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Accused of cheating, the French youtubeur AlanFood Challenge assured the camera to be able to swallow dozens of burgers or kebabs, in the style of American competitions. A trend that now affects France, but which turns out, one suspects, mediocre for health.
50 burgers, 10 kebabs or even 4 giant tacos… This is the kind of XXL challenge that Alan Food challenge, a French youtuber with 830,000 subscribers, takes on in front of the camera. Food contests on the mode of those popularized in the United States, which require to swallow gargantuan quantities to win a prize, or here views on the networks. Only problem, for this French “eater”: he has been accused for a week of cheating and of not eating the alleged quantities. Cornered, he admitted to having faked his videos, faced with the magnitude of the challenge: “Something that weighs 16 kg is difficult. The challenges are getting crazier and crazier, it was rising crescendo. At some point, the human body makes it impossible for you to eat more of it”. The opportunity to take stock of the risks of this practice.
Filling up and “gorging” involves risks
Beyond the stupid challenge, swallowing such a quantity of burgers or tacos so quickly is already heresy. Sandra Feirrera, dietician-nutritionist quoted by the magazine 20 minutes confirms an immediate risk: “The first risk is suffocation, asphyxiation. If the stomach does not have time to digest and the food goes up into the esophagus, you can no longer breathe because the tubes communicate at the very top, at the level of the trachea. There is also a high likelihood of indigestion, with nausea, vomiting, hot flashes.”
A behavior that also disrupts the whole system of regulation, digestion and satiety of the person, as completed by Dr. Arnaud Cocaul, nutritionist doctor whom we contacted:
“This soft food, without cover and eaten by hand, makes the person “glutton” and only fills up. You become tachyphagous because you eat faster and faster, and hyperphagous because you eat more and more. It does not satiate, but only inflates the stomach, it is very bad.”
Poor and dangerous intakes for health
In the long term, following these extraordinary food challenges would also have a deleterious effect on health, to be taken seriously. What has already been proven in the past, as Dr. Cocaul tells
“It was already the theme of the documentary Super Size Me, in which the Morgan Spurlock imposed himself to eat morning noon and evening at Macdonald’s by taking the largest portions offered. Even before a month of this treatment, the man was in the process of degrading his entire state of health, all his biological parameters!”
The fault with this food which, if it is ingested in XXL quantity, remains however very poor in fibers, vitamins, fruits and vegetables on the nutritional level, and very rich in fat and added sugars.
“Other studies carried out on rats, fed an equivalent diet, demonstrate this precisely: in an individual subjected to such a poor diet and in large quantities, fat is formed quickly, blood sugar and insulin soar, the heart also grows. Other disorders are added such as character disorders, people who are much more nervous, with sleep problems.
In other words, “nothing is right in this type of challenge, carried out moreover, while people are starving on the planet”.