Eating Contest

At an eating contest, you boast
That you can eat the most.
How do you down your fiftieth piece of pie?
Eagerly (ugh!), eagerly (yech!), Eager L-Y.

— Tom Lehrer, L-Y

Exactly What It Says on the Tin, two or more characters, at least one of them possibly being a Big Eater, engage in this type of contest, where they try to out-eat each other with as much food as possible. Often, the Big Eater will come out as the victor, while the other loses by becoming full too fast, sometimes ending up with a Balloon Belly.

There are also some cases where both characters will lose in the midst of the contest, by either also gaining the aforementioned Balloon Belly, throwing up, getting sleepy, getting a stomach ache, or just plain giving up. Also, after the Big Eater wins, sometimes he'll ask, "What's for dessert?" or show signs that he's still hungry.

Other variations include seeing who can eat the most spicy food without giving up or drinking water/milk (often resulting in a Fire-Breathing Diner), or seeing who can eat a specific amount of food the fastest. In these cases, eating too much is usually not an issue, so the loser is usually simply the slowest, though they may run the risk of getting nausea or indigestion from fast eating, or (if the food is cold) getting a brain freeze.

Some video games will feature these as a Mini-Game; expect rapid Button Mashing to be the main (if not only) strategy, as well as rotten or even explosive food to be mixed in as an extra challenge.

See also Mega Meal Challenge. Contrast Cooking Duel, although they may go hand-in-hand. Compare Drinking Contest, or may be paired with a Drinking Contest.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: In Chapter 521, Ichigo and Renji's rivalry at dinner time very briefly spills over into an eating competition until they're interrupted by their host.
• JP and Zoe engaged in one of these in episode 17 of Digimon Frontier. Too bad that JP was the one who ended up with the Balloon Belly in the middle of it, while Zoe just kept on eating the food that came her way. Takuya and Koji even lampshade it with the following dialogue in the English dub:
  Takuya: Zoe ate all that!?!? Where does she put it all?
  Koji: Well, she is a growing girl.
• The 801 T.T.S. Airbats OVA features a ramen-eating contest involving most of the main cast, with heavy betting from everyone who hears about it. JSDF troops, American troops, even the crew of a Russian T-95 Bear intruding into Japanese airspace have money riding on the contest. Many of them wind up disappointed when early favourite Konishi is knocked out, with only a few wagering on Yoko's unassuming but bottomless appetite.
• One episode of Magical Play involves Zucchini setting up an eating contest after overhearing Myumyu mention she's trying to keep her figure. Knowing how competitive she is, he figures she won't be able to resist, but doesn't count on her simply feeding all the food to her cats, who also function as her outfit. In the end, she wins, but when she stands up to accept her prize, her cats are too bloated to stay attached to her and fall, leaving her completely naked.
• Maid Latte puts on an eating contest in Maid-Sama!, with Supreme Chef Usui making the dishes, as a means of showcasing their dessert menu; Misaki participates in disguise as a favor to her co-worker Erika, who carelessly promised one of her regular customers that she'd go out on an all-day date with him if he won the contest. They both lose to bottomless pit Hinata.
• Naruto and Sasuke once compete by having an Eating Contest, finish at the same time and promptly throw up.
  • There's an anime omake where Naruto and some of his classmates compete in a ramen eating contest. The winner? Hinata.
• In The Prince of Tennis, some teams go out to eat yakiniku (Japanese barbeque) after the Seigaku/Hyoutei matches. Being teenagers and rather hungry after such a deal, they start getting competitive and end up staging this. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Picollet family of Ranma ½ practices Martial Arts Dining as one of the series' many Martial Arts and Crafts, with the goal not being to see who can eat the most, but who can eat the fastest, an area where the Picollets have a rather disturbing hereditary advantage. Additionally, Martial Arts Dining requires that one eats "elegantly", where "eating elegantly" means "chewing and swallowing so fast that it can't be seen by the unaided human eye". The only way to win against a Picollet is to shove your own food into the Picollet's mouth without him noticing.
• Fuu enters an eating contest in one episode of Samurai Champloo. This earned her a surprising reputation as the Big Eater. However, she ended up losing because she accidentally made the hand signal for "I give up" while trying to kill a fly that had been bothering her.
• In Sket Dance, there is a chapter dealing with a ramen shop where the arrogant owner challenges the customers to completely eat his Biggest Damn Ramen (7 kg!) for a prize.
• Lina and Gourry got into one in the fourth season of Slayers. The loser (The one to eat the least amount of food) had to pick up the check.
• In Urusei Yatsura, the Miss Tomobiki Beauty Contest has a ramen-eating competition as one of its rounds, with the girls seeing which of them can down the most ramen before surrendering. Sakura effortlessly wins by consuming 58 bowls without even trying hard, whilst Lum and Ryuunosuke tie at second place each with a mere 4 bowls.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Season 11 episode 2 opens with Happy S. and Moondance having a friendly noodle-eating contest. Happy S. becomes too stuffed to eat anymore, but Moondance seems to have enough of an appetite to continue eating even after that point.
• In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: The Earth Carnival episode 14, to win more tickets, the goats and Wolffy enter a competition where the contestants must eat as much grass food as possible. The contestants make their own food by riding through the plains on mowers that convert the mowed grass into food.

