The very first world kale-eating record was set in Buffalo, New York yesterday after Gideon “The Truth” Oji managed to eat 25 bowls of lightly-dressed leaves in just eight minutes.
At the Taste of Buffalo food festival, the professional eaters fighting for a $2,000 prize had no time for the Guardian’s declaration that kale is no longer cool – overtaken by seaweed that very day.
They guzzled down a combined 45 bowls, pouring liquids down their throat to help break down the fibrous leaves in a process that left a viscous mixture of Gatorade and kale chunks dripping down chins and chests.
“It’s the new frontier food in major league eating,” said competitive eater Crazy Legs Conti, 45 “but with the stomach of a 19 year old” and the title-holder for eating corn on the cob and French green beans. Conti said he’s long pushed for more vegetable-eating competitions.
“There’s never been a food that’s had a storyline like kale. It was a garnish on all-you-can eat buffets and fast food restaurants,” said Conti.
In recent years kale has, of course, become the vegetable cliche for quinoa-crunching and latte-sipping hipster, who juice, sauté and massage the leaves with the world’s finest olive oils. Then the green went mainstream. McDonald’s offers a kale salad.
Conti joked of a future where American roadhouses serve burgers wrapped in kale buns and cocktail bars serve dirty kale martinis.
“Our flag is red, white and blue but maybe it needs some kale green, to represent the moral fibre and fortitude not only of the vegetable but of our country,” he said.
Meanwhile, Buffalo’s most famous culinary export is its eponymous chicken wings. At the Taste of Buffalo festival, the Guardian tested various local delights including beef on weck (a roast beef sandwich dipped au jus), buffalo chicken soup (not recommended), beer cheese soup (with said beer) and sponge candy (honeycomb covered in chocolate, almost identical to the classic British Cadbury Crunchie).
“Our waistlines are a little thicker here,” said Frank Bona, a local interviewed near the festival.
Waistline concerns were why Healthy Options, a foundation that pushes for healthier eating, sponsored what it called the “world’s healthiest eating championship”. No one knew exactly how this would work.
“There’s a lot of guys here who can beat me in hot dogs. A food like kale is a great equalizer,” said the sole local entrant, “Buffalo” Jim Reeves, a high school maths teacher currently ranked 19th among national competitive eaters. “It takes it from what’s normally a capacity contest to one more about chewing and swallowing.”
Going into the competition everyone talked strategy. “In most contests you see people stuff their mouth full and they can continue to swallow if it’s something that contains enough water,” Reeves said. “But the kale doesn’t contain any water, so for me it’s about flushing the mouth out.
“Because as soon as you get a mouth full of food, you can’t chew and swallow anymore, your jaw gets tired and your jaw and your throat will cramp up,.”
Tongue-in-cheek kitsch was in greater supply than even the kale. The prize trophy, a bright green metal “Kale Cup” filled with kale, awaited the winner on a table outside city hall. Eminem’s Lose Yourself played as MC Mike Sullivan, dressed in a bow-tie, blazer and boater hat, hyped the crowd of a few hundred people for a fight against “a fierce leafy beast”.
“We’ve never seen an eating competition before. This one seems like it’ll be less disgusting to me,” said Elaine Polino, a 52-year-old speech pathologist, who was watching with her husband Mike and 16-year-old daughter.
The nine competitors, wearing orange T-shirts emblazoned with “It’s Crunch Time”, received introductions worthy of the cheesiest wrestling tournament. The clock was set for eight minutes and then, game time.
Eric “Badlands” Booker, listened to his own raps on headphones and at times held the bowl above his head to shovel kale down quicker. Conti chugged Tang in between kale bites. Daniella Gioia, a 23-year-old long-haul truck driver and the only female competitor, was close behind Booker in the unofficial competition for who could spill the most liquid and kale on their T-shirts. Competitors at times held their mouths closed while chewing to stop themselves from involuntarily spitting it out.
Oji, a 24-year-old Nigerian who lives in Atlanta, emerged victorious, eating 25 and a half bowls, more than half the 45 bowls eaten by all competitors combined.
Moments after the competition ended, Mike Polino came over. “It was disgusting,” he said.
The competitors largely agreed: massive kale consumption is as nauseating as it looks. “I did cough during the competition once and that was the slowing point for myself,” said Michael Dietz, a Pennsylvanian who holds records in pumpkin pie and fried mushroom eating but came last for kale. “It got a little stuck in your throat and went up in your nasal passages.”
“Just trying to stuff it so fast and not then to get your mouth stuffed, got pretty hard,” said Booker, who took fourth place and $350 prize. “Later on into the contest, my mouth was pretty stuffed and it was tickling the back of my throat, and I was trying to get some liquid back here to take care of that so I can just swallow it, and keep going. A little bit of time got wasted doing that, if that hadn’t happened I probably would have won.”
The first-place winner, Oji, told the Guardian his strategy was to hold the bowl at his mouth the whole time and drink and chew continuously.
On Monday he’s competes in a Hooters-sponsored wing eating contest in Las Vegas. “I’m not doing this for money,” he said. “I’m doing this to win.”
But 25 bowls of kale was not enough to fill him up. “I’m still hungry, I’m going to go eat some real food,” he said, before wandering off with his shiny Kale Cup.
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