Ahead of last week's election in Alberta, 24-year-old Ian Dalsin made a "very stupid bet" against his friend Thomas Dang's chance of winning a seat for the NDP in the Edmonton-Southwest riding.

"If Dang becomes an MLA this election, I will literally eat my own hat," he proclaimed near the end of April, ribbing his 20-year-old buddy and former Delta Upsilon Alberta fraternity brother on Facebook.

Dalsin, an Edmonton native who recently moved to the U.K., had failed (like many others) to predict that the NDP would win a majority government in the province.

"It was just a flippant comment 'if you win, I will literally eat my hat,'" he told Global News in Edmonton, noting that he "never would've seen" the orange wave coming.

And yet, it did come — bringing with it one very important lesson for Dalsin about hyperbole, "safe" bets, and what hats taste like.

Yes, Dalsin was forced to eat his words about eating his hat on Tuesday when Dang was announced as the youngest NDP MLA ever to win seat in Alberta.



"I sent him a congratulations text message when the polls closed and the first thing he said to me is, 'I hope you have a good hat,'" said Dalsin of his friend's response to winning the bet.

Not one to back down from a promise according to his Twitter feed, Dalsin set out to find a good hat at a mall in London.

"This is a sentence I never thought I'd say," he says to the camera in a video posted to his Facebook profile about the experience on Saturday. "I just spent like, 10 minutes trying to figure out what the most edible hat material is."

A hat made of "100 per cent paper straw" was determined to be the best choice, so Dalsin purchased it and took it home to get cooking.



In the video, Dalsin is seen eating portions of the hat in several different ways; boiled with broccoli, alongside a steak dinner, through mouthfuls of beer, and on top of ice cream.

"That's regrettable," he laughs after drinking from a mug of plain hat soaked in water. "That's a regrettable life choice."

At the end of the video, he speaks about what the bet taught him.

"I've learned a lesson here," he says as the theme song from Rocky plays under his voice. "A lesson about the improbability of election week, and a lesson about using the word literally... and I solemnly swear never to make this bet again."