4th of July Hot Dog Contest | Joey Chestnut excluded because he promotes plant-based meat

(New York) An American champion of a famous hot dog eating competition will not be able to participate in the competition on July 4 in New York because he promotes a competing brand of plant-based meat, announced the organizer of this more than a hundred years old.

“We are devastated to learn that Joey Chesnut chose to represent a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs rather than compete in the “Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest,” lamented Tuesday Major League Eating (MLE) in a press release on the X network.

The famous competition has been organized since 1916 every July 4, a national holiday in the United States.

Nearly 35,000 fans gathered in the Coney Island neighborhood, on the Atlantic coast in the southern borough of Brooklyn.

A Californian of 1.85 m and 104 kg, Chestnut has won the competition 16 times and holds the record for victories.

In 2021, he devoured 76 hot dogs in ten minutes, breaking his own record from the previous year.

But the competition refuses to allow its participants to represent brands other than its own, Nathan’s.

“It seems that for Joey and his agents, another brand of hot dogs takes precedence over our long-standing relationship,” lamented the MLE, denouncing an agreement between its champion and a brand of plant-based meat substitutes, Impossible Foods.

“Joey Chestnut is an American hero. We would love nothing more than to have him” in the competition this year, pleaded the MLE.

The person said on Instagram that he was “very disappointed to learn (of his) exclusion by the media after almost 20 years” of competition and warned that he had “no contract with the MLE or Nathan’s”.

Each year, the five biggest eaters share $40,000 and the first wins the “mustard belt” with an extra $10,000.

According to the American press, Chestnut, nicknamed “Jaw”, has pocketed hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in recent years by also devouring 30 Greek sandwiches in ten minutes or 182 chicken wings in 30 minutes.

The MLE had already excluded a participant from the Nathan’s competition: in 2010, the Japanese Takeru Kobayashi, rival of Joey Chestnut, did not compete following a disagreement over the exclusivity of a contract.