I f money sets off conflicting emotions, food is right behind it. Challenge anyone in the developed world to a word-association game, and chances are good that two of the top ideas linked to eating will be pleasure and guilt. We love to eat, yet see thinness as a virtue and fat as a moral failing. That is why those speed-eating contests currently dominated by Japan's own Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi cause so much heartburn.

Take the divided response to Mr. Kobayashi's latest feat, winning the World Hamburger-Eating Championship in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by downing 69 hamburgers in eight minutes. Even though they were miniburgers, that statistic is hard to digest.

Some people have expressed admiration and even awe -- especially given Mr. Kobayashi's skinniness. Many speed eaters are frankly obese, making the spectacle easier to condemn on both aesthetic and moral grounds: Here is the medieval sin of gluttony made flesh, as it were.