The Minnesota Lettuce Eating Contest

Pictured above is a head of iceberg lettuce. It’s a perfectly cromulent lettuce cultivar, and maybe even more than just adequate — in 2018, the New Yorker called it “superior” — but it’s rarely, if ever, the centerpiece of a culinary adventure. And that makes sense. Iceberg lettuce is a good base for a salad, a decent (and healthier) substitution for a taco or burrito, and… well, that’s just about it. You’re not going to sit around and just dig into a whole head of lettuce.

Unless you’re a student at the University of Minnesota, and you want to be the king of the humble iceberg.

If you’re a college student, you know that there are a lot of student activities available to you. Wannabe student leaders can run for student government roles. Those interested in journalism or storytelling can join the campus newspaper, radio station, TV channel, etc. There are all sorts of cultural organizations, service clubs, professional organizations, and there’s probably even one for board gaming or video gaming. Each club has different levels of participation, and most are very open and welcoming.

The University of Minnesota Lettuce Club is no different. If you’re a student at the school, you can sign up and join the activities organized by the club. Or, more correctly, the “activity,” singular. Because the Lettuce Club only holds one event per year: a lettuce eating contest.

Each May, students congregate on the Knoll, a park on campus, to participate in the event. The rules are simple. Each participant needs to come to the location with a one-pound head of lettuce — bring your own, as the club’s Instagram advertises — have it weighed by judges, and then recite the Lettuce Club creed, which includes the following, per the Minnesota Star Tribune:

Lettuce compete today with honor, glory, and most importantly a mild appetite for leafy vegetables. … We must romaine calm if we do not win, and beleaf in the new Head Lettuce to guide us.

With the puns out of the way, the chomping begins. As Axios Twin Cities reported on their Instagram, “the only goal is to see who can eat a 1-pound head of iceberg lettuce (with or without dressing) the fastest.” The winner of the eating contest is coronated “Head Lettuce,” gets fitted with a Lettuce Crown, and becomes the de facto president of the club — they need to organize the event for the following year. (Graduating seniors can participate, but they’re excluded from winning, because someone needs to be around to carry forward the Lettuce Crown from year to year.) You can watch highlights from the 2024 meeting-slash-competition at that Axios Twin Cities link above.

The winner typically finishes their lettuce head in about three-and-a-half to four minutes, but the race can sometimes go much more quickly than that. According to the Minnesota Daily, the all-time record is a mere two minutes and 35 seconds, held by a former student named Hampton Weber in 2021.

Bonus fact: In 2012, a Burger King employee took a picture of himself standing, shoes on (does that make it better or worse?), in a pair of containers of cut lettuce that was otherwise bound for customers’ burgers. At 11:38 pm on July 16, he anonymously uploaded the photo to an internet message board with the caption, “This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King” — or so he thought. As Mashable reported, within ten minutes of the upload, other members of the message board used metadata from the photo to locate the place the photo was taken (Mayfield Heights, Ohio, if you’re interested) and from there, track down the location of the Burger King in question. Others alerted BK corporate of the lettuce-standing and the employee was identified by the store manager in turn — and was fired the next day.

From the Archives: You Actually Win Friends With Dirty Salad?: Why lettuce used to be served in unwashed wooden bowls.