If you’re a casual fan of competitive eating contests who tunes in once a year to watch the Fourth of July Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, it might seem like competitive eating is all fun and games. For serious competitors, it’s actually pretty lucrative. Takeru Kobayashi, who won the contest sponsored by Nathan’s Famous each year between 2001 and 2006, reportedly earned $650,000 annually over the course of two decades in the competitive eating business. Still, all good things must come to and end, and he has now revealed that concerns about his health have caused him to retire. Over the course of the 45-year-old's career, he has eaten a lot more than hot dogs, including 20 pounds of rice balls in 30 minutes and 41 lobster rolls in 10 minutes. What has Kobayashi ready to hang up his bib, though, is the fact that he no longer has any appetite and the thought of food can actually make him nauseous. He also says that his sense of smell has been seriously affected. At one point, he was unable to eat at all for a few days. Right now, he's working to repair the damage done to his brain and body by his years of competitive eating, trying to reset his appetite by consuming small amounts of nutritious foods instead of the massive amounts of over-processed ones he consumed during his career. Professionally, though, he still has one more contribution he wants to make to the food world as he's currently working on developing a healthy, Japanese-style hot dog.