Comic Books

• An Archie Comics story had Jughead compete against a member of a rival gang in a hamburger-eating contest at Pop's chocolate shop. Jughead won in the end, because no other Big Eater could quite match up to Jughead's style.
• Asterix: In "Asterix and Switzerland", there was an event to see who could eat, drink, and sing the fastest. Obelix wins the eating and drinking parts, but gets too drunk to sing.
• A common competitive sport among the Fatties subculture in Judge Dredd. It goes together nicely with their goal of maximizing their weight.
• In the old Polish comic Koziołek Matołek, the titular goat encounters some Indians, and after being challenged to a duel by their chief, the goat picks the competition to be eating grass. The chief eats until he explodes.
• In a Gold Key Looney Tunes comic book story, Bugs Bunny entered the Tasmanian Devil into an eating contest for a cash prize. While the Tasmanian Devil won the contest when his opponent couldn't eat another bite, his appetite got so out of control that he made his way into a restaurant to satisfy himself. Meanwhile, the loser decided to rig up a pressure cooker and turn it into a bomb, so when Bugs and Porky Pig find out about it, Bugs had the pressure cooker disguised as a cake so he could feed it to the Tasmanian Devil, who acted as a living bomb disposal unit. While Bugs got the cash reward for Taz winning the contest, he also had to pay off the restaurant, which left him with only enough money to buy an after-dinner mint for Taz, which he refused, saying that he needs to watch his figure.

Fan Works

• Personality Conflicts (a Power Rangers fanfic):
  • In the Zeo Rangers' "Aftermath" chapter, Rocky de Santos makes a mental note to never challenge TJ to one, based on their experiences on Danata — Zarakin cooking is very spicy, and while it proved too much for Rocky, TJ had eaten it without any problems.
  • Rocky later competes in one in Shadows of the Future, and wins by downing twenty plates of pie in ten minutes. When the girl who'd challenged him asks him what he has to say for himself, his mischievous reply is "When's lunch?"
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: During the Indigo League, Ash and Iris end up entering a curry-eating contest during their first date together. Being Bloodliners, their heightened metabolism helps them win with relative ease, and Iris even ends up asking to eat the last dish their opponents couldn't finish.
• In The Potioneer's Assistant Rebrewed Ron wins an eating contest by scarfing down 505 chicken wings in half an hour. He receives a large trophy cup filled with fruit-flavored antacids and a trip to the hospital wing to verify that he hadn't taken any appetite-enhancement potions before the contest.
• Project Delta has Fel (an old krogan warrior) on one side, and Jane (an augmented biotic who needs a lot of calories) on the other. It tends to end with the food running out.

