By Justin HAGER

 On Tuesday morning, Feb. 1, the Chop Shop in Glendale was home to an event previously unseen anywhere in the world. A 27-year-old woman from Walnut named Raina Huang set a new world record in a category that didn’t even exist prior to last week. The groundbreaking event was the world’s first ever competitive salad eating contest. Her opponent? A 24-lb., 2-year-old Flemish Giant rabbit named Honey “Mega” Bunny.

Born out of county fair pie-eating contests in the 1880s, competitive food eating has grown in popularity over the past several decades, especially in the U.S., China and Japan. Spurred on by the popular Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, the events even gained a governing body in 1997 with the formation of the organization Major League Eating (MLE), which now oversees 70-80 competitions each year.

Competitive eating celebrities have even risen to the forefront of popular culture with names like Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi making regular appearances on both ESPN and the Food Network. But while the events are growing, according MLE and event referee Kris Kloss, MLE had never before sanctioned a salad-eating competition.

For Huang, a food and travel content creator whose YouTube channel now boasts nearly 600,000 followers, the competition marks the next step of her journey to become the first woman to join Chestnut and Kobayashi as a champion food eater. Huang rose in popularity through her food and travel videos that feature eating challenges from across the country.

As for how the rabbits got involved, that was the brainchild of Chop Shop owner Mark Kulkis.

“I had always been told that salad is rabbit food,” Kulkis said. “I had seen these photos of these huge rabbits before and decided it was time to find out … I just wanted to have some fun. That’s the great part about owning a company; if you have a crazy idea, you can just do it.”

As for the competition itself, perhaps it was anxiety set on by the crowd of spectators and news cameras, perhaps it was the intimidation of competing against a celebrated professional food eater like Raina Huang, or perhaps it was simply that the lettuce was too finely chopped. Regardless of the reason, it was clear from the beginning that Honey was outmatched in the competition – at least in the salad-eating category.

Several minutes into the competition Honey even tagged out, allowing teammate Precious, another Flemish Giant rabbit, this one 15 months old, to compete instead. But neither rabbit could catch Huang, who won the contest and set a new world record in salad eating, consuming in 10 minutes 3.5 lbs. of leafy greens, shredded cabbage and grated carrots.

After the competition, Huang said that she was a little sad the rabbit wasn’t into it, but that she was proud to be the world champion. However, while Huang may have taken home the prize, Honey and Precious stole the show.