By now, I'm sure that many, if not most, of you have
at least tried that now most westernized of Japanese delicacies, sushi. The concept
of eating raw fish seems like it may have taken a while to catch on
amongst Western cultures. For the truth is, as we'll find out in far
more detail to day, not only were Western cultures happily eating raw fish for
ages at one point, they were m in fact eating it so raw as
for it is still in fact to be alive. Now, we aren't talking
about great, big bluefin tuna, or heaven forbid, a sword fish,
although that would take sword swallowing to a whole new level. No, we're
talking about a fish that, unfortunately for it, had the two qualities needed
for it to become the chosen fish. Firstly, it was small enough to
be easily gulped down in one go. And secondly, they were fairly ubiquitous,
found in homes, bedrooms, colleges, and pet stores everywhere. That's
right. Today, we're talking about the nineteen thirty nine craze of college students
competing to swallow as many as they could of the humble goldfish. Welcome to
the fantastic history of food. Strange but true stories from history that in some
way involved food. I'm your host, Nick Charlie Key. In nineteen thirty
nine, in the hallowed halls of Harvard University, boredom was brewing. A
freshman student by the frankly ridiculous name of Lothrop Wthington Junior began bragging to his
friends that he had, in fact once eaten alive fish. At first,
his friends just rolled their eyes at what was clearly just another classic Wthington Junior
tall tale. But Lothrop was adamant he had done and if they didn't believe
him, he would do it again. All right, They said, put
your money where you're fishy mouth is. So he bet them ten dollars that
he could do it again, And from that moment it was on. This
wasn't just going to be a quick axe done in a dorm room. No,
this was going to be a spectacle for the whole student body to witness.
Not only that, but they had't even organized for some members of the
press to attend and cover the event. So a few days later, on
the third of March, he got up into a raised platform in front of
a grinning crowd, of his peers. He surveyed the scene in front of
him, and there on a small side table was a ball with a little
three inch goldfish happily and thankfully obliviously swimming around. He looked up again at
the crowd and said, everyone ready. The chair that erupted was all the
encouragement he needed to go ahead. He plucked the doomed goldfish out of its
ball and dropped it right down his throat in one giant gulp. Everyone was
silent as they watched His eyes widened briefly as he suppressed his gag reflex.
Then he opened his mouth and proudly thrust his tongue out for everyone to see
there was no longer any fish in his mouth. The crowd went wild,
cheering him on as his friends happily produced the ten dollars there had bet him.
In a comment to the local press who had attended, he mentioned that
the toughest part about it had been the scales catching in his throat as the
fish went down, In an amusing juxtaposition to his activities that day, He
followed up his stunt by eating fried fish and chips for dinner that night.
Newspapers and magazines all over the country ran with the story, with Time and
Life magazines featuring the stunt in articles of theirs, and with this reporting came
a level of fame and notoriety, both for Lothrop himself and for Harvard as
an institution. Now we all know how competitive it can get between the country's
top colleges when it comes to any form of sport or competition, but it
seems that even football, basketball, and baseball briefly took a back seat to
the new goldfish swallowing craze that began to sweep the country's institutions. The University
of Pennsylvania, looking to put their names in the hat, chose their champion,
who set the bar for future attempts by swallowing twenty five poor goldfish one
after the other. Mit not to be outdone, took the title themselves of
the newly coined Intercollegiate Goldfish Swallowing Champion when one of their students, Albert Hayes,
smashed Pennsylvania's record of twenty five by upping his intake to forty two goldfish.
Hayes would take almost a minute per fish in his attempt, as he
reportedly struggled with the fish flopping around in his mouth and once or twice having
a jump clear out as the fish sought its freedom from Albert's gaping more at
colleges and universities all around the country, the craze spread like wildfire. Girls
began joining in two and fierce rivalries began to emerge between historically competitive schools.
Most struggled to match the totals set by MIT, but tent to simply be
ahead of their closest rivals. The record would be broken later that same year
by a student named Joseph Deliberato, who attended Clark University. He was not
content with simply beating the record of forty two. He wanted to obliterate it
so completely it would possibly never be beaten again. So on his Fateful day,
he steadied himself in front of the massed crowd and began swallowing goldfish after
goldfish. He started strong, keeping up a fairly steady pace and rhythm of
goldfish being plucked from the tank and subsequently plopped into his mouth. When he
was in the thities and nearing the record, people began to notice him starting
to sweat, and he was gradually slowing down a little. He plopped the
fortieth goldfish into his mouth, and the crowd cheered even louder. Just three
more to go to break the record for Clark University. In went number forty
one, then forty two. The crowd waited in silence as he closed his
eyes lifted number forty three high into the air above his open mouth. He
let the fish go, and he gulped it down, just like he had
the others before it. The crowd erupted. He had done it, he
had broken the record, but he wasn't stopping. He plucked another, and
then another, and in another, swallowing each one with gusto and a renewed
vigor. By the time Joseph was done, not only had he broken the
previous record, he had smashed it to bits by more than doubling it,
eventually calling it quits after swallowing a record eighty nine goldfish in one sitting.