Films — Animated

• The Lion King 1 ½: Timon and Simba hold a bug-eating contest to see who can eat more snails in the film. Simba wins easily.
• Luca: One of the challenges in the Italian "triathlon" is to eat pasta. Giulia gets a little nauseous, and Luca burps, but other than that, both come out fine.

Films — Live-Action

• Beethoven: George and Beethoven enter a hamburger-eating contest at the county fair in the second film. They won by only three burgers remaining.
• Meatballs has a hot-dog eating contest as part of the competition between the two camps.
• Mr. Woodcock: Mr. Jasper Woodcock and his future stepson John Farley take part in a corn-eating contest at a local carnival. John wins.
• Soul Mates (2023): A variant shows up in the restaurant challenge. While Allison and Jason are not competing against each other, they are still forced to eat an unrealistically large 3-course meal to save the life of the "waitress" (another kidnapped person who has been fitted with a Shock Collar that will electrocute her). When Jason realizes how impossible the challenge is, he tries to bolt for the side door to at least save the lives of him and Allison, but the door closes before they can reach it.
• Inverted in Stand by Me, where Gordie tells a story he made up about a kid entering an eating contest just for the chance to drag his entire town into a mass vomit-chain as revenge for treating him as the Butt-Monkey for years.
• The middle part of the hungarian film Taxidermia revolves around a professional eater in 1960's communist Hungary, his training routines, and the aspirations of his trainer to get it acknowledged as an olympic sport.
• In the live-action Underdog film, one of the scenes shown during Shoeshine/Underdog's bouts of crimefighting showed him in a hot dog-eating contest with a fat guy. Underdog beats him before the fat man could even get a bite.

Gamebooks

• Armies of Death has an optional side-quest in Zengis, where you can partake in a pie-eating contest for extra gold to recruit new soldiers. Your eating opponent, the Big Belly Man, absolutely lives up to his name.
• Return to Firetop Mountain have one which is compulsory. In order to get one of the MacGuffin items necessary to finish your quest, you must partake in a sheep's eye eating competition.

Literature

• Stephen King uses this one in his story "The Body" (made into a film under the title Stand by Me, see Film section).
• In Bugs Bunny: Too Many Carrots, Bugs Bunny enters a pie-eating contest against a Fat Bastard who's never lost after convincing the contest organizer to make the pies carrot ones. He wins, but eats so many pies that he becomes sick of carrots for the first time in his life and tries not to cringe at the numerous carrot foods that his friends keep giving him in gratitude for him helping them win their own contests.
• In Clarence Goes To Town, Clarence, a realistically portrayed dog, is in a quiz-and-stunt contest with a bunch of humans. One of the stunts is a pie-eating contest. The show runners decide that, since pie isn't good for dogs, Clarence's pie is substituted with a half pound of raw hamburger.
• Clue: Book #10, chapter 7 ("Pie In Your Eye"), revolves around Mr. Boddy holding his annual pie-eating contest on National Pie Day (though the date given, May 5, is wrong — the actual date is January 23), which Miss Scarlet is noted as having won the previous year with twelve pieces. She wins again this year with ten when the contest is called off early because of the guests' bad behavior.
• The Doctor Who Expanded Universe short story "Too Rich for My Blood" by Rebecca Levine (in the collection Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins, representing Gluttony) is set at a hot dog eating contest in Las Vegas. One of the contestants has been doped with an alien serum to increase his appetite. When they run out of hot dogs, he starts on the other competitors. And then it goes viral...
• Encyclopedia Brown:
  • Book 4, chapter 8 ("The Case of the Blueberry Pies") involves a variant — with the new rules this year, the competitors have to finish two blueberry pies, with fork and knife (the woman in charge disapproves of eating with your hands, calling it "a disgrace"), and then run half a mile to the finish line. Encyclopedia winds up proving that the winners cheated via Twin Switch — one ate the pies, and then sneakily switched places with their twin during the race; they're disqualified as a result, and Encyclopedia's friend Chester wins.
  • Encyclopedia's friend Chester is noted as competing in other eating contests in other books.
• In More Pies!, by Robert Munsch, a boy named Sam wins a pie-eating contest despite competing with two grown men, because he loves pie so much.
• Damon Runyon's short story A Piece of Pie has one between Joel Duffle and Violette Shumberger.
• Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black contains a short story A Reversal of Fortune. It revolves around an eating contest. The man cuts a hole in his stomach to make room to eat. However, Nikki wins by eating some of the candy removed from the man's stomach.
• In Spaghetti Pig-Out, by Paul Jennings, the protagonist and his rival, nicknamed "Guts", compete in eating spaghetti. Guts's friend, known as "Rabbit", cheats by using a remote control to speed up Guts.
• A fairly common competitive sport, albeit one forbidden by orthodoxy, in the 20 Minutes into the Future Dystopia Thinner Than Thou. One of the protagonists is even a semi-professional participant.

