Which Food Would Win You An Eating Contest?

We at Defector have a few connections to the beautiful sport that is competitive eating. Dan ate dinner with Takeru Kobayashi ahead of the 2012 Wing Bowl. Barry tried and failed to eat 50 eggs on camera. So naturally, we discussed Tuesday's hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, and after a short detour through this very good Jim Henson commercial from the '60s...

...I posed the question, "What eating contest do you think you'd be most likely to win?" Here are some of the gang's answers, with elaboration on how much they could eat and why, if they provided it:

• Lauren: Croutons, five bags in five minutes. "I'm playing the percentages that nobody will enter the crouton contest."
• Drew: Utz cheese balls, a full monkey barrel in five minutes.
• Chris: Peanut M&Ms, 456 pieces (one family-sized bag) in 30 minutes.
• Samer: Warak dawali, 60 in five minutes, "I guess."
• David Roth: Little street tacos. "I honestly have no idea how many tacos I could eat, or how quickly. I always run out of tacos way before I run out of the urge to continue eating tacos."
• Barry: Kasugai gummy candies, at least 10 bags in 30 minutes.
• Abigail: Miss Vickie's spicy dill pickle chips, one large bag in three minutes.
• Sabs: Dungeness crab, two crabs in 30 minutes, "realistically."
• Patrick: Water. "I could drink a gallon in 30 seconds."
• Dan: Coke. "I finished second in my freshman dorm in a soda drinking contest. I drank a liter in, I think, 25 seconds. (The winner was sub-20.) I figure I could do it again."
• Tom: Popcorn. "I've had to consciously stop myself from finishing an entire big bucket of movie theater popcorn by myself before the movie even starts. I bet I could put down two buckets in, like, 30 minutes?"
• Dave McKenna: Trail mix. "I've never been around a bag too big to kill."
• Ray: Cape Cod kettle chips. "They are, I believe, laced with heroin, and they have me in their claws."
• Albert: Raw oysters. "So long as I don't have to do the shucking, I could eat, what, like three dozen in five minutes."
• Maitreyi: Ice cubes, 100 cubes in 30 minutes. "Reading some WebMD-type pages for eating ice and they make it seem like a miracle I’m even alive."

So, which food would you pick as your best possible chance at gold? And don't say any of the above, because we're winning those.

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