"horseman of the esophagus" news and stories

Salon.com currently features an interview with Ryan Nerz, author of Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit. The book chronicles Nerz's experiences and observations from having emceed several eating contests over the course of a year. What's even better is that there's another book out on the subject, entitled Horseman of the Esophagus. Incidentally, both have hot dogs on their covers. In the Salon interview, Nerz talks about some of the more hotly contested subjects in the world of competitive eating, namely the "belt of fat" theory, which tries to explain why thin people have better luck in eating competitions than larger folks.