I have spoken so much of Louis‘ great strength that now I must tell you of his great weakness – eating. His excuse for eating so much was that his great expenditure of strength required it. That was just his joke, though, for he was a slave to the table all his life.
He could eat more than four ordinary men at one sitting, and took a keen delight watching the amazement creep over the waiter’s face when he turned in his order at the hotel. Six pounds of meat at one meal was nothing for him. He could devour that for breakfast.
Next to a lifting contest, he loved an eating contest best, and any man who thought he could tuck more food under his belt than Louis was an agreeable friend with an agreeable pastime, and the question must be settled by a bet and a trial.
Many a gourmand has gone away wiser in head and lighter in pocket after a meat-and-potato contest with the giant Louis. His homecomings were always a feast, with everything done up royally on the table…..
In eating, as in lifting Barre (WHO?) was a close second to Louis. I heard that one time they had an eating match to be decided by which could devour a twenty-two pound suckling pig the quickest, and they say that Louis was done when Horace was little more than half way through.
Source: George F. Jowett, The Strongest Man That Ever Lived (Milo, 1927)
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