Top 10 Ridiculous Food Challenges You Should Never Try

10. Habanero Challenge

This is perhaps one of the most well-known food challenges; people love to cram as many spicy peppers in their mouths as possible and see how long they can go before they need a drink. In all actuality, no one really enjoys it; their friends enjoy watching them do it and taping the results. This sort of activity is a social thing and usually precipitated by heavy peer pressure. Also, restaurants challenge people to eat large amounts of wings with Habanero sauce for the honor of being on their Wall of Fame and winning a free beer. That’s usually a pretty good way to inspire someone to do something dumb. Among the worst peppers out there are the Habanero and ghost pepper. Some people online actually go to the trouble to review peppers for hotness, and obviously have graded both of these quite high.While the Habanero can be quite painful to consume, it luckily isn’t particularly dangerous if you can handle spice well. The ghost pepper on the other hand, is actually quite dangerous and shouldn’t be consumed whole as a challenge. A pepper that strong is best put in very small quantities in a large dish. And then thrown into a deep, deep pit and never spoken of ever again.

9. Pickle Challenge

The pickle challenge is probably one of the most disgusting food challenges on the planet, even if you like pickles. While there isn’t a lot of documentation on this specific one, probably because most people don’t want to do it, there are a few points that seem to be pretty common. The most obvious aspect of the challenge is that you eat an entire jar of pickles and all of the juice therein. Some people impose a time limit on this, because God forbid you dilly-dally on shoving that many pickles and disgusting juice down your throat. We aren’t sure why people enjoy wasting all this food; perhaps pickles were the only thing they had in the house.

8. Hamburger Challenge

Many restaurants have done the enormous burger thing, but one has gone so far as to make a burger weighing 6 pounds. The recipe includes two whole onions and two whole tomatoes, and at least one whole head of lettuce. The restaurant also offers slightly less gargantuan burgers that are only 3 pounds, in case you’re not feeling particularly hungry that day. Like many restaurants, if you can eat the entire cow that they shoved between a loaf’s worth of bun, they will give you all sorts of prizes, such as the meal being free. One site has even come up with a home order version of the challenge. Basically, they give you a recipe, you make the enormous burger and tape yourself eating it within two hours. If you pull it off, you win $500, which unfortunately won’t be enough to cover the hospital bill for what you did to your body.

7. Saltine Challenge

The saltine challenge sounds ridiculously easy at first. You are supposed to eat six tiny saltines in a minute. At ten seconds per cracker, that seems like nothing. Except it’s actually quite difficult, not to mention horrible. The salt, plus the dryness of the crackers, makes it essentially impossible to get them down within the time limit. Some people have tried on multiple occasions, and still been left with about two crackers at the end. While this challenge is basically impossible, and incredibly pointless, at the very least it’s safer and less wasteful than many of the others.

6. Milk Challenge

The milk challenge is one of those activities that happen when you and a group of people you have nothing in common with are so bored that vomiting dairy products all over the room sounds like a good idea. The idea of the challenge is to drink an entire gallon of milk in just one hour without puking any of it back up. Most people who haven’t tried it think it sounds fairly easy, but the human body just isn’t very good at processing that much dairy at once. Except for Kobayashi, but that’s because he’s almost certainly a space alien. One person was so enamored by the challenge, and the never-ending failure of those who attempt it, that he created a website just to document everything about it it. It’s filled with picture after picture of people puking up milk, which is exactly the kind of content that Al Gore envisioned when he invented the Internet.

5. Oreo Challenge

While most of these are solely about gluttony, some challenges are just plain silly. This is one of those. The Oreo challenge actually has nothing to do with how many you eat. Instead, you twist the Oreo apart and lick the white filling, then you stick the cookie on your forehead and attempt to eat it without using your hands. Of course, people have made videos of themselves doing this, because some things should be saved for posterity, and in case the robots need yet another reason to enslave us all without a second thought.

4. Garlic Challenge

While the kids today don’t really enjoy eating large amounts of garlic, that doesn’t mean certain people haven’t made a sport of it. Some places actually host garlic eating contests, where the winner gets actual money, which they presumably then spend on tons of mouthwash in an attempt to anybody to come near them ever again. Just as crazy is the tale of a Japanese man who decided to eat a hamburger with 100 slices of onion, garlic’s more accomplished cousin. He didn’t finish the gigantic burger, not because it was a giant hamburger, but because he was really sick of the taste of onion. Because that’s exactly why people partake in these stupid challenges. Taste.

3. Cinnamon Challenge

This is actually fairly popular as a rite of passage among young people daring each other into permanent YouTube embarrassment. This challenge consists of eating an entire tablespoon of cinnamon in less than a minute, with nothing to wash it down. The challenge sounds pretty simple, but you already know it’s not. Cinnamon is simply so dry that it pretty much immediately removes all the saliva from your mouth, making it near-impossible to swallow. While no one has yet died thanks to this stupid stunt, many people have suffered serious lung damage, not to mention a horrible case of something called Dragon’s Breath. Generally, “dragon” in front of something means “hot as hell and the sure sign of a bad time.” Maybe the garlic eating champion can lend these clowns a bit of mouthwash.

2. Jell-O Challenge

The Jell-O challenge has quite a few variations, but the most popular one is to make a cup of Jell-O and down it in less than a minute, without sending it right back up. However, some people approach it similarly to the cinnamon challenge, and actually attempt to eat an entire dry packet of Jell-O. Because the real problem with downing cinnamon wasn’t that it was dry and impossible to swallow, but that it didn’t taste like strawberry.

1. Banana and Sprite Challenge

The banana and Sprite challenge is possibly the stupidest idea mankind has ever devised, aside from war and the Virtual Boy. The challenge consists of eating two bananas, and drinking an entire liter of Sprite, as quickly as possible. This pretty much always leads to projectile vomiting, but that’s not the reason why this challenge is so mind-bogglingly dumb. No, it’s dumb because, unlike some challenges, you’re expected to vomit. Keeping everything down is not generally a requirement; the only thing judges care about is how fast you can shove everything down your throat. What happens afterwards is strictly your own disgusting business.