Watching the eating contestants devour bowls of dumplings at painful speeds -- and even, in some cases, to messy, unfortunate results -- did nothing to quell the appetites of visitors sampling dumplings from around the world at the sixth annual NYC Dumpling Fest. The fest paid tribute to the global bundle Saturday in a event featuring a competitive eating contest, a dumpling how-to class, author appearances and food stands serving edible representations from around the world.

The Lower East Side function supported the Food Bank for New York City with sales of the usual Asian dumplings and a smattering of dumpling cousins: Polish pierogi, Chinese bao, Italian gnocchi, Mexican tamales, Asian pot stickers, Malaysian kuih koci, Indian idli and Filipino palitawa.

Chefs Wai Hon Chu (co-author of "The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide") and Jaden Hair (author of "The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough for Tonight's Dinner) did book signings, but the obvious highlight of the event was the eating contest.

Forty contestants, largely male, of all shapes and sizes showed up to voraciously dive into bowls of whole-wheat dumplings at varying speeds. Judged by a panel including city councilman John Liu -- who quipped about the dumpling, "All those ingredients in one little package, what more could you ask for!" -- the gustatory athletes were an amusingly motley bunch.

More on the eating competition, after the jump.

"Coney Island Elephant." Photo: Theremina/Flickr

In a result that shocked ... no one ... elephants defeated humans in an eating contest at Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Coney Island on Friday afternoon. The trio of animals, whose names sound like second string Golden Girls (Bunny, Susie and Minny) beat the people eaters by nearly 3 to 1 -- 505 to 143 hot dog rolls, in case you were counting.

The animals are in their 40s, and moved at what one reporter called a "leisurely" pace, compared to human counterparts who utilized strategies like dipping two buns in liquid, then stuffing them in their mouths.

Ironically enough, when Slashfood reported this story last week, our source at Major League Eating, George Shea, said, "really, the strategy of ... whether or not the elephants will understand they're in a contest: Will they begin as quickly as the eaters? Will they eat in a leisurely fashion?"

It didn't seem to matter. The results, declared organizers, were a "setback for humanity."

Competitive eaters v. Ringling Bros. elephants. Photos: Getty Images

Man versus beast. That age-old test of wills is being revived once more, and this time it's about who can pack down more hot-dog buns.

As a prelude to the annual hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island, three professional eaters will go up against three Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey elephants on July 3 in Brooklyn, N.Y., an organizer confirmed to Slashfood.

"The animal kingdom in general is oppressed -- many would say -- by the dominance of the human species, and if they were to win this battle, in a way it could signal a rise of the animals," George Shea, chairman of Major League Eating, tells Slashfood. "Or at the very least, a confidence booster."

Get the details on this pachyderm pack down after the jump.

Philadelphia Magazine writer Jason Fagone spent one year profiling some of the most divinely outsized personalities in the world of competitive eating. While Akron house painter Coondog O'Karma makes a midlife grab at glory via rapid-fire pizza consumption, Bill "El Wingador" Simmons attempts to reclaim Wong Bowl supremacy from 90lb Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas, and day trader Tim Janus dons the mantle of the mysterious Eater X, it all comes down to one shared hunger. They all want to win the Mustard Yellow Belt of International Hot Dog Eating Supremacy back from the Japanese who'd dominated the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest nearly every year since 1997.

Back in July of 2001, that would mean beating the record of 25 1/8 set the previous year by Kazutoyo "The Rabbit" Arai.

That was before Takeru Kobayashi's 50 Dog Day.

Read an excerpt from Jason Fagone's Horsemen of the Esophagus on AOL Food

Competitive eating isn't just for professionals anymore, these days anyone who had a video camera and a few minutes can get in the game. Sweet Sweet Confections, a candy company out of San Jose, CA is currently running a contest in which contestants see how many S'mores bars they can eat in three minutes. Sweet Sweet is offering those bars at 25% off through the contest (which ends September 30th), however even with the discount they are still sort of spendy to be stuffing into your mouth with wild abandon. The winner (many will enter, few will win) will be reimbursed for the cost of their candy and will be awarded a cash prize and free chocolate (although I wonder the winner will even be particularly interested in chocolate after going the distance to win this contest).

