The World's Top 5 Most Intense Food Fight Traditions
27 September 2019
If you've ever wanted to take part in a government-sanctioned food fight with other adults, here's your chance.
Sometimes you just have to let the tomatoes fly.
In a world where food is expected to stay on our plates, throwing food at other humans is a radical act of defiance. Food fights are absurd, joyful, exuberant disruptions of normal life—and in some places around the world, they're annual events. Our sympathies lie with whoever has to clean this up, but the pictures sure are dazzling.
1. Clean Monday Flour Wars (Galaxidi, Greece)
Normally a quiet resort town, things go a little haywire in Galaxidi during carnival season. Inhabitants of this town have developed a tradition of throwing massive quantities of flour at each other each year, leading to one of the world's largest food fights and most entertainingly carnivalesque affairs. A similar flour festival happens in Ukraine each year, so you have options.
▲Flour War (2)
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2. Battle of the Oranges (Ivrea, Italy)
This food fight starts out like any regular revolutionary battle reenactment, with townspeople raging at an oppressive government. Except here, their weapons of choice are oranges.
Each year, the Battle of the Oranges leaves Ivrea's streets completely covered with smashed citrus fruits. Apparently the event is based on a very old carnival tradition where villagers violently pelted each other with oranges. Now, there's less violence, but by the looks of things, just as much wasted fruit.
▲Ivrea, Italy (2)
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3. Setsubun (Japan)
Setsubun is celebrated all over Japan, and marks the beginning of spring. During this festival, which is meant to wash away evil from the previous year and drive away spirits of disease from the year to come, roasted soybeans are thrown out the door or in the streets.
▲4. La Tomatina (Spain)
Every year on La Tomatina, people hurl tomatoes at each other until the streets are soaked in red. The town, which normally holds 9,000 people, expands to hold 40 or 50,000 spectators who come to enjoy the festival. The fight lasts exactly one hour, and some sites recommend bringing goggles, because things get messy, to say the least.
▲La Tomatina (2)
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5. Haro Wine Festival (Spain)
If you've ever dreamed of dousing your entire body in red wine, here's your chance. Each year, people in the vineyard-filled Spanish village of Haro, Rioja throw 130,000 liters of wine at each other as part of this festival (and one would imagine that a fair amount is flowing through these partygoers' bloodstreams).
▲Wine Festival (2)
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