Meat Sweats

The other day, I went with Ali and Rich to a barbeque restaurant. For reasons he claims were out of his control, Ali was very late, and ultimately we didn't sit down to eat lunch until 2 pm. We were all starving by then, and made the somewhat foolish choice of ordering the "Backyard Barbeque Family Feast" which consisted of slabs of St. Louis and baby back ribs, two barbeque chickens, biscuits, enormous bowls (I mean like, would hold three-quarters of a gallon) of baked beans, mac and cheese, collard greens, and peanut slaw. And watermelon. Can't forget the watermelon.

We made a valiant effort, and eventually finished all the meat (finishing the baked beans would have literally meant the end of my life, and thus the end of this blog). You know that feeling when you eat so much meat at one sitting that you have no desire to eat meat for days? And you feel like your mouth, your body, your whole being is just covered with meat? That's how I felt the last couple of days.

Ali mentioned that he was having an onset of "meat sweats". I'd heard the term before, but didn't use it myself. I went on Wikipedia to learn about them, and learned a couple of interesting points. First off, veggie burgers can also give you meat sweats, which is lame. Vegetarians ruin everything - now they are ruining cool terms like "meat sweats". I hope no one changes the term because of that. Secondly, I was excited to see there was a section of the article entitled, "Possible Cures". However, I was disappointed with the content: "There is no known remedy for meat sweats, besides, of course, not eating so much meat." That's not a possible cure, having a section like that is just plain deceiving.

Anyways, the way I felt the last couple days makes me wonder about competitive eaters. After Takeru Kobayashi goes through a competition, can he not eat meat for like a month? I'm a huge fan of seafood (shellfish especially) and I'll eat (and enjoy) nearly every vegetable out there, but if my job required me to go a month at a time without eating meat, (plus it would render me unable to enjoy the one time I actually get to eat meat), I would be so depressed. I'm not sure what the prize money is for competitive eating, but I'm sure it's not good enough to get me into the game.