Who says there are no injuries in the world of competitive eating?

Sure, they might not have to deal with torn cartilege or a twisted ankle or a blown out knee, but what about jaw injuries? Takeru Kobayashi, the king of the annual Nathan's Famous July Fourth International Hot Dog Eating Contest, has arthritis of the jaw. He can't even open his mouth more than the size of a fingertip, but he's still going to enter the competition this year. Last year he ate a little over 53 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

Kobayashi isn't limited to hot dogs either. He once ate 97 hamburgers in eight minutes. The hell?

We might not be into participating ourselves, but we to hear about eating competitions, whether they're professional or not. In fact, while the pros are great, it's even more interesting to get an outside perspective from a non-pro who decides to take on a supersized eating task just for the challenge of it. In this case, Bear Silber and some of his friends decided to face off in a local eating competition: the Belly Buster Challenge. The event was held at a restaurant called Pizza and Pipes in Santa Clara, California and involves a single person eating a 20″ cheese pizza with 2 toppings in under one hour. The pizzeria has a few established rules that contestants are expected to abide by and the winner gets the glory, along with some free pizza, a picture on the wall of fame and a free t-shirt.

Bear's friends went with classically topped Pepperoni and Mushroom pizzas, while he strategically opted to have different toppings on each quarter of the pizza (one quarter pepperoni and olive, one quarter Canadian bacon and pineapple, one quarter pesto and tomato and one quarter sausage and mushroom). His friends ended up joining the Wall of Shame, but Bear managed to polish off the pie at only 37 minutes, becoming the first person ever to conquer the Belly Buster Challenge.

Do we have a future competitive eater on our hands here?

Artie's Deli in New York held its annual turkey-eating contest last Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving. Each contestant was given a fully-cooked 12-pound turkey and the goal was to see who could eat the most in 12 minutes. Competitive eating champion Pat Bertoletti walked away from his competition, eating a full pound more meat than his closest rival and reaching a total of 4.8 pounds. Competitive eating fans might be surprised to know that Sonya Thomas, aka the black widow and the defending turkey-eating champ, was also competing. Unfortunately, she was disqualified after getting so much turkey into her mouth that she was unable to swallow. Bertoletti, for his part, said that he had a specific strategy that helped him. He started with the white meat because it was harder to chew, so that his jaw would have enough energy to get through it before moving onto the softer, moister dark meat. The runners up included Tim Janus (3.8 lbs), Arturo Rios (2.8 lbs) and Crazy Legs Conti (2.38 lbs).

I haven't posted anything about competitive eating in a while, but, for a number of reasons, this is too good to pass up. A recent post to the International Federation of Competitive Eating website mentioned next weekend's World Posole Eating Championship at the Sky City Casino in Acoma, New Mexico. I'm a big posole fan, but I never knew it was something that was eaten competitively. If you've visited the IFOCE site in the past, you might be familiar with competitive eater Rich "The Locust" LeFevre. Rich will be competing next weekend, but it turns out that his wife Carlene (right) was the star of the competition two years ago, when she became the "world posole champ" by eating almost 110 ounces of of the spicy pork and hominy soup in 12 minutes. Her husband finished with about 10 ounces less than that. Carlene won't be competing this time around, but her husband Rich will, along with competitive eater Pat Bertoletti.

In the Krystal Square Off III World Hamburger Eating Contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee this past weekend, Takeru Kobayashi brought home another championship title by eating 97 hamburgers in 8 minutes. Joey Chestnut came in second, finishing with 91 hamburgers, followed by Patrick Bertoletti in third with 76. All the numbers are up hugely from last year's contest, in which Kobayashi narrowly beat Chestnut with a final total of 67-62 burgers. One other big change from previous years was that the contest was televised on ESPN2, which gives the sport a much wider audience and much more publicity than it enjoyed before.

The contest is known as the "square off" because the burgers that the competitors wolf down are square, but Krystal's burgers hosts the contest because they have been holding eating contests at their stores since the first one opened in 1932. According to company legend, the tradition was set when the second customer challenged the first customer to a head-to-head hamburger showdown.