Live-Action TV

• Jim and Andy from According to Jim once participate in a hot dog speed-eating contest for the prize of being the spokesperson in a local commercial sponsored by the company of said hot dog product. Too bad for them they both lose... to a woman with smaller body. Jim's so unhappy about this that he challenges her to another speed-eating contest.
• The Amazing Race has had mass-eating tasks as Roadblocks over the years which, because of the nature of the race, often wound up as head-to-head (or multiple) contests:
  • Cousins Mirna and Charla had an agreement that Charla would do any eating-related challenges. This led to her having to cook and consume an entire ostrich egg (the equivalent of dozens of chicken eggs) and two pounds of caviar along with biting into hundreds of chocolates in search of one with a white center.
  • The infamous Meatblock, where team members were required to eat four pounds of various meats. This cemented Boston Rob's status as a Manipulative Bastard as, after he quit the challenge, he convinced two other teams to quit before they even tried, guaranteeing there would be at least two teams behind him and Amber after they finished the time penalty for quitting.
• In Bonanza Hoss is winning a pancake-eating contest. A fellow contestant asks him his secret; he reveals that for a change from all the sweetness of syrup, he occasionally switches to vinegar. The other contestant turns away, vomiting.
• Bones had an episode where the victim was a competitive eater.
• The Brady Bunch: When Bobby gets envious of the other Brady kids for all having trophies except him, he enters an ice cream eating contest on TV. He loses.
• An episode of CSI had a man who died from an over-expanded stomach in the midst of an eating contest, because his brain could not process 'full' signals from his stomach. This happened because the person who cared for him was a Jerkass who wanted to use him to win the contest.
• The Drew Carey Show: Drew enters a pie-eating contest at a county fair and beats the reigning champion, a pig.
• In the Friends episode "The One With The Lottery", Monica reveals she's not won anything since she was in sixth grade.
  Chandler: Pie-eating contest?
  Monica: You assume that because I was heavy, that's the only way I could win something?
  Chandler: No, I saw the picture of you covered in blueberries.
• How I Met Your Mother: Lily won a hot dog-eating contest in college with 28 hot dogs in 8 minutes, which even earned her the nickname "Lily the Belly". A flashback shows her standing up after being declared champion, revealing her swollen stomach. Funnily enough, Alyson Hannigan was pregnant at the time and the writers used the contest to show her baby bump while keeping up Hide Your Pregnancy.
• Malcolm in the Middle: When the family discovers that the neighborhood has a block party whenever they leave, Hal and Lois decide to show them up by winning the kielbasa eating contest.
• Has happened occasionally in the reality show Man v. Food.
• In an episode of Mr. Belvedere, George (at Belvedere's suggestion) wins the respect of some tough truckers in such a contest. (To his regret, his opponent gets "choice of weapon" and chooses beans.)
• The Trial by Fire at the Patience Family Day in "Family Day" from Resident Alien, featuring progressively hotter chili peppers. D'Arcy has been the champion for over a decade, save one year she got beaten by an out-of-towner. Asta enters the contest to prove a point and eats up very nearly choking around the fourth or fifth pepper. D'Arcy drops out and they make up when it comes to their fight they've been having throughout the episode, leaving Ellen as the winner.
• Round the Twist has "Spaghetti Pig-Out", based upon the Paul Jennings story of the same name. The boys compete in eating spaghetti, while several of the girls boycott the contest.
• The Australian anthology series Swap Shop once had a story about an eating contest in which two Big Eaters competed to see who could eat a whole cow (converted into meat pies) the quickest. The local champion gained an early lead, but stopped before eating the last of his pies, giving the challenger a chance to catch up and then to win. When his friends asked him later why he'd stopped, he explained that he'd misunderstood and thought the pies were just an appetiser: he'd foregone the last pie because he wanted to leave room for the cow.
• In 30 Rock, Kenneth entered a pig-eating contest to win money to leave for New York to start his dreams. Turns out his pig was his old childhood pet Harold.
  Kenneth: I ate all of him. Even the face in case of a tie. I ate my father-pig!
• Viva La Bam:
  • One part of a competition between Phil and Don Vito in one episode.
  • In another, the group enters Don Vito in a "Rocky Mountain Oyster"^*Bull testicles eating contest, which he ends up winning. Bam, however, takes the prize money and drops it into a port-a-potty.
• An episode of Weeds featured this. The food in question was butter.
• A variation of this appears in the episode "True Dromance" of Workaholics, the guys go to Rancho Cucapizza and enter in a contest to eat a huge pizza (a Humonga Cucamonga) the fastest. They have the genius idea of burning their tongues with red hot spoons first so they don't have to worry about the hot pizza. Yet they win, and in a moment of friendship, give the prize of free pizza for a year to Karl, convincing him to stay in town and be their drug dealer again.
• On Yes, Dear, Greg mentions in one episode that he and Jimmy once had a contest to see who could eat the most butter.

