Many of you have seen it. Many of you have attempted it. Many of you have lost the contents of your stomach to an audience of cheering friends basking in your misery. It’s the Gallon Challenge, and it seems impossible.

The object of the game is to down a whole gallon of milk in an hour’s time without rejecting it. Three things are needed to compete in the Gallon Challenge: a gallon of milk, a watch and a blimp-sized stomach.

The MTV show “Jackass” first made the challenge famous on season two, episode five when three people drank three flavors of whole milk and then threw up rainbow-colored vomit. Word of the masochistic challenge spread and became a favorite among college students looking to have a disgustingly fun time.

“There’s nothing like watching your friends make fools of themselves and puke all over the place,” Crystal Archbell, a senior in marketing, said.

The Gallon Challenge may seem great for a few cheap laughs, but dangerous side effects could be a possibility.

The circumstances surrounding the Gallon Challenge shocked an operator at the Carolinas Poison Center in Charlotte. “I’ve never been asked [about drinking a gallon of milk in an hour],” she said. “I thought I had heard everything.”After a brief moment to check on the dangers of massive milk consumption she returned.”It would depend on the type of milk used. Fat-free milk is mostly water so it could mess with your system’s balance of electrolytes, which could affect your heart. But with only a gallon it shouldn’t be harmful.”

Even if these thrill-seeking, projectile-vomiting milk chuggers are not risking permanent harm, what makes this challenge so challenging has created a long dialogue of debate.

“I’ve done it before with a group of 10 or 15,” Silas George, a senior in mechanical engineering, said. “And no one was able to do it. The milk like turns to cottage cheese in your stomach and expands. I had half of it down and it felt like I had drank the whole thing.”

Emanuel Alexander, a freshman in business, gave his own opinion on the difficulty of the challenge. “I think it’s the lactic acid,” he said. “Plus you have to take the type of milk into account. One percent or skim would work better. I don’t think it’s impossible; I’ve came close.”

From the body’s inability to consume that much lactose, to the fat in whole milk, to Silas’ “cottage cheese” theory, there are many speculations as to why the human body can’t handle a gallon of milk in an hour.

The Challenge

Three brave men set out to put an end to all the controversy in a challenge of epic proportions. Three men enter; no man leaves without vomiting.

In the name of science, David Shaffer, a senior in industrial engineering, Chris Valentine, a senior in criminal justice and Chris Kabool, a senior in business management, met to test out some of these theories.

“Stoked” is how veteran milk chugger Kabool felt about another shot to beat the gallon. He chose to drink whole milk. Chris Valentine, angry at how close he came last time, chose to drink skim milk and Shaffer, a first-timer, drank Deer Park water as a volume control.

“I’m feeling good about the whole thing,” Shaffer said. “It should be easy.”

If the rejection of the milk is due to the fat, Kabool should be the first to regurgitate. If the issue is with lactose, then both Kabool and Valentine should have the same trouble. If the sickness is due to the amount consumed, then all three would be in a smelly, sticky situation.

With the pull of the seals and crack of the tops it began.

All three participants went at their gallons strong in the first few minutes, easily downing a third of their jugs.

“I’ve had about my usual dose for the day,” joked Valentine, “the rest should be easy!”

After 15 minutes Shaffer began “feeling pretty full now.”

Thirty minutes into the challenge, Kabool stood up and paced around the yard. “Just shakin’ it out,” he said. “I’m never getting osteoporosis.”

“I feel extremely full but that’s about it,” remarked Shaffer, now passing the half-way mark. “I’m sure anything I’m feeling is felt tenfold by them.”

Kabool, bent over, clung to his gallon with one finger and said, “I can hear my heart beating in my head, is that bad?”

Only 15 minutes to go and the three inspected their gallons. They all looked at each other, took a second breath, and went for it, slowly downing more of their jugs.

Valentine then stood up with a strange look on his face and took a few steps back. “Now it’s starting to crawl,” he said. He bent over and released his 7/8 gallon of partly-digested skim milk on the grass beneath him.

A minute later and Kabool followed suit. He violently regurgitated his milk like a fire hose. “It’s coming out of my nose!” he said, “There is milk coming out of my nose!”

Not even a minute had passed when Shaffer took a few steps back, bent over, and released the hounds all over the grass, though not nearly as violently as the other two.

Shaffer then finished the rest of his water and said, “You know how you will be eating in a restaurant and you’re so full that you know the next bite will make you puke? That’s how it felt.”

The Science

All three men regurgitated in roughly the same fashion at about the same time. The milk challenge’s impossible nature lies in sheer quantity.

“First of all, there is a total stomach capacity as well as [an] individual tolerance for large quantities in your stomach at one time,” Dr. Sarah Ash, Associate Professor and coordinator of the Undergraduate Nutrition Program, said. “The stomach in general only holds about a half a gallon — one of the triggers of the vomit reflex are the so-called ‘stretch’ receptors in the stomach that sense when capacity has been met.”

Dr. Ash also described how Shaffer could slightly outlast the milk participants with a less severe response. The release of stomach contents into the small intestine depends on the protein and fat content of what you have consumed. In general, the more protein and fat, the longer the delay in the emptying of the stomach’s contents into the small intestine. Thus, being able to drink a gallon of water would be easier than a gallon of milk because water will move out of the stomach quicker.

Many people seem to think that it’s the body’s intolerance of the lactose in milk that makes binge drinking result in vomiting.

“The lactose is not likely the cause of the vomiting. Lactose intolerance, caused by too little of the digestive enzyme that breaks down lactose, is a problem of the large intestine, not the stomach,” Ash said. “Lactose is normally digested and its components absorbed in the small intestine… then it continues to travel on down to the large intestine where it attracts water and is acted on by the bacteria that live down there. The result is diarrhea and gas. Your participants may have experienced those problems too later on — but that would have nothing to do with the vomiting.”

However, Kabool and Valentine described their experience as much more painful than Shaffer’s, and this could be a cause of mind versus body. “Another possibility would be the more general mind-body connection that, for example, gives us “butterflies” in our stomachs when we are stressed,” Ash said. “Drinking a large volume of milk is likely to just be more unpleasant generally than drinking that much water due to its taste, texture and/or density. So you vomit just as you would if you drank or ate something else that was unpalatable, like urine or live bugs, etc. The more unpleasant it becomes, the more you feel like throwing up.”

Quantity, stomach release rate and a general unpleasant experience are the culprits here. The difficulty of the Gallon Challenge has little to do with milk specifically; a professional eater whose stomach is much larger should be able to do it in no time and feel great.

If someone were to recreate this event they might have the three participants in separate areas as the sight and sound of each other’s regurgitation could have had a significant effect on their own.

These three brave men tried put an end to the controversy surrounding the Gallon Challenge, and they were successful. Because sometimes you beat the gallon and, well, sometimes the gallon beats you.