By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator
In recent years, competitive eating has become a popular and
widely-recognized activity (some would say sport) with professional
organizations and contests with major prize money. The 4th of July
hot dog eating contest sponsored by Nathan’s Famous on Coney Island is a
televised annual spectacle that features contestants downing inhuman amounts of
processed meats. But, while taken to extremes now, competitive eating is
nothing new. For example, in Elmira over the past 100+ years, there have been
eating contests featuring raisins, crackers, corn, bread, cake, fried cake, pancakes,
ice cream, clams, hot dogs, doughnuts, eggs, lollipops, apples, candy, milk,
sandwiches, and peanuts, just to name a few.
Local corn eating contest, 1921 |
American eating contests got their start at county fairs and
community gatherings. For most, pie was the food of choice. Pie eating contests
were popular in Elmira from as early as the 1890s. Sometimes the contests would
be only for youths or they would be separated by gender (yes, ladies-only pie
contests were popular). In other contests, everyone participated together.
Pie contest, Elmira Heights, 1955 |
Advertisement, 1926 |
That same month, at the American Sales Book Company picnic,
“the most disastrous event of the afternoon came in the pie eating contest.
Murphy was far in the lead in this game and was nearing the center of his third
cocoanut pie when someone pushed his head. Flanden then took the lead in the
race and easily won by eating four pies- an apple, one custard, and two
rhubarbs in less than three minutes.”
The other most popular food for eating contests was watermelon.
Watermelon contests, while frequently open to all competitors, did often have
racist connotations and built upon the post-Emancipation stereotypical racial symbolism of the fruit. As late as the 1930s, these contests were advertised as
only open to African American boys or they pitted black children against white
children.
Contest recruitment, 1901. |
Most contests were more light-hearted, however. When the
Hoyt’s Musical Revue was at the Lyceum Theatre in 1918, they arranged special
events, including a spaghetti eating contest to “learn who the champion
spaghetti eater is in Elmira.” In 1925, cracker contests (which involved eating
a bunch of crackers and whistling a tune) were so popular, the newspaper
printed contest instructions. The YWCA hosted caramel and marshmallow contests
in 1930 as part of their Halloween celebration. A 1933 Kiwanis meeting featured
a “ludicrous banana eating contest” between Fred D. Crispin and Osmond
G. Wall.
The heyday of competitive eating in Elmira seems to have
peaked in the 1920s, but it remained popular through early 1950s.
Understandably, there was a decrease in that type of activity during the Great
Depression. Likely, if there was extra food available, it would have been seen
as poor taste to make such a spectacle of gorging oneself. By the 1910s and
1920s, contests sometimes featured branded products (like the original Nathan’s
contest in 1916) or a 1920 Nabisco eating contest in Elmira.
1939 |
I will conclude with my favorite instance of competitive
eating in Elmira, which also happened to be a city-wide endeavor. For Good
Friday, April 10, 1925, local bakeries worked together to make 56,936 hot cross
buns. The goal was for everyone in the city to have all of them eaten by
midnight. By 3pm, 31,726 had been eaten. I’m not sure if they hit their goal or
not.
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