The Sweetest Man V Food Challenges That Made Our Bellies Hurt

No television show has ever made audiences feel fuller without taking a single bite then "Man v. Food." That's a shame, considering the quantity of food presented in just a single episode, let alone the voluminous arrangements of sweets, treats, and eats the cast has gnawed on during the show's run. Through the seasons, there have been monumental challenges that would put even the most eager eater through the wringer, featuring stacks of grub that were about as far from nutritious as possible.

More than any other sort of other, it's surely the desserts that make viewers' stomachs bloat in sympathy. Whether it was Adam Richman sipping 15 milkshakes or Casey Webb digging into a giant slice of Key lime pie, the sweet treats that hit the table are the ones that stick with fans of the show long after the episode has ended. 

Whether you consider this the best or worst of "Man v. Food" depends on how much you love dessert. Chances are, even fans of the ooey and gooey have difficulty digesting the power eating presented on these episodes. Here are perhaps the most egregious episodes for creating second-hand tummy aches that refuse to go away ... the memory alone is enough to inspire a gut clench.

It's hard to know exactly what you're getting yourself into with an eating challenge selection called The Pig's Trough. The "Man v. Food" team surely let out a sigh of relief upon learning it would be a combination pie a la mode and a slew of tempting toppings. That sigh may have turned to a groan when they discovered it would be three slices wearing four scoops of vanilla ice cream with plenty of those toppings. Maybe apple cores and potato peelings would have been preferable to all that sugar.

Casey Webb was the lucky muncher who unhinged his jaw for this dubious adventure. He took a trek to Betty's Pies in Duluth, Minnesota, where it's clear that baked desserts are no joke. The plate turned out to be three pounds of serious eating, one that customers were none too shy to admit was too sweet to finish. 

Webb had 20 minutes to consume the trough, opting to work through the ice cream before addressing the Bumbleberry, Key Lime and Lemon Angel pie slices. Chilly temperatures at the end of the spoon started to take its toll, forcing the power eater to switch to the pie layer until the issue passed. After six minutes of sucking down sugar, the slow-down started, yet Webb pushed through and finished the whole plate in nine minutes and 21 seconds.

There's hardly ever a reason to throw everything into your eating plans, unless you're being paid to show the world how far a human stomach can stretch. Recalling how Adam Richman undertook The Kitchen Sink Challenge at San Francisco Creamery Co. brings to mind pictures of a pile-up of eating decisions named for one of the nastiest vessels in any kitchen. Luckily for Richman, this kitchen sink refers to 10 scoops of ice cream with all sorts of toppings, topping out at two gallons of dessert. And it's served in a basin-shaped dish rather than a real sink, so the bacterial count is reduced considerably. Whew!

Only four other challengers had ever conquered the ice cream colossus when Richman bellied up to the table. After 30 minutes of intensive labor, Man had nearly prevailed over Food. What remained in the dish was a soupy puddle that would have been easier to suck through a straw. Instead, Richman kept going with a full-sized ladle, cleaning the drippings from the tray to become the fifth Kitchen Sink Challenge winner ... while simultaneously grossing out anyone who's ever gorged themselves on too much ice cream.

Ah, The Comfy Cow Challenge. What an adorable name for something that asks you to expand your stomach in painful new ways. It suggests that you'll be eating just the right amount of sugar to satisfy your sweet tooth without going overboard. But the comfy part goes out the window in favor of overfilling bowl and belly with 15 scoops of ice cream. You may be comfy after the first spoonful or two, but you're guaranteed to be a grumpy cow with stomach cramps by the time you reach the bottom of the bowl.

The Comfy Cow turned was a quaint, unassuming ice cream parlor in Louisville, Kentucky where this reckless bit of dairy derring-do occurred. The eatery offers one of the wildest food challenges in the state, during which a "Man v. Food" stand-in competitor named "Burrito Joe" Niccolai took a seat and took on a massive five-and-a-half pound mountain of ice cream wearing a pound of fruit toppings, 1/4 pound of nuts, and a full one-pound whipped-cream topping. Burrito Joe had a full hour to devour the sugary tower, and with his family and host Adam Richman cheering him on, this iron-stomached warrior went for it. Ultimately, food won the round. The Comfy Cow kicked Burrito Joe in the stomach and he left a pound or so of ice cream in the bowl. 

Let's not fool ourselves. The only reason to eat the outer rings of a cinnamon roll is so you can make your way to the super-chewy center that holds the ultimate concentration of butter, sugar, and cinnamon. So picture the chore of eating a three-pound cinnamon roll just to reach the core and how full you'd feel by the time you arrived at your ultimate destination. Now toss in two large scoops of icing to make the slope even more slippery, and you have the "Man v. Food" Cinnamon Roll Challenge. It's a dining dare with a name so direct, there's no mistaking what the host got himself into.

