47 articles
Beard Meats Food
Beard Meats Food, aka Adam Moran, Leeds-based British competitive eater and YouTuber; UK's number one independent competitive eater, MLE world rank 17, records in Yorkshire puddings and Jaffa cakes.
Black Day (블랙데이) (South Korea)
Black Day (블랙데이) is South Korea's unofficial April 14 observance for singles who received nothing on Valentine's Day or White Day, marked by eating jajangmyeon, wearing black, and drinking black coffee; it emerged in the 1990s.
Calavera
Calavera (Spanish, "skull"): Mexican Day of the Dead skull imagery, including sugar, chocolate, and amaranth skulls (alfeñique technique), satirical Posada prints like La Catrina, and humorous mock-epitaph verses written each November.
Cannibalism in Africa
Cannibalism in Africa covers documented ritual and wartime cases (Zande, Leopard society, Mambasa 2003, Sahel videos) and the European colonial discourse of the savage African cannibal, largely refuted by modern anthropology since Arens' 1979 Man-Eating Myth.
Charles Domery
Charles Domery (Charles Domerz), c. 1778–after 1800, Polish soldier in the Prussian and French armies, captured on the Hoche in 1799 and interned at Liverpool, famous for eating 16 lbs of food daily, cats, rats, and candles.
Christmas dinner
Christmas dinner, the festive meal of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or Epiphany, known in Britain and America for roast turkey, stuffing, and Christmas pudding. Its modern menu emerged in the nineteenth century; other traditions center on carp, ham, lamb, or KFC in Japan.
Competitive eating
Competitive eating, or speed eating, is a sport of consuming the most food in a fixed time, governed by Major League Eating and best known through Nathan's July 4 hot dog contest, the Kobayashi-Chestnut rivalry, and Chestnut's 83 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
Culinary diplomacy
Culinary diplomacy is the use of food and cuisine to foster cross-cultural understanding and improve international relations. It is a soft power tool used by states worldwide.
Culinary tourism
Culinary tourism, also called food tourism or gastronomy tourism, is intentional, exploratory engagement with unfamiliar foodways. Coined by folklorist Lucy Long (1996), it spans scholarship, industry, and curiosity-driven eating.
Dave Arnold
Dave Arnold (born 1971) is an American culinary technology innovator, founder of the Museum of Food and Drink, former head of the French Culinary Institute's culinary technology department, co-creator of the Booker and Dax bar with David Chang, and author of the James Beard-winning Liquid Intelligence.
Dinner
Dinner: the main meal of the day, usually in the evening but at midday in parts of Britain; from Old French disner, to break one's fast. Covers etymology, the drift from midday to evening, meal structure, hospitality, and modern solo-dining trends.
Don Gorske
Donald (Don) Gorske, the Big Mac record holder and "Mac Daddy", is a retired Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, prison guard who has eaten Big Macs daily since 17 May 1972, holding the Guinness World Record for most Big Macs eaten in a lifetime (over 35,000 by March 2025), documented with every receipt.
Eating utensil etiquette
Eating utensil etiquette covers rules for using knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks, and hands at the table. Key facts: pre-16th-century Europe lacked eating utensils; the fork spread via Catherine de' Medici; à la russe service drove Victorian cutlery complexity; norms vary sharply by region.
Endocannibalism
Endocannibalism, or mortuary cannibalism, is the ritual consumption of deceased relatives within one's own social group. It was thought to be most widely practiced in lowland South America.
Eric Pateman
Eric Pateman is a Vancouver-born chef, entrepreneur, and culinary tourism strategist who founded Edible Canada, led YVR's guest experience as CXO, and is now SVP North America at Plaza Premium Group.
Fat Thursday
Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) is the last Thursday before Ash Wednesday, opening the final week of Carnival before Lent. Best known in Poland for eating pączki, about 100 million doughnuts sold that day; distinct from Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.
Feast of the Seven Fishes
Feast of the Seven Fishes (la vigilia): Italian-American Christmas Eve meal of at least seven seafood dishes, rooted in Southern Italian Catholic meatless fast days and developed in the United States from the early 1900s.
Foodie
Foodie: informal term for a food enthusiast who eats as a hobby, coined around 1980-1982 (Gael Greene, New York magazine; Harpers & Queen), studied by Johnston and Baumann for its democracy-versus-distinction tension, and considered dated by the mid-2020s.
Frozen Dead Guy Days
Frozen Dead Guy Days is a winter festival in Estes Park, Colorado, honoring Bredo Morstøl, a Norwegian man kept cryogenically frozen since his 1989 death.
Furious Pete
Furious Pete, Peter (Piotr) Czerwinski, Canadian competitive eater, bodybuilder, and YouTuber (~5M subscribers); Guinness record holder (4 hamburgers/minute), 72-oz steak in 6:48, ~90 contests won since 2007.
Going Dutch
Going Dutch, or to go Dutch, is an idiom for each person paying their own share of a meal or outing; from the 19th-century Americanism Dutch treat, likely via the Pennsylvania Dutch, not a Dutch custom.
Gratuity
A gratuity (tip) is a voluntary customer payment to a service worker, legally distinct from a service charge. Covers history, US tip credit ($2.13 tipped minimum), weak evidence tips reward service, and the 2025-2028 No Tax on Tips deduction.
Hamantash
Hamantash (Yiddish homentash, Hebrew oznei Haman) is the triangular filled cookie eaten on Purim, named for Haman; likely from German Mohntaschen, poppy pocket, first recorded as food in a 1550 Mantua play.
Joey Chestnut
Joey "Jaws" Chestnut is an American competitive eater who has won the Nathan's Famous hot dog contest 18 times and holds the record of 83 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
L.A. Beast
L.A. Beast, also known as Kevin Thomas Strahle, is a professional competitive eater who has set Guinness World Records, including eating nine powdered doughnuts in three minutes.
La Tomatina
La Tomatina is Buñol, Spain's annual tomato-throwing festival on the last Wednesday of August, begun in 1945, banned under Franco, legalized in 1959, capped at 22,000 ticket holders, and a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional since 2002.
Let them eat cake
"Let them eat cake" (Qu'ils mangent de la brioche) is a saying misattributed to Marie Antoinette; it appears in Rousseau's Confessions (written 1765, published 1782) as an unnamed princess's remark, with the first attribution to the queen appearing only in 1843.
List of Christmas dishes
Christmas dishes: festive foods and drinks served at Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or Epiphany meals worldwide. Includes Polish Wigilia carp, British turkey and Christmas pudding, Italian panettone, Greek yiaprakia, Japanese KFC, Nigerian jollof rice, and eggnog.
Maslenitsa (Масленица)
Maslenitsa (Масленица), or Butter Week, is the East Slavic pre-Lenten festival of blini, effigy burning, and Forgiveness Sunday, aligned with Orthodox Cheesefare Week before Great Lent.
Matt Stonie
Matt "Megatoad" Stonie, San Jose competitive eater and YouTuber, won the 2015 Nathan's Famous contest with 62 hot dogs, ending Joey Chestnut's eight-year streak; he holds 14 eating records.