Don't make me eat you.

From the always entertaining PRBop comes the day's most quease-inducing press release.

Fast food icon Krystal announced today that it will host the first-ever World Hamburger-Eating Championship. Billed as the Krystal Square Off® and expected to draw the world's top competitive eaters, the 11-event hamburger-eating circuit will run throughout the Southeast this fall, culminating with a final world championship event in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Nov. 13, 2004. Sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), the Krystal Square Off® World Hamburger-Eating Championship will be the first time the IFOCE has crowned a hamburger-eating champion of the world.

The championship series will feature "The Krystal," the famous 2.5-inch square Krystal hamburger that has been the restaurant chain's signature offering since its founding in 1932. While people generally eat Krystal burgers in multiples of three and four, Krystal Square Off® organizers anticipate top gustatory athletes to consume upwards of around 40 to 50 Krystal burgers within the allotted 8-minute eating period. The Krystal Square Off® World Hamburger-Eating Championship will award a $5,000 first prize and is poised to instantly become a major event on the international competitive eating circuit.

That's right. Competitive eating has a circuit. And an international sanctioning body. And a newsletter called the Gurgitator. And "more than 3,000 veteran and rookie athletes."

Competitive eating's top athletes currently include: Sonya Thomas, a 100-pound woman from Alexandria, Va., who holds no less than 12 world records, including 432 oysters in 15 minutes and 43 tacos in 11 minutes; Cookie Jarvis, a world champion in disciplines including Ribs, Ice Cream and Corn-on-the-Cob; and Eric 'Badlands' Booker, a man-mountain who has eaten 48 donuts in eight minutes.

Sonya's pretty cute, but any 100-pound woman that can eat 23 pulled pork sandwiches in ten minutes should be approached with extreme caution. Some of the more eye-opening among the list of IFOCE's official world records:

• Butter: 7 quarter-pound sticks in 5 minutes, Donald Lerman
• Chili: 1.5 gallons in 10 minutes, Richard LeFevre
• Cow Brains: 57 (17.7 pounds) in 15 minutes, Takeru Kobayashi
• Crawfish: 331 in 12 minutes, Chris Hendrix
• Mayonnaise: 4 32-ounce bowls in 8 minutes, Oleg Zhornitskiy
• Rice Balls: 20 pounds in 30 minutes, Takeru Kobayashi
• SPAM: 6 pounds from the can in 12 minutes, Richard LeFevre