baloney descriptions. How’s this?
Wienercrap.
