I believe that I mentioned one of my favorite things - although I had quite a lot of "favorites" to be perfectly honest - from the Fancy Foods Show were the meat pies that I had at the Vili's Gourmet booth. Meat pies are a favorite Australian snack food, the sort of thing that you'll find at pubs, random takeaways and - of course - at any major sporting event. They exactly what they sound like, too: small pastries that are filled with a thick mixture of meat and gravy. It's important that the filling be thick enough not to run out all over the eater, since the pies are usually eaten by hand and they are best when topped of with a bit of tomato sauce (ketchup).

There are two types of competitions in the world of competitive eating, whether you are talking about pros or about the contests you'll find at the local county fair. One type, perhaps the most popular type, emphasizes quantity and challenges participants to eat as much as they can in a set time limit. IFCOE contests from grilled cheese to ice cream to hot dogs run this way. Other contests challenge eaters to eat a certain amount as fast as possible.

With concerns about the amount of calories that the contest participants take in (and the possibility that they somehow encourage overeating and obesity), some contests are making the decision to switch to this second format, such as the committee behind the World Pie Eating Championship. Even though there have been concerns about choking in speed eating contests before, the WPEC will only have competitors eat one "regulation" meat pie in as short a time as possible. Also in the interest of health, they will be offering a meat-free pie option so as to encourage healthy eating while not discriminating against vegetarians who wish to participate.

Meatless option aside, it actually seems healthier to eat a lot of food than to simply stuff down food as fast as possible, although they planners' theory is that that goes on in the quantity-oriented contests, as well.

Historians have recently made a claim that is rather upsetting to the British food community, disputing the origin of the famous Cornish pasty, a handheld pie usually filled with meat, for anyone unlucky enough to have missed out on them). It was long assumed to have originated in Cornwall, from where it takes its name. It turns out, according to Dr. Todd Gray, chairman of the Friends of Devon's Archives, that they actually originated in Devon.

Dr. Gray apparently discovered an historical document that references the making of pasties as early as 1510, while the first recipe of record in Cornwall didn't appear until 1746. As you might expect with any regional icon, emotions run high on the subject, especially for those in Cornwall. Most other experts, including that author of The Official Encyclopedia of the Cornish Pasty and the spokesman for the Cornish Pasty Association, seem to think that it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the first instance of a pasty being made and, since pastry/bread vessels were fairly common "as early as the 1100s," the fact that there is a dated, "official" recipe for the modern pasty proves little about the actual origin.