San Antonio's Lulu's Bakery and Café was where Casey Webb geared up to clobber a 3-pound cinnamon roll dripping with two oversized scoops of icing. The pastry in question resembled a cake more than a cinnamon roll. Webb dug his hands in deep and pulled out the heart early on, taking the richest bites first. Whether that was strategy or simple temptation, the sugar hit his blood and he shoveled bite after bite into his maw. Though the shock slowed him down, he never stopped and by the time he took the last bite and collected his "Check Out These Buns" victory t-shirt, viewers were ready to reach for a carrot stick and swear off sugar for good.

The cool sweetness of a Key lime pie runs interference for a rich, creamy filling made of the most decadent ingredients in the pantry. With egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk in the pan, an average slice is more than enough for anyone other than the ultimate sweet eater. But that's not how the sausage is made on "Man v. Food," so naturally, the work at hand for the Key Lime Pie Challenge involved eating a 3.5-pound slice. That's nearly equivalent to eating an entire pie but pretending you only had one piece. Surely, everyone has dreamed of doing such a thing, but most of us refrain from actually doing it, much less showing it to the world on television.

Casey Webb headed to The Fish House in Key Largo, Florida to devour this powerful pastry, hoping to earn a shirt (plus another slice of pie) as his trophy. It turned out Webb was the first challenger to step up to the plate and eat the quarter-pie-sized piece. He used a regular dinner fork to attack the baked behemoth, developing the sugar sweats less than halfway through. It's brutal watching the eating machine work his way to the 20-minute point of a 30-minute challenge. With just under two minutes left, Webb let the cheers of the crowd propel him over the finish line. Anyone watching was probably finished, too — finished liking Key lime pie, that is.

There's no mistaking what's happening with the Cookie Munchers Challenge, although it requires a little "Man v. Food" culinary multiplication to fit the paradigm. Take enjoying a classic milk-and-cookie treat and turn it into a whopper of a task by plating up 10 ginormous cookies and making the beverage an entire pint of milk. You wouldn't ordinarily pile this all onto a scale to give it a number, but in this instance, the show lets you know that the food weighs a total of 3.5 pounds. It's enough to make your esophagus shiver.

When Casey Webb visited Cookie Munchers in Tampa, Florida, he discovered these face-sized cookies and 20 minutes on the timer waiting for him. All the serious snacker had to do was dunk the cookies in the milk and slam them down. The tray was filled with a variety of flavors, but the sugar consumption proved a real issue by the midway point. By then, the milk was gone, a few cookies remained, and Casey was petering out. But the point at which watchers were likeliest to hurl was the same moment the Casey Monster emerged to push past the physical limitations of an ordinary human. Ultimately, there were a mere 48 seconds left as the last bite went down. You can practically feel your own blood sugar rise just taking in the episode.

There's nothing like adding a temperature element to make an eating challenge even more taxing. With the Fire & Ice Challenge, a textural twist entered the picture: a pound of fiery popcorn was paired with a 64-ounce frozen hot chocolate chaser. It sounds like sleepover food, or the menu at a campout where Mom and Dad forgot to pack an actual meal — essentially, a seven-year-old's dream come true. Yet, considering how much feather-light popcorn it takes to measure out a pound, even a seven-year-old would probably pass on downing the whole thing.

Casey Webb came to take down this potential digestive tornado at Santa's Candy Castle just outside Louisville, Kentucky. Out of 200 prior attempts, only four had succeeded before Webb arrived to give it a go. He was given 60 minutes to empty a family-sized bowl of popcorn and a stein's worth of frosty hot chocolate, complete with a pillar of whipped cream. The heat in the back of his throat seemed immense as he scraped the final kernels out of the bowl and wedged them into his mouth. With fewer than 18 minutes to go, the steel-gutted trooper drained the last of the hot chocolate. With the challenge successfully complete, somehow Webb's victory felt like a weight in your stomach.

You pretty much know going into something called the Goliath Challenge that you won't be coming out with any space left in your gullet. Forget the fact that there's likely to be a few pounds of sugar heading down the pipes. Even without knowing what foods are involved, the sheer size hinted at in the name is enough to make you loosen your belt. The "Man v. Food" crew had to know they were heading into dicey territory when they learned about the real foe: a 2.5-pound chocolate cupcake covered in frosting. It was equal to a brain-bending 22 regular cupcakes in a single overly-ambitious bake.

