Going above and beyond the hot dog eating contest

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, we bring you a list of 30 of the most entertaining eating contests in the country.

Thankfully, we’ve already missed the habanero eating contest held on Father’s Day — is nothing sacred? — that was featured on the list compiled by Esquire.com.

Sadly, we’ll have to wait until next year to enter the banana split and strawberry shortcake eating contests that took place in June. But there are plenty of other appetizing events scheduled throughout the summer, culminating with perhaps the best of them all on Aug. 29 — the bacon eating contest that caps off the Carroll County, Ind., bacon festival.

While thousands of fans flock to Coney Island, N.Y., on Saturday to see Joey “Jaws” Chestnut try to chomp his way to his ninth straight hot dog title, a hotter ticket taking place on the same day is the jalapeno eating contest in Round Rock, Texas.

We have no interest in the SPAM eating contest scheduled for Monday in the Crustacean Celebration for the Maryland Blue Crabs minor league baseball team. Unless, of course, it was changed to a crabcake eating contest, but that would apparently make too much sense.

Count us in for the following eating contests: lobster roll, steak, cannoli, thickburger and ice cream. We’re going to skip the all-you-can-eat bull testicles event but hope everyone at the 33rd annual “Testy Festy” in Montana has a ball.