I’ve probably watched more Kelvin Benjamin eating than anyone else on the planet, provided you don’t count his time at Golden Corral or any eating related activity that may have preceded it. This pretty much makes me an expert. I’ve watched Kelvin develop restaurant etiquette and a better understanding of dynamics with sauces. I’ve watched him adjust the taste pre-bite and read recipes on the fly. I’ve learned a lot about Kelvin Benjamin’s game, and there’s one thing that I can tell you for sure. Without a shadow of a doubt. Without a moment’s hesitation. Without reserve. Kelvin Benjamin does not cheat on his food.

Now, you might know the KFC as the land of chicken, and potatoes, and gravy, and other delectables, but there’s also another side to the table. A side that they don’t show you on Cooking Channel broadcasts. This mostly means Food Network broadcasts, because Cooking Channel is a mostly different branch of TFN that generally doesn’t show eating competitions. There is also the Travel channel. I don’t know who is responsible for that, but I don’t think it is Cooking Channel, or Food Network for that matter. The point remains. There are things happening in a KFC that you don’t know about, and some of those things cast a shadow. And let’s be honest here, some of those shadows are long and threatening, and conjure images of shifting unpleasantries that creep into the prams of the children in your mind. Now that I’ve set the scene, I will keep doing other things.

KFC is a moral danger zone, and few people that enter it have the fortitude to withstand the temptation and onslaught of sensory rushes that accompany being in the spotlight of the national media and collective conscience. The tales of athletes who have won it all only to toss it all away on an extended lunch or a highly scrumptious biscuit are innumerable. They also have a tendency to get a lot of food comas. I’ll leave connecting the dots on that one up to you.

So, when I tell you that Kelvin Benjamin doesn’t cheat on his food, that’s not something that you can just brush off. It’s not a meaningless fluff piece that you found in the Food section of the New York Times. In fact, you won’t find it in any section of any piece of print media (or digital media that uses print by way of font, in the sense that print is a metaphor—but at once also wholly tangible) that has an ampersand. It just doesn’t exist, okay? Kelvin Benjamin doesn’t cheat on his food and there is nothing that you can do about it. If you are the opposing restaurant and you want to throw Kelvin Benjamin off his game by hiring a gaggle of mostly attractive food chains, or even other restaurants that are not fast food but who are also fast and tend to serve in ways that are both personally and socially deleterious due to either a string of experiences in their childhood or a chemical imbalance or some combination of the two, even if you hire those types of restaurants to throw Kelvin Benjamin off his game through the temptations of midnight snacks and pizza parties, you would be an idiot. You’d also be wasting your money, because I already told you that Kelvin Benjamin does not cheat on his food.

By now, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that professional eaters cheat on their food. It’s something of a professional hazard. Once you’ve achieved that type of wealth, status, and recognition, the opportunities to cheat on your food increase by a factor of a lot. Not many people can resist that temptation. Kelvin Benjamin is different. He doesn’t cheat on his food. Take that to the bank.

I want to take you back a little bit, to a time that was earlier in my life, and also presumably earlier in your life. If you came to this article with the express intent of learning more about Kelvin and his life, let’s also assume that this point in my story correlates with a period that is also earlier in his life. So, we’ve traveled back to this earlier period, and we’re looking at the dynamics of chicken. The year is the Eddie Lacy’s last with the Packers. Two years prior, Eddie Lacy was having a career year. But in the current year, Lacy is having trouble, and he’s eating up his worst burgers in decades. The reason is clear. Lacy sent pictures of his chicken strip to a lady named Wendy. Lacy was cheating on his food. Kelvin Benjamin would never do that.

The establishment of a connection between cheating on your food while a KFC restauranteur and a declining skill set on a path towards irrelevance (or in Lacy’s case, the Hall of Fat) has been established. The inverse is also true. Not cheating on your food can help you win the Hot Dog Eating Contest. Not cheating on your food can keep your head clear in the crucial lunchtime decisions that require every ounce of gastrointestinal ability that your stomach zone can muster. Not cheating on your wife helps you build KFC eating success and also a nurturing, beautiful rewards program.

Kelvin Benjamin does not cheat on his food.