Takeru Kobayashi, the Japanese competitive eater who brought global attention to the July 4 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog contest, has announced that health concerns have forced his retirement from the eating circuit.
The six-time Nathan’s champion said the decades of gobbling down everything from wieners and Buffalo wings to lobster rolls and cow brains have had damaging effects on his digestive system and gut health.
In the new Netflix documentary “Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut,” Kobayashi, 46, said, “I’ve decided to retire from competitive eating. It’s all I’ve done for the last 20 years.
Kobayashi said he now often has no appetite or no sensation of fullness, and his wife Maggie James added that he will sometimes go days without eating anything at all.
“I am Japanese but I’ve eaten like an American. I think that’s what damaged my body,” he said in the film. “I overeat because I’m a competitive eater. … When you eat too much, you don’t savor the taste or fully enjoy the smell of the food. You ignore your body’s signals, like fullness.”
Explaining in 2004 how he would prepare months expanding his stomach ahead of competitions, Kobayashi said, “You have to gradually build up your gut by eating larger and larger amounts of food, and then be sure to work it all off so body fat doesn’t put a squeeze on the expansion of your stomach in competition. I start my regimen about two months before a big competition.”
After gaining local fame on a Japanese TV variety show in 2000, Kobayashi became a global sensation at the July 4 Nathan’s contest. At that event in 2001, he doubled the existing record by downing 50 franks and buns in 10 minutes. That win began a streak of six straight titles.
His head-to-head competitions with fellow eater Joey Chestnut further elevated both his fame and the profile of the sport.
“I’m sure that I’ve eaten 10,000 hot dogs since the beginning of my career,” Kobayashi explained in the film.