Mythology

• Loki competes in an eating contest when he and Thor journey to the home of Utgarda-Loki. He loses to a personification of fire.

Newspaper Comics

• One For Better or for Worse strip had April, Becky, Duncan and Gerald watch "The World Championship Extreme Eating Contest" on TV, while an observing Elly sadly contemplates "...And half of the world goes hungry."
• FoxTrot
  • In the strip seen here, Peter and Jason have a hotdog eating contest, but not to see who can eat more.
  • On one Thanksgiving, Jason bets Peter a dollar he can eat more than him. He eats two helpings and calls it quits; Peter eats 27 platefuls before even checking the score, eventually passing out without closing his eyes. (Meaning Jason loses, but how else could he have had so much fun for a dollar?)
• Garfield:
  • One strip had Garfield and Jon have a popcorn-eating contest together. However, Garfield won unfairly by eating both bowls of popcorn instead of one kernel at a time like Jon did. Another strip had Garfield and Jon have a hot pepper-eating contest to see who would endure the hotness of each different pepper they ate. Garfield lost in the end when he ate a Peruvian Death Pepper.
  • Another strip had them seeing who could eat swallow bigger sized foods whole starting with a grape. Eventually Jon got a turkey stuck in his mouth and Garfield got his head stuck in a watermelon causing them both to have to go the doctor.

Podcasts

• Mission to Zyxx features a hot dog eating contest in the Flarn episode to establish diplomatic relations.

Tabletop Games

• In Warhammer, this is a form of Duel to the Death between ogres: The winner gets to eat the loser. The ogres will gladly take similar challenges from non-ogres, except trolls, whose Hollywood Acid digestive system is a Game-Breaker even by ogre standards.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, the Space Wolves Primarch, Leman Russ, went into an eating contest against the Emperor when they first met. He WON. Empy only got his allegiance by challenging him to a proper fight and winning.

