It isn't that hard to eat two Dodger dogs, despite the fact that they are quite large, but they run only $4.75 (or $5.25 for all-beef) each. A soft pretzel is $3.50 and peanuts are $5. It seems like the average fan may not eat $35 worth of food, excluding beer, during a game.

The ticket prices this season for right field were $10 each and the left field bleachers will still be available at that price.

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.

It looks like Ohio State isn't the only college football team that's going to get their own brand of cereal this season. The University of Florida Gators are getting a line of Frosted Flakes Corn Cereal, which are a limited edition item to commemorate 100 years of Gator football. The cereals will be available at 250 Publix markets throughout the state.

Some fans are buying it for the box, which could be something of a collectors' item to a die-hard fan, but others are simply buying the cereal because they like frosted flakes for breakfast. No matter what the reason behind the purchases, Publix says that the cereals are selling quickly and that they expect to see sales climb throughout the season or until the stocks, since it was produced in a limited run, run out.

First of all you need a crockpot, a large T.V. at the very least, and probably cable. Where I live one of the Networks comes in unacceptably snowy via antenna. For quick, easy dishes check these crock recipes at Out of the Frying Pan. Use your imagination and plenty of cheese to personalize things. Food coloring, shaped or sculptured dipping foods, etc. Here are a few more tips:

• Watch with friends; if you drink, make it light beer. You'll get plenty of carbs and calories from all the snacks.
• Don't start throwing food at your friends until the third quarter. Don't throw cheese in any form, hors d'oeuvres dipped in cheese, or the crockpot.

A 20-year old Celtic supporter in Scotland is very devoted to his team and has taken his devotion far beyond the standards set be even the most die-hard tailgaters. He has vowed to eat only foods that are in the club's colors for the 2006/2007 season, meaning that he has eaten a diet of salad, green vegetables and white meat (mostly chicken and a little fish) since July.

Clearly, the young man, Scott Campbell, is lucky that there are actually quite a few foods that come in green and white. Had the team colors been blue and silver, he would have been wise to come up with another way to express his loyalty.

Does anyone else have any other dedication-through-food stories, or is Campbell the only one who has taken it this far?

When the school year starts back up, sports fans can look foward to a new season of college football. In addition to cheering on their team at games, fans of the Ohio State Buckeyes will get a new way to show their spirit: Buckeye HerOes cereal, the breakfast cereal with OSU current and former players on the box. The honey-nut-toasted-oat cereal sounds exactly like similar to a well-known national brand, so it probably won't take much for fans to hand over the $3.49 at Kroger stores for a box. OSU is not the first university to do a cereal promotion, but their 75,000 box run of product is the largest to-date and the manufacturer says that more will be produced if the initial fun sells out, with a production run once or twice a year.

OSU's next branded product is expected to be single-serving milk cartons.

One of the fun things about bundt pans is that they come in so many different shapes - far more than an ordinary cake pan. The problem with this is that you can end up with too many pans, some of which are only really appropriate for certain occasions and the Holiday Tree bundt is a prime example of this. The Stadium Pan does not have this problem, even though it does have an undeniably unique shape, since there are sporting events running all year long. All you need to do is make sure the icing colors match the team that you're supporting before the match, and you can root for your favorite team while you and your friends chow down.

As the number of teams in the World Cup narrows, the anticipation to see who will win is growing, as is the desire of the players to win the World Cup for their country. If you're not on one of the advancing teams (and odds are good that you're not if you have the time to read this right now), the only way you're going to get your hands on a World Cup is if you buy a chocolate one. Shown with the creator/chocolatier, the chocolate World Cup is made of both milk and dark chocolates and weighs more than 5kg. It is hand-sculpted and covered in edible gold dust for an authentic and tasty look.

The base price for the trophy is £75, but that only includes shipping within the UK. If you're in Europe, the cost with shipping will be £100, and a whopping £125 ($227) to the US.

At least it's less expensive than the real thing!

A masters student at UC Berkeley, Mike Wooldridge, started thinking about the relatively young "sport" of competitive eating and noticed that there were many records, but no way to compare performance results across food groups. He set out to see if he could normalize, or standardize, the results from all types of eating contests and make it possible to compare the performance of the eaters across different foods.

Mike analyzed 23 records and converted them into a rate of ingestion (ROI), resulting in a kilograms per minute value for every food.

