20 Burger Beatdown - Remembering a Big Accidental Day

Some things happen with no planning whatsoever. That's the case when it came to my 20 hamburger challenge, which is currently one of my most popular YouTube videos.

I was bored one night... it was summer of 2014, and I needed something to do. A schoolteacher in the summer is a bit like a car without a driver, so for some reason I thought it would be cool to film a food challenge at 11PM.

The rest, as they say, is history. I had no plans to make a speed challenge out of it and mostly ate the burgers in a manner that mocked the way competitive eaters look when they try to eat quickly. I wonder if anyone got the joke.

I didn't even bother with a joke when I did the McDonald's family pack solo. Right in the video, I tell you that I'm going to eat this thing leisurely. Not sure if that was the best approach. The last few bites were a bit agonizing. You gotta see for yourself though :)

At least I actually planned on eating the family pack. The burgers were just plain crazy.

Food Review Channel - Naader Eats!

Just a quick announcement, that I've started a new youtube channel dedicated purely to food reviews and restaurant reviews. My main channel, FreakEating, will carry on purely with food challenge videos at this point.

The split was awhile in coming. It followed a lot of comments by the viewers, who either wanted to see a division or who thought that review type videos didn't really belong on FreakEating. It's a good philosophical argument. It finally won me over.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the first video on my new channel. A review of the new Ghost Pepper Wings at Popeye's Chicken. Count on me to add more hot sauce to make the experience better. I'd definitely appreciate anyone who wants to see these videos to tune in and subscribe.

There will be more reviews soon. My goal is to have a video up every Wednesday evening. FreakEating will have a challenge video every Saturday night. Talk to you all later!

Special Announcement: New YouTube Channel

The announcement was already made on social media outlets, but I'll include it here too. I have a new YouTube channel entitled "Freak Eating." This channel will feature greater organization than my last one. The focus will be upon series of challenges, typically ones I do with or against other eating channels.

Material from my old channel will be ported over. Eventually, the old channel will be retired. It became incredibly cluttered with many random videos and not much direction.

Hopefully people who enjoyed my old channel and videos come over and subscribe to the new ones. There's no plan on stopping what I'm doing. I look forward to many hundreds of videos to come. Stay tuned as I eat like a freak.

(En)grossing Thoughts

Probably some of the most disgusting pictures I've come across are the "after" shots. The ones we take of finished plates. It's an attempt to prove that the meal was really eaten and not merely thrown over the shoulder. It's kind of feeble. Before I resorted to video it made sense. Now it's kind of gross.

What does a tray full of sauce and grease really prove anyway? Obviously a tray full of wing bones and empty ice cream containers don't prove anything. They're good to tack onto the end of a video, but that's it.

And who the Hell smiles after eating 7+ lbs of chicken? That's gotta be the world's second fakest smile.

Because this is the world's first fakest smile, taken after eating 12 lbs of pizza. In the future I'm going to opt for a more realistic post-game pose. Yes, an eating challenge is about winning. I don't need to look like I climbed a mountain, all triumphant and such.

When it's all over, it really feels like a mountain climbed you. And that's nothing to smile about.

Month of Mayhem

In seeking votes for the new July 4th hot dog contest, I offered a huge dare to my supporters last night.

It's right there on the Facebook page for Wreckless Eating: if the voters can put me over the top, I will give the public a new eating challeng video everyday until the contest on July 4.

That's a ton of videos, you're thinking. I already have over a dozen in possession ready to go. My YouTube presence is on heavy delay, usually limiting myself to updates once or twice a week. This time an exception will be made. The voters/viewers now have a big incentive to vote me into the contest.

Can I release 33 challenge videos in the next 33 days? There's one way to find out. Vote for me.

Froyo and the Freak Attack a Six Stack

Mmmmm.... pancakes! A couple months ago, Aaron Ybarra and I met up for a pancake challenge in downtown Fullerton. Heroes Bar & Grill is known better for its nightlife, but on Sunday mornings they tempt us mass consumers with an offer for free breakfast.

That's a stack of six large pancakes. Of course, everything Heroes serves is large. Their nachos or chili cheese fries could easily pass off as challenges. All their beverages come to the table in huge glass mugs. The pancakes are just following a set reputation for grandiosity.

The challenge is simple. Eat all six pancakes, a cup of fruit, and two strips of bacon (I subbed more fruit) in one sitting and your $12 meal is free. There's no time limit. We were confident that we'd finish, and it turns out that didn't need more than 20 minutes when it was all said and done.

Of course, Aaron and I aren't strangers. We've done plenty of challenges together. We clashed in at least two contests. So for this challenge, we decided to do something special and create a "how to" video regarding  approaching a challenge like this one.



The video process is a bit frustrating. You don't always remember that you're on camera while eating. There's moments where I look messy. We stopped to give little hints, and there is some humor going back and forth between "Froyo" and the "Freak." Hopefully you like the finished product.

We left the place feeling not quite stuffed, but fluffy. That's pancakes for you. 

Something Different

The format of this blog takes on a very repetitve course. It's usually: "XYZ goes here, eats large item of food, shocks onlookers, leaves." That's the short version. My write-ups are much longer than that.

Some months back I thought about using slideshows to vary the content. After one slideshow, the concept was shelved. Maybe it seemed like a lot of work. In the interest of variety, the slideshow idea will be given new life.

In this post and the next, I will include slideshows highlighting all the food challenges completed in the first half of 2011. It might give the reader a better sense of what I eat on a month-to-month basis. My stream of consciousness usually jumps from one year to the next seamlessly. Most of my stories do not obey chronology so it's hard to gauge what's happening in reality.

The end of July will bring another slideshow, and there will be one video for every month to close out 2011 assuming I stay in this activity.

So, here are the video links.

January 2011



February 2011



March 2011



The videos for April, May, and June 2011 will debut in the next post.

It's a new step. Sometimes that's what you need most.

The 20K Club

Insomnia strikes at inopportune moments sometimes. I figured I may as well do something productive.

This post is a reflection on the "20K Club," an informal competitive eating association borne of a Facebook conversation between Johnnie Excel and Matt Stonie regarding the feasibility of consuming 20,000 calories in one sitting.

That's a hell of a lot of calories to put down in one run. For the sake of perspective, 4 lbs of peanut butter would only get you to 11,000 calories.

Come to think of it, there's many of us who might have yet to enter the 10K Club. It's tough to say... but plates like the one pictured above might certainly help.

That's a heap of soft serve ice cream buried under five dense pieces of cheesecake. It reminds me of those ridiculously oversized dessert plates you would see on Ben Monson's bodybuilding.com page, though clearly Ben did it bigger.

You're gonna need to eat several of these plates to even remotely approach 20k. Maybe you could try candy bars - between 90 and 100 would take you to 20,000 calories.

The 20K Club has some rules in place that make the task even more daunting. For example, you can't simply eat large quantities of calorie-dense ingredients such as butter or mayonnaise to achieve high totals. You have to consume actual foods or ingredients assembled into legitimate dishes. Foods used must also be sourced from nutrition labels so that the calorie counts may be verified. And: the consumption must be captured on one continuous video clip for posterity.

That's complicated enough. And pretty straightforward.

There's many ways to enter the hallowed Hall of Fame (which is still barren). Do 11 lbs of animal crackers sound good to anyone?