Toys

• In the first few Tamagotchi Connection toys, it's possible to connect your handheld to another and have the pets in both participate in a rice-eating competition.

Video Games

• Bug Fables: One of the activities Team Snakemouth participates during the Golden Festival in Chapter 2 is the eating competition, the prize for which is the Moon Offering that is required for visiting Venus. Leif agrees to participate, due to being extreme Big Eater, and he finds himself competing against Chubee and Zasp, the latter of which gets indigestion in the middle of the contest. The competition itself is played out as a mini-game, where the player is required to mash button to eat as fast as possible.
• Galaxy Angel: In the second game, an argument about which curry tastes better between Ranpha and Forte devolves into this as the two try to out-eat one another. Chitose gets caught up in it too, and ends up beating them both.
• Garfield Lasagna Party: The "It's Time to Eat" mini-game involves Garfield, Odie, Nermal, and Arlene partaking in this kind of contest. Pressing the right button combinations quickly will make your character eat faster. The character who eats the most by the time the time limit ends wins.
• Kirby Super Star has the Gourmet Race, with Kirby and King Dedede racing to see who can eat the most food while still reaching the finish line first. It's both an eating contest and a race.
• Love & Pies: According to Sven's public records, he was featured in the news for eating the most apple pies in an hour in a contest.
• The very first One Piece video game — a little obscurity made for the WonderSwan — features this as a mini-game, available only in multiplayer mode. Apart from dodging food contaminated by flies, players can also make more room in their stomachs by grabbing digestif drinks.
• Papa Louie Arcade: In the intro of Papa's Taco Mia!, the player character gets their job at the titular restaurant after winning 1st place in a taco eating contest.
• Pizza Tower: One of the scenes shown during the credits depicts Brick beating Pepperman in a hot dog eating contest.
• In Pokémon Sun and Moon and the "Ultra" versions, once you become champion and have eaten at the Battle Buffet five times, you'll be visited there by the Buffet Queen, who challenges you to see who can get the highest satisfaction score within the pre-set time limit of 10 turns. If you win(which requires a score of at least 50), you'll be granted the title of Buffet King/Queen.
• Slaps and Beans have hot-dog eating stages between Terrence and Bud (on single-player, the AI controls the other). Both players can eat up to at least 50 dogs before the time limit.
• In South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, one of the mini-games is entitled "Eat This". In this mini-game, Stan, Eric, Kyle, and/or Kenny are entered in a pie-eating contest, and have 30 seconds to eat the most pies. Two buttons are used for the boys' hands to eat the pies, and one button is used to push an eaten pie away. The player who eats the most pies within the time limit wins.
• Terranigma has two of these as Mini Games: a bread-eating contest in Loire Castle, and a noodle-eating contest in Neotokio.
• Tribal Hunter has this as part of the sidequest to get Munch's 5th weight level. The first time ends in a 4-way tie between him, To-Ri, Boarus, and Sunfire, namely because the latter three tapped out at the end and Munch himself burst upon eating the last piece of food that was available. Thankfully because of Munch's situation as a plushie, he comes back. It's only after getting a potion that requires him to get to a certain fullness cap threshold that he wins the rematch contest.
• In Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, Mrs. Gabberley and Major Crum enter a pie eating contest at a charity fair for a new dog shelter. The winner is Mrs. Gabberley. The fair, however is a sham to steal away the townspeople's donations.
• Warriors of Fate will, in-between stages, throw in an eating mini-game where the player characters compete with each other (or with an NPC on single-player) to clean up their post-victory dinners. There's quite a lot on their banquet table, too, with a pile of mantou, three slabs of roast, and a whole chicken.
• The NES game Yo! Noid has a bonus round with — what else? — a pizza eating contest.

