Sweeping Changes Announced for the International Federation of Competitive Eating

Three New Categories to Include Insects & Reptiles, Animal Sweetbreads and Non-organic Hardware

NEW YORK - The sports world was stunned yesterday when the International Federation of Competitive Eating announced sweeping changes to the sport of amateur gurgitation.

“Due to the unbridled success of our competitors, we’ve been forced to up the ante by adding additional record categories,” said George Shea, Chairman of the IFOCE. “Up until now, we’ve primarily focused on natural food products in any form or method of preparation. But with the records inching up at an alarming rate, we’ve decided to level the playing field by including non-mainstream and non-organic categories.”

What Shea is referring to is the addition of three new gustatory categories: insects & reptiles, animal sweetbreads and non-organic hardware.

On the heels of the popular network television program, “Fear Factor,” the IFOCE will begin hosting competitive eating events for insects at its next scheduled event at the Golden Palace.net World Series of Eating Events in Springfield, Illinois. “We’re going to start off with three insect categories: flies, mealworms & beetles and a miscellaneous category that includes stink bugs, caterpillars, earwigs and ticks,” said Shea. “We’ve heard of a guy down in New Orleans, named Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, who can wolf down 72 stink bugs in 6 minutes. And there’s a 24 year old woman named Sally George Doke from Atlanta that holds the local record for South African Dung Beetles.”

The additional categories were added in an attempt to challenge the numerous eating records held for burritos, butter, cheesecake, chicken wings, hard boiled eggs, hot dogs and spam. “There’s one little lady named Sonya Thomas who ate over 9 pounds of Jambalaya last summer in 10 minutes,” complained Shea. “Who in the heck can compete with that? And, another guy downed 45 conch fritters in 6 minutes! I don’t know what a conch fritter is, but he ate a lot of them.”