Deadly Eating Contests, Fake Croissants & Truffle Truths

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Deadly Eating Contests, Fake Croissants & Truffle Truths

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A man once ate 57 cow brains in fifteen minutes. Another ate the leaves off 74 feet of stinging nettles. A third downed 49 raw garlic cloves in five, and reported that the garlic got stronger every time it came back up. George Duran opens the show by dragging Karla Walsh through the strangest corners of competitive eating history — the first recorded pie-eating tournament in Toronto in 1878, where contestants knelt in front of raspberry tarts with their hands tied behind their backs and won a nicely bound book for it; the 1909 Manhattan Fat Men's Club contest where a 380-pound former alderman put away 275 oysters, eight pounds of steak and eleven cups of coffee; and the 1899 Welsh rarebit championship in Nutley, New Jersey, where three quarters of a gallon of melted cheese earned a man a beer mug.Then the mood turns. George walks through the medical case files: the doughnut challenge in Denver that killed a 42-year-old man while bystanders assumed the choking was part of the act, the ghost pepper burger that tore a hole in a man's esophagus and collapsed his lung, the single Carolina Reaper that constricted arteries in a man's brain, and a case published this year of a pizza contest that over-distended a stomach until it perforated. Karla's conclusion: listen to this episode before you sign the waiver.After the break, it's fakery from the bakery. A TikTok creator films what looks like a Costco delivery arriving at a Times Square French bakery moments after she pays $12 for a pistachio croissant. A Long Island vegan market discovers its "house-made, gluten-free" doughnut is wearing Dunkin's sprinkles. A 60-year-old Biloxi institution pleads guilty to selling more than 29 tons of imported frozen fish as Gulf snapper and grouper. Plus the escolar problem hiding behind the words "white tuna," and a round of Michelin Impossible, in which George reads absurdly elegant descriptions of supermarket junk food and Karla identifies them with unsettling accuracy.In the second half, Paolo Montanaro — second-generation truffle man and CEO of Tartuflanghe in Alba — explains what a real truffle actually tastes like, why almost all truffle oil is one synthetic molecule doing the work of hundreds, why white truffles can't be farmed and black ones can, how long a truffle really lasts after harvest, the color test that tells you whether the truffle being shaved onto your plate is mature or a prop, and why the world's truffle hunters swapped pigs for dogs.Key TakeawaysCompetitive eating is older and weirder than the hot dog era. The first recorded pie-eating tournament was a charity fundraiser in Toronto in January 1878, won by Albert Piddington at the Grand Opera House. His prize was a handsomely bound book. Karla's response: she'd rather just buy the book.The Fat Men's Club numbers are real. At the Manhattan club's East Third Street clubhouse in 1909, former alderman Frank Dotzler ate 275 oysters, eight-plus pounds of steak, twelve rolls, three pies and eleven cups of coffee. He won $50 — roughly $1,800 today.A beer mug for three quarters of a gallon of cheese. The 1899 New Jersey Welsh rarebit championship in Nutley went to Conrad H. Ray, described by the Chicago Daily Tribune as a man with a large mouth and a hungry look.The nettle championship started as a farmer's bet. Guinness traces it to 1986, when Dorset farmer Alex Williams produced a 15-foot-6 nettle and promised to eat any longer one. Somebody found one. In 2025 Michael Hobbs stripped and ate the leaves from 74 feet of nettles in an hour.Nettles are safe cooked; these people aren't cooking them. Blanching or drying neutralizes the sting. Raw, in quantity, it's mouth and throat irritation and an unhappy stomach.57 cow brains, 17.7 pounds, 15 minutes. Takeru Kobayashi's record — by George's math, about 12,100 calories and 249,000 mg of cholesterol. George's own cow-brain trauma is a childhood memory of coming home from a lesson on the nervous system and lifting a pot lid to find one bubbling away.49 raw garlic cloves in five minutes. Oliver Farmer won the first World Garlic Eating Competition in Dorset in 2013. Four to nine cloves is enough to cause serious gastrointestinal distress; doctors have documented genuine garlic burns.The deaths and injuries are not hypothetical. Travis Malouff, 42, choked to death in 2017 attempting a half-pound doughnut in 80 seconds — witnesses didn't intervene fast enough because distress and effort look identical in an eating challenge.A ghost pepper burger tore a 2.5 cm hole in a man's esophagus. Emergency surgery, a collapsed lung, 23 days in hospital, home with a feeding tube.One pepper, one brain event. A 34-year-old man who ate a single Carolina Reaper developed thunderclap headaches; imaging showed several cerebral arteries had temporarily constricted. They returned to normal.Stomachs can and do rupture. A case published this year: a 44-year-old man's stomach perforated immediately after a pizza-eating competition...

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