Webcomics

• Champions of Far'aus: For one week, once every ten years, during the N.E.U.U (No Eyes Upon Us) festival, the "Daily mystery dish eating challenge" is held in Galemore's capital, Dorawn. Rom takes part in the day one challenge, consisting of five bowls of increasingly painful "Heartburn salad", of which a recipe can be found in "The Far'aus Cookbook" in the companion piece.
• In a Housepets! story arc set at the state fair, Tiger (a canine Deconstructive Parody of Garfield) sees the idea of an eating contest as something approaching Nirvana. Unfortunately the contest attracts the strip's other Big Eater, Other Daryl Wolf. Tiger decides he needs to cheat, and for some reason decides this means starting a Food Fight. Daryl wins, but Tiger isn't disqualified because the ferrets thought it made better television ... and because the runner-up prize money almost exactly covers Tiger's destruction of their studio in "Tiger's Very Own Super-Special Television Show!"
• In Men in Hats, Aram enters a taco eating contest to compensate for his lack of real emotions so he can have something to write in his diary.
• In Out at Home, Thurman enters one as part of a story arc.

Web Original

• In the Whateley Universe story "Parents' Day", Tennyo's family comes to see her, and she ends up in an eating contest against her mother (both her parents are mutants too — so are her brothers).
• In the SuperMarioLogan episode, "Joseph Moves In!", Bowser Junior gets tired of having Joseph stay at his house, so he tries to think of a way to raise the money to buy an apartment for Joseph to live in. When he and Cody see a commercial for a raw hot dog eating contest where the grand prize is $20,000.00, Cody enters it, and competes against Shrek. Shrek wins the contest because he eats all of his hot dogs, whereas Cody merely tries to fit as many hot dogs in his mouth as he can. Fortunately for Cody, Shrek gets disqualified after he throws up, so Cody wins the money anyway.

