Pizza-eating challenge faces first female participant

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Tiffany Bodine can probably out-eat you.

The Dundee senior is the only female to ever participate in the Mother Tucker pizza challenge at The Grotto, 304 W. Broomfield St.

Art Tait, owner of The Grotto, said the Mother Tucker challenges a team of two to eat an entire 24-inch, 10-pound pizza in an hour.

The $35 pizza consists of two and a half pounds of cheese, two pounds of dough and five and a half pounds of meat toppings, including ham, pepperoni, sausage, ground beef and bacon.

“If you finish, it’s free,” Tait said. “We put your name on the wall of fame and we custom make shirts for you.”

Since the competition started last May, there have been 154 teams to compete, and only one team has ever finished the challenge.

Bodine, who competed against her friend, said the two decided to take place in the Mother Tucker challenge after Redford senior Shane Lizura expressed doubt in her pizza-eating ability.

“He didn’t think that I could eat an entire (Little Caesars) Hot ‘N’ Ready pizza, and then it escalated into doing this,” she said.

Haslett senior Jim Carr first heard about the Mother Trucker from a TV commercial about two weeks ago.

“They talked about eating a large pizza,” he said. “I was like, ‘get it you two!’”

Carr was one member of a ten-person support team that showed up to support Bodine and Lizura.

Tait said the idea for the Mother Tucker challenge came after watching an episode of Man vs. Food.

“We thought it’d be funny, and it has been,” he said.

Tait said the only team to ever finish the contest was the duo consisting of Emanuele Solito and Joe Bowden, who finished the entire pizza in 59 minutes and 30 seconds on May 7, 2010.

Bodine said she spent the past two days preparing for the Mother Tucker.

“(Yesterday) I drank well over a gallon and a half of water and ate as much lettuce as I could,” she said. “At night, I ate an entire Hot ‘N’ Ready in about 15 minutes to prepare myself.”

Tiffany said she ate only a granola bar on the morning of the competition, working out and drinking water throughout the day.

Lizura’s preparation strategy was similar. He said he ate a lot of pasta and a large salad, as well as consuming a lot of water to prepare himself.

The team admitted defeat after 44 minutes, with just under half of the pizza remaining.

“(The pizza) was delicious at first,” Lizura said. “Not anymore.”

Tait said most teams make it about halfway through, and Bodine and Lizura made it further than most teams do.

At the end of the competition, the duo posed for a photo to put on the Mother Tucker “wall of shame-” located in the bathroom.

Though the two didn’t finish the pizza, Bodine said being the first female to compete in the Mother Tucker pizza-eating challenge made her feel “like a badass.”