Cheese rolls, bun climbs and eating chillies – the weirdest food sports
- Food sport is the basis of many cultural festivals worldwide but testing human consumption is as popular
- Contests date back as far as the War of the Roses but modern versions take on Scoville scale of heat and hot dogs
Arsene Wenger is credited with changing the English Premier League’s attitude to food – before the Frenchman arrived at Arsenal from Japanese J-League side Nagoya Grampus Eight in 1995, players diets were largely steak-based, if they had their own choice.
That’s the stuff of cliché – to the point where Steak – Diana Ross: Diary of a Football Nobody was the title of Dave McVeigh’s biography, based on the stock responses of footballers to questionnaires issued by football magazines in the 1970s and 80s.
While football, and indeed sport at large, has seen an attitude shift when it comes to food, there is a smorgasbord of sports that are food based – and not all of them so healthy.
From competitive eating (which inspired the television show Man vs Food) to contests where food is thrown as far as possible to all out food fights, here are some of the weirdest food-based sports from across the world.
Food fights are staples of any film and television set in the US education system but the most famous of them all globally is likely La Tomatina in Spain.
The annual tomato tossing takes place in Bunol and up to 20,000 people turn up to squash the fruit and fling it at other humans. Shockingly, no one has tried to upgrade by squeezing ketchup.