James Can Eat

What do you picture when you think of competitive eating? If you’re an outsider to this world, or haven’t seen anything of it for a few years, you probably picture huge, round-bodied men who seem to have a lot of room in which to store hot dogs or whatever is the chosen item of the day – but things have changed. James Webb, known to fans as J Webby, briefly enjoyed a career as a professional footballer, and that’s the body type he retains today: gym-toned, healthy-looking. The secrets of his success are a highly flexible, expandable stomach and a fast metabolism. This documentary profiles his achievements to date, looks at the challenges he has faced in his professional and personal lives, and reflects on the state of the US-based competition scene and how it has handled this Australian interloper.

James makes his living day to day as a streamer, taking on eating challenges, whilst his fiancée, Kate, has studied media, so it’s no surprise that he comes across well. Kate’s young daughter, Kennedy, who reckons that he makes a pretty good job of being a dad, is also present to charm viewers. If there were any negative aspect to his story, it seems unlikely that we’d hear it, but with this caveat in mind, the documentary is an interesting watch, with no shortage of things to say.

There is another James behind the image fans will be familiar with, and he could have ended up living a very different life. The film covers his brush with Guillain-Barré syndrome, the years he spent in hospital and the severe impairments which could easily have given rise to lasting disability. It becomes clear that his ambitious approach to physical challenges has contributed to his recovery process and helped him to believe that can overcome any obstacle through sufficient hard work, thus undoing some of the psychological damage caused by being struck by an illness like that out of the blue, building a sort of faith in the future.

It takes faith like that to undertake serious eating challenges, knowing how horrible one’s body will feel the morning after and for several days to follow. The everyday hunger and inability to feel full after a nice meal with the family isn’t much fun, and then there is the need for constant training; we get a breakdown of the various techniques used for this, some of which come with safety warnings. The focus here is mostly on the physical, with relatively little said about the importance of keeping electrolytes in balance, but there is an acknowledgement that the pursuit of eating contest victories can and does cost some people their lives – and that’s before one factors in deliberate poisoning, with one of James’ stories really chilling if you understand the level of danger he faced.

Other issues also come under scrutiny. Yes, it might seem grotesque to see people eating for the sake of competition whilst others are starving elsewhere, but it’s not as if the food used could easily be transported to the places where it’s needed, and the contests do in fact raise a lot of charitable donations to help out in just such situations. One interviewee asserts that in a year’s worth of contests less food is used than Walmart throws away in a day. Animal right protesters express concern about the trivialisation of animal lives, and whilst participants mock them for having protested about a pig farm at the world famous Nathan’s 4th of July hot dog eating contest, which is all beef, director Vlad Yudin makes room for the activists to explain that the beef in question comes from the same company.

A bigger issue for most fans of competitive eating will be what the film has to say about corruption in the sport. Doubtless there are those who would call James a sore loser, but the footage we are shown goes some way to supporting his claims about having been intentionally scuppered on at least one important occasion. He’s very much aware of himself as an outsider, and of how US officials, their pride wounded by the success of Japanese legend Takeru Kobayashi, are reluctant to cede their country’s dominance of the sport again.

Nevertheless, James is heavily invested in his own legend, stating at one point that he feels this is the destiny that God intended for him. Maybe, maybe not. It’s an entertaining watch, and whatever you believe about the rest, it has to be admitted that nobody has ever seen a man eat so many chicken wings.

Reviewed on: 21 Aug 2025