In Japan, one of the hottest stars in competitive eating is Natsuko "Gal" Sone, a cute, bubbly young woman that is known almost as well for her unusual makeup (which includes white eyeliner) as she is for her eating skils. Her nickname comes from her style of dressing in the gyaru or "gal" fashion, with dyed blonde hair. She is one of the relatively few female competitive eaters and seems to be the highest ranked one at the moment, with victories in contests involving seafood, curry and hamburgers, among other things, and for participating in a number of regular eating contests on Japanese TV. Her eating quirk is that she actually seems to be a very picky eater and takes her own container of mayonnaise, her favorite condiment, along when she eats to put on just about everything.

In the clip after the jump, you can see a Japanese television show follow her throughout the day as she consumed 40,000 calories. If, like me, you don't speak Japanese, you'll find the popups on the show very helpful, as they show the measurements (weights, etc) of the foods that she eats and keep track of the calorie count.

[Thanks, Mark]

It's something of a mystery as to where the FOX network gets some of their programming ideas, so the original inspiration for this particular segment is anyone's guess. Since Takeru Kobayshi can out-eat just about anybody, FOX decided to have him face off against a Kodiak bear - an 8-ft tall, 1000-lb animal - in a hot dog eating competition.

The clip is pretty funny, actually. The announcers treat it almost like a wrestling match and the best line is when they start to talk about the bear's technique vs. Kobayashi's. "[The bear] has a very different approach to eating. See, he looks away and he takes a break. He doesn't know it's a competition. He's just a natural eating machine." For his part, Kobayashi definitely knew it was a competition and didn't take his eyes off the bear.

Who emerged victorious? You'll have to watch the clip to find out, but I will say that someone is already eagerly awaiting a rematch.

It is extremely unlikely that you could out-eat world champion competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi, but what if you had three friends on your team? As it turns out, 4:1 are not good enough odds to take on the champ. In the World Lobster Roll Eating Challenge in Boston, a team of four young Massachusetts residents (about 19 years old or so) tried, collectively, to eat more than Kobayashi. Even with $10,000 prize money as an incentive, the four could only put away 25 rolls to Kobayashi's 41.Kobayashi, who has been called the Lance Armstrong of the competitive eating world, took home the prize money instead of the local team.

As with many things that Kobayashi eats, this number is the new world record for lobster-roll eating. He only tasted his first lobster roll the night before the competition and said that he thought he could beat his record in the future, now that he was more familiar with the food.

A 32-year-old woman in Canada was participating in a Chubby Bunny contest, a game in which participants attempt to stuff as many marshmallows into their mouths as possible and still say "chubby bunny." It is often played by children at camps and sleepovers and, more often than not, all efforts subside into laughter after about the fourth or fifth mallow. Adults take these things more seriously, however, and instead of ending up laughing, the above-mentioned woman ended up in critical condition at a London, Ontario hospital after choking on a marshmallow. The contest was already over and she was walking backstage when she collapsed. She had no vital signs when the paramedics got to her and is currently in critical condition.

The future of Chubby Bunny contests at this fair are seriously in doubt, as it may be in other venues since this is not an isolated incident, and it is possible that other food-events will be more closely monitored in the future ,a reminder to all competitive eaters that chewing your food could potentially be far more important than winning.

Update: Unfortunately, the woman did not recover from the incident.

[image via wikipedia]

A 13-year-old girl in the U.K. beat several grown men in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest this week, setting a British record in the process. Emily Cotterill consumed 26 ears of corn in 20 minutes, watching while "male opponents began vomiting and dropping out." Her parents seemed proud of their daughter's achievement, and her father even remarked that he considered entering the contest, but did not think he would stand a chance against Emily.

Emily said that she felt a little ill after the competition, but it soon passed. She also noted that she probably wouldn't be eating corn again anytime soon, but did not make a comment indicating whether or not she was interested in pursuing a career as a competitive eater in the future.

At least she was eating something relatively healthy, and not brats or hot dogs.