Eating four McDonald’s burgers, 30 pieces of chicken nuggets in 7 minutes to earn money for charity

Would you attempt to finish four burgers, 30 pieces of chicken nuggets, two packets of fries and four drinks in one sitting just so you can earn $3,500, especially if you dislike the food?

Zermatt Neo, a Singaporean competitive eater, took up the challenge from a friend and did so in slightly over seven minutes. But instead of keeping the money for himself, he told the friend who had offered him the money to donate it to Food From The Heart (Singapore) instead.

“I was really happy to be able to do this… $3,500 is not a small sum of money for most people,” said the 32-year-old. The idea to do this came after a tweet sent out by American actor Trevor Donovan on Mar 30. The tweet, accompanied with a photo of two packets of McDonald’s fries, four quarter-pounder burgers, two packets of chicken nuggets and four drinks, said: “Somebody offers you $3,500 to finish everything on this tray in 90 minutes. Could/would you do it?”

Last month, Matt Stonie, a popular figure among the competitive eating industry, came across the tweet and decided to do the challenge, finishing it within nine minutes. He posted a video of it on YouTube and the challenge caught on.

Zermatt said that he initially hadn’t planned on doing the challenge, as he “didn’t really fancy McDonald’s”. Plus, with the decrease in engagements on his YouTube videos since circuit breaker started, every video counts and he did not want to do the challenge just for the sake of it.

“I wanted to do something more enjoyable for my audience too,” he added.

But a friend of his, who wanted to remain anonymous, challenged him to beat Matt Stonie’s time.

“He said, ‘Why don’t we do this? You try to beat Matt Stonie’s time and if you do it, I’ll donate $3,500 to a charity.’ We both also agreed that I won’t take the money at all,” said Zermatt.

In his video, posted onto his Facebook page on Wednesday, Zermatt also attached the receipt of donation. It has been viewed over 10,000 times and garened over 80 comments, with some praising him for picking up the challenge even though he didn’t like McDonald’s food.

Zermatt is hoping that he can get back to his daily routine soon, following the end of the circuit breaker. As a fitness professional (we aren’t doubting that, looking at his muscular frame), not being able to go to the gym has affected him the most.

“I spend around two to three hours a day in the gym, sometimes even more, so gym is a big part of my daily routine. Now, I try to run a lot more and do a bunch of body weight exercises, but of course, it’s still nothing compared to the gym,” he explained. “I’m losing quite a bit of muscle mass too… but I understand I’m able to regain all that strength very quickly once I have access to the gym so I’m not freaking out.”

The other part he’s worried about is the lack of income. With the engagement numbers dropping for his videos, it has affected his earnings too.

He suspects it might have something to do with the fact that he’s not been able to shoot outdoors, so the content hasn’t been as interesting as before. For now, he’s still finding ways to make do by shooting videos on his own at home, until the end of circuit breaker.

“At the very least, my family and I are all healthy and we are just staying home, not because of the rules put in place, but because we want to do our part to keep this virus in check and flatten the curve,” he said.