July 4th: My Ma’s B-day

Posted On March 9, 2016

JaJangmyun, tangsuyuk, kimchi, and roasted barley tea.

The other unique American Independence Day tradition of late is the famed Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest held annually on Coney Island. This year came down a battle between the reigning and 8-time defending champ Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, who de-throned the Japanese eating champ Kobayashi, and a young phenom named Matt Stonie. Stonie is nicknamed “Megatoad” because he resembles the Toad character in Nitendo’s video game Super Mario Brothers and was the runner-up to Chestnut in 2014. In 10 minutes of thrilling and nail-biting competition, the YouTube sensation Stonie downed 62 weiners to Chestnut’s 60 to become the the new hotdog eating champ of the world.

What’s the moral lesson to be had here? The lesson is that mastering one of the deadly sins, gluttony, can win you 100 Benjamins and land you on ESPN, NYTimes, Yahoo, NPR. The interesting thing here is, like the girl in my Mukbang post, the 5’8″ Stonie weighs a mere 125 lbs despite his belly-busting eating habits.

Although the 4th for most Americans represents outdoor BBQs and fireworks, to me, the 4th is my mom’s birthday. And to her, it is about consuming a Chinese/Korean dish called Ja Jang Myun: hand-pulled noodles with black bean sauce, pork belly, and veggies. The unique thing about the dish is how the noodles are made. I would try to describe the process to you but just go here and you can see it for yourself. Maybe you will get a kick out of it like Christopher did, as he watched the noodle man work his magic at the restaurant.

So you are asking, “How is he so thin if he does this for a living?” I know it really doesn’t make sense; he did wolf down 17,360 calories and 1116 grams of fat on his way to victory. My guess is that outside of his eating competitions, he probably adheres to a form of intermittent fasting. When it comes to weight gain or weight loss, it is all about the control of daily maintenance calories. As long as one’s maintenance calories are not exceeded in the long run, theoretically, no weight gain should occur.

So, I hope you had your fill of a hotdog or two on my ma’s b-day. I certainly had my fill of yummy foods.