The blue bars are the average ROI of given foods (easier foods have higher bars) and the yellow bars are the eaters' records. The big spikes are some of world champion eater Takeru Kobayashi's records, but you can see that, because the rest of the yellow bars are approximately equal, the eaters mostly perform up to the same standards, despite the food involved in the challenge.

[via Trencherwomen]

Sonya Thomas, a.k.a. "the Black Widow," has just set a new record in her chosen sport of competitive eating. Yesterday, at a competition during the 16th Annual Virginia State Harley Davidson Owners Group Rally, Thomas ate 60 ham biscuits in 8 minutes, beating out 11 other competitors.

A ham biscuit is a simple, popular Southern snack that consists of a fluffy biscuit, split in half, and filled with ham and butter. The biscuits used in the competition look more like hamburger buns than real Southern biscuits, but that might have made them easier to eat, since the "gurgitators" dunk them in water to soften them up and make chewing easier.

Sonya has another trick to help her get the food down, which is hopping up and down during the final moments of the competition. You can read her account on her website.

It's hard to say precisely why grilling and golf seem to be the two most popular themes for Father's Day, but we're not complaining because this BBQ set is fantastic. The 5-piece set was designed with golf in mind, for someone who loves the sport but also likes to cook. All the handles are soft and insulated, modeled after the handles on real clubs, and top cylindrical, stainless steel shafts that end in the grilling tools. There is a spatula shaped like a club, grilling fork and tongs that have a remarkably golf ball-like look to them. In addition, the set includes two plastic golf ball salt and pepper shakers.

For the next three years, Baby Ruth will be the official candy bar of Major League Baseball. In addition to having a logo proclaiming it as such on the packaging, the candy will also be featured in a number of in-game and TV promotions. The candy bar is nougat, coated in peanuts and dipped in chocolate. The fact that the name is almost identical to that of one of the greatest players of all time can only help endear it to fans.

Many people believe that the candy is named after the baseball player Babe Ruth, due to the similarity in the names. A Snopes article tends to support this theory, but the company that invented the bars, before they were sold to Nestle, says that they were named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter - who was named Ruth. Unfortunately this explanation has a few flaws, as Snopes points out. Not only were the bars introduced in 1921, but Ruth Cleveland died at the age of 12 in 1904, making her an odd choice to have a candy bar named after her.

In all likelihood, quite a few people who are on the competitive eating circuit have blogs, but the blog of Skinnyboy is the first that I have come across. Ranked at #28, he blogs his training and various other food-related undertakings. Some of the posts are about his "stretches," which involve eating massive of foods like pasta, pudding and water, but many of the recent posts are geared towards one event: the May 18th Las Vegas qualifier for this year's annual Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest. The hot dog eating contest is something like the world cup of competitive eating and Skinnyboy is practicing. In fact, you can even watch a video clip of some of his sprints, but I think that just the shot of his refrigerator is enough to give you an idea of how serious he is about his sport.

I would be interested to see the blogs of any other competitive eaters, just for comparison. Anyone know of any?

A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association indicated that teens who are involved in athletic programs have healthier eating habits than those who are not involved in sport. The findings indicated that both the athletic boys and girls were more likely to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, not skipping meals and making healthier choices than their peers, though many of the girls still did not meet their nutritional requirements for calcium and iron.

The study was conducted by the Eating Disorders institute in Minnesota and, surprisingly, concluded that students in weight-based sports, such as wresting and gymnastics, had even better eating habits than other athletes. Researchers dismissed concerns that these pressures often lead to eating disorders, saying "it may be that youth involved in sports at a less elite level of athletics, such as the junior high and high school levels, are able to maintain better nutrient profiles than athletes involved at an elite level."

By munching his way through 34 ears of sweet corn in only 12 minutes, Joe LaRue set the world record for corn eating over the weekend at the Sweet Corn Fiesta at the South Florida Fairgrounds. For his efforts, LaRue took home $1,500 grand prize. He and other competitors said that technique and speed were crucial in corn-eating, since the biggest obstacle eaters must overcome is jaw fatigue. LaRue's winning technique involved a side-to-side typewriter eating pattern, wrap around sunglasses to minimize distractions and a Rage Against the Machine CD to get him motivated. The event was officiated by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

[Image of Joe LaRue from IFCE]