What does recent study about eating hot dogs mean for Joey Chestnut?

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, according to this study, when eating hot dogs is your world.

Fans are concerned for the wellbeing of beloved hot dog eating champ Joey Chestnut after a new study found that every water dog a human eats takes more than half an hour off their life.

“Eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of healthy life, while choosing to eat a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of extra healthy life,” begins a press release for the University of Michigan study, published this month in the journal Nature Food.

The findings have provoked simultaneous concern and admiration for the legendary competitive eater who, by some Twitter denizens’ calculations, should have died many decades ago based on the new study.

“Joey Chestnut would be dead already,” sportswriter Gary Sheffield Jr. wrote in response to the article.

“By this math, Joey Chestnut is a Civil War Ghost that haunts eating competitions,” tweeted sports betting site SportzStew.

“R.I.P Joey Chestnut 1983-1749,” wrote an amateur hot dog mathematician.

“Joey Chestnut disappearing out of photos like ‘Back to the Future,’” another offered as a visual representation.

Indeed, by the website Sporting News’ calculations, Chestnut has consumed a combined 1,094 hot dogs since first debuting at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2005. And that’s not even including the number of dogs he’s consumed while training for the contest, which he has won 14 times — a record.

During quarantine alone, “Nathan’s shipped me out 90 pounds” of hot dogs, Chestnut told The Post last year. “I definitely had 90 pounds. They’re gone. I had to buy some more on my own.”

Just those 90 pounds accounted for 54 lost hours of life, according to the University of Michigan’s research.

Joey Chestnut consumes potentially life-limiting hot dogs at Nathan’s July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Paul Martinka for NY Post

Some are using Chestnut’s continued existence upon this earth as evidence that the study’s finding may be more reflective of a greater truth about healthy eating and mortality rate and less accurate about the specific life detraction amount of certain foods.

“Counterpoint: joey chestnut is still alive,” tweeted sneaker writer Russ Bengtson.

The Post has reached out to Chestnut for comment.

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