Some eat to live, others to set a record

Food can take on any avatar. It's absolutely without any frills, like a down-to-earth faithful pet when you look at it as your staple. You just have to have your staple fare at least once a week to feel that deep sense of contentment. Whether it's a lentil curry with rice, tortillas with refried beans, hommous with khubuz... it all looks and sounds just such a normal thing to do.

It is the incorrigible nerve wrecker as comfort food - rich dark chocolate, cream-filled doughnuts and smooth lemon meringues... you know all about the evil calories but can't help the binge!

Food gets arty when it acquires the status of a starter. Those lovely lip-smacking canapes, fries and other finger foods circulated around in a party... with pretty window-dressing and tantalising sauces, they leave you with a feeling of always wanting some more. That's why these never go out of fashion.

But seriously what do you say to food when it is consumed by the bulk and measured not in grammes but in kilogrammes or pounds? I wonder why do people indulge in major league eating competitions and what really inspires a person to gulp down pounds of meat, fish, crab or chicken, just to chase a silly record.

The competition is about eating anything that people can lay their hands on - Burritos, crab cakes, sausages, waffles, fries, nuggets, chicken wings and you have prizes upwards of $10,000 to be a glutton. Forget about the massive spike it must be causing to your blood sugar, cholesterol and other stuff. What it does to your taste buds, olfactories and gullet must be absolutely devastating.

Bizarre contests

But people who compete in such bizarre contests, always live to tell the tale. Surprisingly they are people who are reed thin, of course some of them are pleasantly plump, but not walking health disasters by any stretch of imagination. The Japanese girl who won last year's hamburger eating competition, Takeru Kobayashi weighs 160 pounds and ate 97 hamburgers in eight minutes!

The most surprising of them all is a thin Asian girl called Sonya Thomas who weighs 105 pounds and holds at least 20 records for diverse food items such as crab cakes, fries and nuggets. The most striking of her records is that of eating 9.75 pounds of deep fried okra in less than 10 minutes and 46 crab cakes in 10 minutes!

On the one hand we have the anorexic and bulimic brigade, throwing up everything they eat and literally measuring the air they breathe. And on the other, we have such insane record holders throwing all caution to wind and stuffing themselves silly.

I guess, it takes all kinds to make this world!