What is 'picnic style' eating in competitive eating contests?

What is 'picnic style' eating in competitive eating contests?

Arnie "Chowhound" Chapman (Competitive Eater) gives expert video advice on: How do you train for a competitive eating contest?; What is 'picnic style' eating in competitive eating contests?; What training techniques work best for competitive eating? and more...

With my group, The Association of Independent Competitive Eaters, we eat our food 'picnic style'. We don't mutilate the food, we don't mush it, we don't mash it, and we eat the food as is presented in accordance to history, custom, and the culture of that food item. So you have to eat the food as is without it being transformed. When people take food and they pour water on it, and they dunk it in water, what they're doing is transforming the molecular structure of that particular food item and they're really not honestly eating the food. So, 'picnic style' rules is how I like to eat food. I've been in contests before where there wasn't 'picnic style' rules. You can eat the food faster when you're allowed to pour water on it and stuff like that, but first of all it's disgusting. Viewers can't see where people are at in the contests, because one guy has got three wieners, and one or another guy has buns all over the place and it's a sloppy mess and it doesn't pay any respect to the food.