Stephen Jardine: Eating contests leave a bad taste OVER the holidays, I experienced Man v Food. I don't mean my personal battle with turkey and chipolatas, but rather the fascinating cult TV show from America. Presented by the hugely likeable Adam Richman, it follows one man's journey to eat all he can across the United States. Each programme focuses on one place and explores the food culture, culminating in a crazy local eating challenge. Highlights have included Richman's demolition of 15 dozen oysters. In another episode, he tackled a gargantuan 190lb burger, as a big as a dustbin lid. In other hands, this could be a grotesque festival of gluttony but it is saved by the host. Richman is a food fanatic and his knowledge and enthusiasm makes the show palatable. He also throws in the towel a lot. Having guzzled his way around America for four years, Richman has decided to quit while he is ahead. That sensible sentiment sadly isn't shared by others in the strange world of competitive eating. This week an ITV documentary, All You Can Eat, examined the phenomenon and the impact it is having here. In America, the spread of obesity has been matched by a growth in competitive eating. The highlight is the annual Independence Day hotdog competition on Coney Island. Last year's winner, Joey Chestnut, triumphed by consuming 68 hotdogs in ten minutes. To save you the maths, that means eating one every nine seconds. However, it's not eating in the conventional sense. The gurgitators, as they are called, dip the bun and sausage in water to make it pliable and then use both hands to cram it in and keep it in. On this side of the Atlantic, we just can't compete. Britain's contribution to the programme was a bloke who ate a lot of chillies and a menacing old man with a passion for hard boiled eggs. But according to the show, this is just the start. Competitive eating is coming. We're spreading worldwide and it's only a matter of time" said George Shea, chairman of the International Federation of Competitive Eating. This week's documentary failed to mention the uncomfortable fact that eating competitions take place in a world where one in seven of the population go hungry every day. I wonder how those people enduring famine in the Horn of Africa would view a competition where you eat so much that your body tries to go into what the eaters quaintly call "reversal"? We've taken some wonderful things from the US down the years but that stops at food. Their chocolate is inedible and their cheese is indigestible but competitive eating is their worst offence yet. In a world where 925 million are starving, it's obscene and wrong and it has no place here.