As with most fads, its popularity burned brightly for a short while, but
quickly began to die out. Its demise was partly due to the Massachusetts state
Senator George Krapp, filing a bill to outlaw the practice in his state in
order to preserve the fish from cruel and wanton consumption. The Public Health Service
doubled down on this by issuing a statement that live fish could contain tape worms
and were there four unsuitable for consumption at all. Interestingly, the universities themselves
fired back by publishing studies that showed that adult males could consume around one hundred
and fifty live fish seemingly without consequence. Fifty years after the fad exploded onto
the scene, the record is said to have been smashed yet again and set
at a frankly eyewatering three hundred live goldfish consumed in one sitting. This is
still somewhat in the realm of urban legend, though, but if true,
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things of this nature, it never truly dies out for good, and there
are many stomach churning videos on YouTube of people attempting the goldfish challenge. In
the UK, however, you can now face legal prosecution for doing this.
Recently, a twenty year old from Suffolk was fined two hundred pounds and banned
from owning any live animals for a year after police found a video of him
swallowing too live goldfish. Luckily for these two goldfish, howiver, he couldn't
keep them down and they were rescued and then survived after he threw them back
up again. In twenty sixteen, in Rotterdam, a few young Dutchmen,
after having a few too many drinks, began swallowing goldfish live from their home
aquarium. Not to be outdone, a twenty eight year old man among them
scoffed at the simpler city of just swallowing goldfish and plucked a much larger,
and unfortunately for the man, much spikier, bronze catfish out of the tank.
He put the catfish into a glass of water, and, as can
be seen on a video from the incident, his friends around him started chanting
in Dutch big Fish, Big Fish, He tilts the glass back and swallows
the catfish whole. From here, things quickly turned ugly as the man is
seen struggling to dislodge it from his throat as he coughs up a bit of
fish and blood. Instead of immediately rushing the man to hospital, his friends
try to dislodge the fish by pouring beer into his mouth, followed by multiple
spoons of honey, and then finally some ice cream, before admitting defeat and
taking him to the emergency room. At the heart of the argument for or
against this sort of practice is simple ethics. Animal rights groups will understandably say
that it causes needless pain to innocent living beings, but those in favor of
such shenanigans argue that other foods like oysters, are eaten live all around the
world. In fact, there are many cultural traditions that favor the consumption of
live seafood as a delicacy, regardless of whether it holds any inherent cruelty in
it. In Japan, there is a delicacy known as odori ebi, which
in English is translated as the dancing shrimp. It is considered a form of
sushi, whereby a baby shrimp that are still alive and able to move their
legs and antennae are dunked into a strong alcoholic bath of sake in order to
render the shrimp intoxicated. Then they are dipped into a special acidic dipping source
that makes the shrimp's muscles flex and contract as if it was dancing, before
quickly being eaten whole. In some instances, the head is removed prior to
serving and brought deep fried as a side dish. There is also a belief
amongst certain chefs that when consuming the spiny lobster, the meat tastes the best
right out of the belly of the crustacean while its head still unnervingly moves around
on the plate. Thankfully, this isn't truly alive, but simply the nerve
endings reacting to the acid and salt. In India, there is a particularly
interesting yearly ritual that happens during the first week of June. Thousands of asthma
sufferers flock to the city of Nampalae in Hyderabad to take part in a yearly
asthma cure called fish Prucedam. It's a practice that dates back to eighteen forty
five and all started with one particular family. They claim to have perfected a
secret recipe that can cure someone of asthma, and have passed this recipe down
the generations for almost two hundred years. A few years ago, in twenty
eighteen, more than eighty thousand people attended the festival, with a Department of
Fisheries providing almost two hundred thousand fingering fish. The miracle cure involves a very
specific type of murral fish that has the secret recipe yellow herbal paste stuffed into
its mouth. This little fish is then swallowed whole and alive by the festival
goers. It is said to work even better if the patient feels the fish
wriggling as it goes down their throat, as this is said to help coat
the throat with a special paste as it descends, making the chances of it
working all the higher. Finally, for this long list of stomach churning examples,
we finish on the Asian delicacy of sun Nakjee, which is the practice
of eating octopus tentacles served in sesame oil. Now that sounds at least pretty
normal, so why is it on this list? Well, besides the fact
that even though those octopus tentacles are not alive because of the oil they are
dastin. They wriggle and writhe as if alive on the plate, but still
they are technically not alive. So why are there on this list? Well,
true to form, people do in fact like to eat the whole baby
octopus alive, but this is one delicacy that likes to fight back. On
average, six people a year are killed trying to eat these whole baby octopi
as during the swallowing of the creature, it flares the suckers on its tentacles
and grabs hold of the inside of the diner's throat. Unable to get it
to release, they unfortunately succumb to a lack of oxygen and become another victim
of the octopus resistance. So before you decide that you two would like to
try quickly downing some form of live animal, I'd recommend firstly just not doing
it, but if you're adamant, maybe make sure it doesn't have any spikes
or tentacles that could spell disaster for your slow moving Saturday afternoon. Thank you
for listening to this episode of The Fantastic history of Food. If you'd like
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