I hope you all had a wonderful July 4 weekend.
There were many highlights to celebrate here in the City this past week:
The Mets took this round of the Subway Series, winning two of three from the Yankees.
Eric Adams is the presumptive Democrat nominee for mayor.
We finally celebrated the heroes of the pandemic with the Hometown Heroes Ticker Tape Parade.
One highlight this past weekend might stand above the rest as a feat unseen in human history: Joey Chestnut ate a world record 76 hot dogs (and hot dog buns) in 10 minutes at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. 2xParked will dig into the data to see what that might actually mean.
It Sure Ain’t Healthy
76 hot dogs is a disgusting amount of food for one person.
This is horrifying. Look at how much food is being digested in just 10 minutes:
It is recommended we eat 2,000-2,500 calories a day. 10 minutes of hot dog eating equates to 9-11 days worth of food.
About 3,500 additional calories on top of what you burn equates to about a pound of added weight. If all of these calories stayed in the body, you would be about 6 pounds heavier.
The amount of sodium is equal to drinking 6-7 cups of salt water straight from the ocean.
The total fat intake would be the same if you ate 380 slices of bacon, 250 sticks of string cheese, 60 avocados, or 50 bars of chocolate.
If all this sugar intake went straight to the blood, an average person would go from having normal blood sugar level (< 140 mg/dl) to pre-diabetes (140-190 mg/dl).
All this cholesterol added to the blood could increase your chance of a heart attack by 30%.
A body can only absorb about 35g of protein at a time. This means 96% of protein consumed will be wasted.
The Kobayashi Effect
In sports there are two different types of greatness. There are the goats (“greatest of all time”) who are among the best at playing the game. This would include players like Tom Brady and LeBron James.
Then there is a whole different level: the players who change how the game is played. Babe Ruth changed baseball from speed and contact to a game about hitting home runs. Steph Curry’s sharp shooting has made the 3-point shot a keystone of any modern team. Roger Bannister’s 4-minute mile started a new wave of track records.
The moment Takeru Kobayashi dipped a hot dog into water in 2001, he changed professional eating.
Everyone prior to Kobayashi saw hot dogs as food. Through instinct and a lifetime of experience, we were conditioned on how we ate it. Kobayashi took a more objective approach. He saw food as objects which needed to get into his stomach, and whatever did the trick was good enough.
This resulted in an instant doubling of hot dog eating consumption. Although his records have since been shattered, he inspired other eaters to eat more, believe in the impossible, and come up with innovative eating techniques.
MayorModel
My thoughts last week hold now that Eric Adams is the presumptive winner of the Democratic Party nomination for NYC mayor.
Garcia narrowed the gap once absentee ballots were counted, but the hurdle of having to win 58-60% of the vote over Adams was a huge ask. Garcia did have an edge, but to get an edge of that magnitude required the absentee population to be a totally different decomposition than the rest of NYC. Because Adams had already was getting 50% of the final tally from in-person voting counts and he really is not that different politically than the other candidates (despite what they might say, the differences really lie in a few talking points), there was not a lot of opportunity to gain big.
Now that we are preparing for the general election, the model results are not quite as interesting. Given that Joe Biden won nearly 70% of NYC presidential vote, it seems unlikely Curtis Sliwa will defeat Eric Adams. I say “unlikely” though because with 4 months left, anything could happen.
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