Western Animation

• The CatDog episode "Dog's Strange Condition" begins with Dog effortlessly winning a local pecan pie eating contest. The titular condition is his resulting "Pecanitis," which causes a pecan tree to grow out of his head.
• In the Detentionaire episode "Corndog Day Afternoon", Holger and Steve have one to see who wins Greta's hand. It just ends with her being grossed out and leaving both of them be.
• Dragon Tales: In "Dragon Drop", Ord enters a pie-eating contest at the Dragon Fair. Unfortunately, he practices so much he's too bloated when it's time to compete.
  Ord: I'm stuffed... (takes a single bite, then collapses to the ground) Maybe I practiced too much.
• An episode of Garfield and Friends had Jon and Garfield go to an authentic Chinese restaurant while visiting China. While there, the owner tells them the story of how thousands of years ago, a cat similar to Garfield outwitted the dragon out of all the food that he stole by bullying the villagers by challenging him to an eating contest. When the dragon discovers that he had been tricked out of all the food he acquired, he then chases the cat clear across China, making it sort of a subversion. When the story is finished, the owner then warns Jon that if an orange cat with black stripes (referring to Garfield) should ever eat too much whilst in China, the dragon will return and exact his revenge. However, much to the horror of both Jon and the restaurant owner, Garfield had already eaten all of the food that was in the restaurant while the owner was telling the story, claiming it to be a long fable, so he and Jon leave afterward.
• In George of the Jungle (2007): In "Larry of the Jungle" George has a pie eating contest against some yetis and wins. Unfortunately, he throws up after the suggestion that everyone go out to dinner to celebrate.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "Terror of the Black Knight", Billy wants a cool knight costume that Grim gives him. During the course of events, Billy drinks a lot of punch, then tries to relieve himself, but he can't take the armor off. As it turns out, the only way to remove the armor is to win a challenge. One of the challenges Billy partakes in is a pie-eating contest against Pud'n, who is allergic to pie. Billy eats the most pies, while Pud'n swells up after eating just one piece. Grim declares Pud'n the winner, which Billy finds unfair, since he ate the most pies. Grim tells Billy that he ate all of Pud'n's pies, and that his pies weren't even on the table to begin with.
• On Hey Arnold!, Arnold competes in one in the appropriately titled episode "Eating Contest".
• In the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode "Chow Down", it's discovered that Yumi is quite the Big Eater. Kaz tries to capitalize on this by entering her in an eating contest hoping to win some cash, but she ends up losing miserably. Ami and Kaz are baffled by this, since she was able to eat so much before. Eventually Ami discovers the secret: Yumi can only eat like a black hole when she's extremely bored.
• Downplayed in the Horrible Histories episode "The Savage Stone Age", where Mo and Stitch compete to see, not who can eat the most pizza, but rather who can eat their slice of pizza the fastest.
• In the first half of the two part first Season Finale of Jackie Chan Adventures, Jackie and his friends have to compete in a pie eating contest to find the tiger talisman hidden inside one of the pies. Jackie stabs through his pies with a fork without eating them. Jade eats through her pies as quick as she can. Tohru eats through his pies much quicker, shoving them whole into his mouth before chewing. The talisman is of course found by the only other contestant, an old man still working his way through his first pie at a snail's pace.
• A Ripped from the Headlines episode of King of the Hill featured a hot-dog eating contest where Dale shows up Bill by double-fisting the hot dogs, but losing in the end to a skinny Asian speed-eater.
• Near the end of the Little Bear episode "Little Bear's Sweet Tooth", just as Grandmother Bear announces the hardest game in the Harvest Day picnic: a pie eating contest, the title character ends up getting sick with a stomach ache after eating too many desserts, so Mother and Father Bear decide to take him home to rest before it really started. Therefore, it is unknown who won the Harvest Day pie eating contest after we fade to the next scene at Little Bear's house later that night.
• In the The Looney Tunes Show episode, "Mr. Wiener", Daffy enrolls in a hot dog eating contest at the carnival to win the title of "Mr. Wiener" and to defend his family legacy of winning this kind of events. But since he needs to eat 62 hot dogs to beat the record and his personal best is four and a half, he needs to train before entering.
• The Loud House: Discussed in "Pipe Dreams", when Lynn says she won a hot dog eating contest.
• Coop in Megas XLR competes in these, and has three championship crowns from the "Lord of the Large Pants" eating contest.
• Popeye: The cartoon Duel To the Finish has Popeye challenge Wimpy to a duel (Olive was trying to make Popeye jealous) and Wimpy chooses an eating contest. Wimpy easily dominates it but conceds to Popeye when Olive said she couldn't cook another thing.
• The Simpsons: In "Maximum Homerdrive," Homer gets in an eating contest with a trucker named Red, who dies right after beating Homer by finishing a 16-pound steak first. Just before the contest Red had eaten an entire lamb. Before the contest, Red and Tony Randall had been the only two people ever to complete the challenge.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "What's Eating Patrick" has Patrick training to compete in the Krusty Krab eating contest to beat Oswald McNulty who had won the previous years.
• Teen Titans (2003) has the episode introducing Kole and Gnnark, and the latter got into an eating competition against Cyborg. Gnnark is quite a Big Eater, but unfortunately his opponent is Cyborg... cue Gnnnark's Vomit Discretion Shot.
• Wander over Yonder: In the first episode "The Greatest", the first challenge for the Greatest in the Galaxy contest is a hot dog eating contest. Hater only eats a few at a time, while Wander wolfs down several loads.
• What's with Andy?: In "Weight to Go, Andy!", Andy trains for a "fastest eater" contest, and so is teased by Lik, Leech, and Jen for being fat and eating too much.

Real Life

• This trope can range from professional competitions (for the money!) and Man v. Food to informal college and high school contests.
• The Coney Island Forth of July Hot Dog eating contest is a well-known New York City tradition.

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