Easter is just around the corner, and you know what that means: It’s once again socially acceptable to purchase Peeps—the pastel-colored marshmallow treats that have somehow become practically synonymous with Easter—puff them up in the microwave, and then possibly consider eating only one (just to be festive).
Matt Stonie, a San Jose, CA, native and former champion of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest (the Holy Grail of competitive eating), won the top prize at the second annual National Harbor World Peeps Eating Championship by scarfing down a whopping 255 of the sugary treats in just five minutes.
Calories: Each individual peep contains 28 calories. Multiply by that by 255 and you get a whopping 7,140 total calories. Break that down per minute, and you’ll see that Stonie consumed 1,428 calories every 60 seconds during the competition.
In order to burn off all those calories, you could play squash (which burns over 1,000 calories per hour) for seven hours, practice yoga for a day and a half straight, or have sex for just over 31 hours. (Think really hard before attempting that.)
Carbs: Each Peep has 7.2g of carbohydrates, 6.8g of which are sugar—which means that when it comes to carbs, Peeps are about as “empty” as it gets. Because they’re almost entirely processed sugar, those carbs will hit all at once—unlike these 10 sources of heathly, “complex” carbs—and that means a serious sugar high followed by a serious sugar crash as your body struggles to metabolize all that extra “fuel.”
Crunch the numbers and you’ll realize that Stonie inhaled 1,836g of total carbs, of which 1,734g were pure sugar. You read that correctly: Stonie ate 1.7 kilograms—roughly 3.75lbs—of sugar. Even our greatest high-intensity, sugar-burning workout to cut body fat would have a hard time making a dent in those numbers.
Ingredients: Peeps aren’t made of much, but they do contain potassium sorbate (a preservative), yellow #5 (tartrazine), and carnauba wax, which is non-toxic. But did we mention that carnauba wax is also the main ingredient in car wax? Yes, that’s right, along with a ton of calories, empty carbs, and sugar, Stonie devoured a bunch of food dye, preservatives, and stuff that makes your set of wheels look shiny.
Check out Stonie’s winning performance, if you can stomach it, at the second annual National Harbor World Peeps Eating Championship here.
