Nela Zisser finished 800g of noodles, meat and vegetables in just over 10 minutes in the heats. Photo / Chris Loufte
Nela Zisser finished 800g of noodles, meat and vegetables in just over 10 minutes in the heats. Photo / Chris Loufte
Former Miss Earth NZ sets her sights on winning hot dog-eating competition next month in New York.
A model who gets a thrill out of speed eating is setting her eyes on winning a hot dog competition in New York on the 4th of July.
Former Miss Earth New Zealand Nela Zisser, 23, is off next week to take on defending women's champion Miki Sudo, who ate 34 hot dogs in 10 minutes last year at Nathan's Famous July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Zisser is also in the finals of an Auckland eating competition. She intends to devour 800g of noodles, meat, egg and vegetables and 1.6 litres of broth in record time at the Wowwowwow Japanese Ramen Challenge in mid July.
Competitive eating involves participants consuming large quantities of food in the quickest time.
Zisser said she got hooked on speed eating after "beating 19 big dudes" at a 2014 Sal's Pizza competition by demolishing 12 slices of an 18-inch pizza in 12 minutes.
"I had a really good time ... and I thought to myself, hey this is one sport that I can be really good at."
Zisser then took part in a Mad Mex challenge where she finished a 2.3kg burrito, the size of an average chihuahua, in under five minutes.
Since then, she had watched online videos of records being set and attempted to beat them at home.
She had chomped through 120 chicken nuggets in 16 minutes, 10 Filet-o-Fish in under 6 minutes and last week she downed five foot-long Subway sandwiches in just over 9 minutes - beating Aussie eating champion Matt Stonie's time of 9 minutes and 32 seconds by 15 seconds.
"I just love competing, and I love meeting other competitive eaters and I've made some really good friends which is quite cool," she said.
"It's quite a fun community and you can win quite decent prizes at the end of it."
The biggest prize she had won was the $1500 from Sal's Pizza, but her target now is the $20,000 prize money from the New York competition.
Nela Zisser says she generally eats a healthy diet and does not binge eat unless for a competition. Photo / Chris Loufte
"It's going to be tough to beat people who have been doing it for years, but I'm hoping to do at least 30 hot dogs and aiming for a top-four finish," she said.
When asked what her secret to keeping her figure was, Zisser said she generally eats a healthy diet and does not binge eat unless for a competition.
"I just eat healthy most of the time ... I like a lot of the Japanese and Asian food, and I'm quite active as well," she said.
Ramen Challenge organiser Tung Wei Ling said Zisser made it to competition finals after she finished her giant bowl of noodles in just over 10 minutes in the qualifiers.
Of the 50 who had entered the challenge since March, just one other competitor, Lulu Huang, had managed to finish the noodles in under the given 20 minutes.