With every season being competitive eating season for Casey Webb, the affable snacker headed to Kirby's Kupcakes in Rogers, Arkansas to spend 30 minutes attempting to down the decadent creation. Webb even helped create the Goliath before he took a fork and knife to the buttercream-coated cake decorated to look like a giant cupcake. It was like watching a kid celebrating his birthday without sharing, only the kid is middle-aged and the cake is ... well, a full-sized cake. When the platter toppled at the 15-minute point, it seemed to be game over. But Webb rallied and the cake was gone with just under 5 minutes left. The real potential gift here: not having an appetite for chocolate cake for a very long time after watching the challenge.

You may think of crêpes as a lighter gourmet dessert that only fills you up if you're already stuffed from the four-course French dinner that came before. But "Man v. Food" doesn't see it that way. Where there's a dessert with a lighter texture, jacking up the quantity and pairing it with four pounds of ice cream is a sure way to make it filling to the max. Take the Holy Crêpe Challenge. In a contemporary twist, the ice cream here came in the form of Thai rolled ice cream, an exciting form that can dazzle a competitive eater into forgetting just how much dairy and sugar they're actually eating.

St. Paul's Soda Hot and Cold provided Casey Webb the tray of potentially bad judgment, a combination that sounds like it could have been delicious in singular form but just sounds awful en masse. The culinary crusher dove right in, whaling away at the ice cream rolls and doing an admirable job. But with only 20 minutes to finish the remaining crêpes, there just wasn't enough space in the ol' bread box for Webb to pack away the rest. The challenge ended with crêpes left on the plate and a tropical-shirted competitor perhaps wishing he'd worn his stretch pants.

Why would anyone ever volunteer to chug 15 24-ounce malteds in a Malt Milkshake Challenge? Because this is "Man v. Food," of course. There's nothing in the food world so daunting that it can't be downed by the power eaters who tackle whatever happens to be on the table — or whatever the producers are devious enough to sign them up for. It's hard not to wonder how quickly brain freeze sets in when you down 15 24-ounce chillers that are full-on frosty and waiting for you to take the big gulp. Original host Adam Richman was game to find out.

The site of this unlikely chugging contest was Crown Candy Kitchen in St. Louis, Missouri. There, Richman had a cool half-hour to slurp down 120 ounces of arctic liquid — and in the middle of winter, no less. The shake glasses lined up on the table represented an array of flavors that included mocha, eggnog, and vanilla, arriving five per round. Even with his milkshake mustache, Richman's nausea was palpable as he braced himself against the wall to finish the final gulps. While brain freeze never seemed to hit, physiology did take over in an unfortunate way as Richman's shakes made a return appearance. 

Potential spoiler alert here: the Titanic didn't fare so well. The suggestion could be that the eater may go down like a ship smashing into an iceberg while eating ice cream, though it's just as likely a reference to the sheer volume of food offered. It's easy to imagine that a giant platter filled with eight scoops of ice cream crowned with six toppings plus whipped cream plus four cherries seems like a Titanic-sized proposal, especially when it's plopped down on the counter in front of you. The four cake ice cream cones stacked on top just feel like an insult added to forthcoming injury to your digestive tract. Titanic, indeed.

Casey Webb swept into Justine's Ice Cream Parlor in Ocean City, Maryland for the Titanic Sundae Challenge, which featured a beach bucket loaded with the sugary stuff, to the tune of nearly 6.5 pounds. Webb schmoozed with the locals before picking up the spoon and shoveling down his four self-chosen flavors of ice cream with 30 minutes on the clock. He plowed through the toppings but with half a bucket to go, brain freeze began to nip at his upper palate. Something like a frozen brain couldn't be enough to stop the Casey Train, however, and he kept at it until the bucket was empty and less than 15 minutes remained. Man may have got the better of Food this time, but the episode likely got the better of Webb's digestive tract.

You might think by lining up an episode called the Go Bananas Challenge that the folks at "Man v. Food" had started incorporating a healthy quantity of fruit into the overeating schedule. But you would be deluding yourself. This challenge features fruit on the margin as the unexpectedly natural garnish for a gut-numbing four pounds of French toast filled to the gills with sweetened cream cheese. Calling it Go Bananas is akin to calling your gin and tonic drinking water; sure, there's water in the mix, but that's not the ingredient that should be getting the attention.

Sauntering into The Hungry Monkey in Newport, Rhode Island, Casey Webb shifted to diner food instead of dessert for this challenge. However, it might as well have been dessert for all the sugar and richness it brought to the table. The platter looked like more than a crowd could finish, but Webb endeavored to get it down all on his own in just 30 minutes. Rather than using a fork, he picked up the pieces like sandwiches and took a soup scoop to the looser fillings. The plate was hardly cleared before he started feeling the pinch. If you're going to be stuffed by an eating challenge, stuffed French toast is probably the one to leave you groaning. In the ned, Webb didn't complete his mission, but watching him try likely weighed the audience down all the same.