The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash., Dan Voelpel column.

By Dan Voelpel, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Sep. 17--GET YOUR BELLY READY FOR SOME COMPETITIVE EATING: How many pieces of Cashew Roca can you eat in six minutes?

Do you think you could out-eat Eric "Badlands" Booker? First, consider that Badlands holds the following world records:

--Forty-nine Krispy Kreme hot glazed doughnuts in eight minutes.

--Fifty Hamentaschen, the traditional Jewish Purim cookies, in six minutes.

--Two pounds of candy -- Snickers, Milky Way and 3 Musketeers minibars -- in six minutes.

Wednesday, Badlands Booker will fly to Los Angeles where he'll battle Ray "The Bison" Meduna of Mount Vernon and others in the first Winchell's World Donut Eating Championship.

Badlands -- all 420 pounds of him -- knows his sweets.

But before this month, the man ranked No. 4 in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating had never heard of Almond Roca or Brown & Haley or the Tacoma candymaker's newest innovation, Cashew Roca.

Neither did the top dogs at the IFOCE in New York know anything about 92-year-old Brown & Haley or its fine confections.

So I FedEx'd two tubs of Cashew Roca -- one to Badlands Booker's home in Copiagne, N.Y., the other to David …