The Battle of the Eras reunion had a random segment that looked at spicy comments Amanda made. One of these was a tweet where she expressed her disdain for the vegan options on the show.
Clearly, this was targeted at Tori, who is a vegan and has allegedly had veganism written into her contract. So, Tori defended vegan options during eating challenges because there are equally gross foods that don’t hurt animals. Specifically, she pointed to the gross smoothie that they were forced to eat during Flying Around on the World Championship.
The cast was split on this topic. Jordan said that being vegan is a choice, while Nehemiah (a devout vegan) thinks making the Challenge more inclusive of dietary needs is a good thing.
If you’re a longtime Challenge fan, you’ll know that eating challenges have historically involved meat or other non-vegan foods in some capacity. People have broken their vegan diets to compete over the years — like Diem during the Battle of the Exes final, Kellyanne during the Family Dinner challenge on Bloodlines, or Nehemiah on the All Stars 3 final.
Usually, these meaty meals appear to be gross, but they’re delicacies in other countries. Challenge seasons are set all over the world, but the locations often get ignored on more recent seasons. Sometimes, including these delicacies is the only real connection to the season’s setting, and relying on vegan-friendly foods can remove that connection.
This can be seen on the Ride or Dies final when the cast was eating spaghetti and ice cream in Argentina.
For many people, this is the turning point when veganism replaced meaty cultural dishes in the final. Likely because this is the season when Tori mentioned her vegan diet and it started to get discussed online.
This forced Tori to be the face of Challenge vegans, even though there have been many others before her. In actuality, Tori likely isn’t the first person to demand a vegan option on the show.
On The Challenge: USA — the season filmed directly before Ride or Dies — the final included an eating portion. This season was also filmed in Argentina, and the cast had to eat onions, garlic, and lemon juice. Most people found this disgusting, but vegan chef Angela had a delicious snack as she gleefully poured lemon juice on the onion.
Likely, Angela is the vegan trailblazer. Veganism is part of her online brand, so it’s awfully suspicious that she was in the first final to skip the meat.
This season set the precedent, and most of the eating challenges since then have been much less disgusting. Rather, they rely on massive quantities, super spicy foods, and smelly dishes. It should be noted that meat isn’t entirely off the menu; we saw tuna smoothies on Battle for a New Champion. It’s only omitted if one of the competitors doesn’t eat meat.
I don’t think meat is necessary to make the challenge difficult, but the eating portion is supposed to be an equalizer. Allowing a small group of people to have influence on the menu kind of defeats the purpose. Usually, this also removes any cultural significance of the food and replaces it with dishes that are merely uncomfortable.
At this point on The Challenge, the entertainment value of eating competitions is almost gone. It might just be better to exclude eating challenges altogether if the regional dishes aren’t vegan. Luckily, Vietnam had soy-based foods and durian to gross out people on season 40, but the vegan dilemma is probably the reason we didn’t see a real eating portion on the Battle of the Eras final in the Philippines.
Stop Being Polite 