10 Guinness World Records That Took Food To Ridiculous Extremes

The Guinness World Records have long shown how far people can push themselves in the name of simply seeing what they can do. The records started as a pub promotion from the Guinness Brewery (yes, the one and only), where the company would create a book of trivia and facts designed to settle pub arguments.

Many of the records deal with food. Some simply aim to grow or build the largest of this or that type of food. Others involve food in bizarre feats. And yet others showcase dedication to specific recipes and cooking in general. "Ridiculous" is really a subjective term, and despite all our pondering about why some of these feats were attempted in the first place, the people who set the records clearly took it seriously and are proud of their achievements. So, let's honor these people who set and met goals and look at 10 Guinness World Records that took food to some surprising extremes.

Let's start with a twofer, where one person set records for two similar categories on the same day. Wallace Wong, also known as the Six-Pack Chef, set the records for Most Slices of Celery Sliced in 30 Seconds and the Most Slices of Celery Sliced While Blindfolded in 30 Seconds on June 12, 2024. What's really cool about these records is that the blindfold didn't slow him down all that much. His record for just the slices stands at 128, and his record for slicing while blindfolded is 125. That is some excellent knife control.

Wong was at the Guinness World Records Headquarters in London and attempted nine different records, and yes, he broke them all. In addition to the two celery records, he broke two records cutting tomatoes, with and without a blindfold; two records slicing a bell pepper, with and without a blindfold; two records slicing garlic, with and without a blindfold; and chopping chilies. He also holds two records set in 2023, slicing carrots and cucumbers while blindfolded. All of these records had time limits of 30 seconds or one minute, except for the bell pepper records, which focused on chopping the peppers as quickly as possible.

This one may be one of the longest-running record attempts because it began in 1972 and was set on March 15, 2025. Don Gorske has eaten 35,000 Big Macs since 1972 to set the record for Most Big Mac Burgers Eaten in a Lifetime. He says he first got the idea when he saw the Guinness World Record book back in 1970 and thought that, since he ate burgers every day, he could set a record for that. And set one he did, first achieving the record in 1999 and expanding it ever since. He's even said he now keeps some Big Macs in the freezer in case there's a blizzard and McDonald's isn't open.

Gorske has tried other burgers but simply prefers the Big Mac. He said in an interview with The Guardian in March 2025 that his cholesterol and other numbers are normal, even though he eats two Big Macs a day. He's also become such a fixture at McDonald's that the location closest to his home has a booth with his name and photo on it. However, he remains down to earth and advises people not to try for his record. That's not because he doesn't want the challenge; it's because, as he said in the Guardian interview, you'd have to eat two Big Macs a day for 50 years, and that he could set the record because he was already eating the burgers anyway.

This next record may be on the verge of changing as we speak. At the time of writing this, the official Guinness World Record for the Longest Cooking Marathon (Individual) was set on February 19, 2024, by Evette Quoibia in Melbourne, Australia. She cooked for 140 hours, 11 minutes, and 11 seconds. Her record notes that she had never found anything big that she'd wanted to do until she heard about the cooking marathon. She did have a team helping out, as you can see in this video. But all the cooking was done by Quoibia. The Liberian-Australian chef owns a restaurant and has loved cooking since she was a child.

But a new record may be in the works. In April 2025, Haitian chef Danaisa Orchestre, also known as Leen Excellent and Chef Leen, cooked for 192 hours straight. Her team sent proof of the feat to Guinness World Records, which can take several weeks to verify and decide if a record has actually been broken. As of late August 2025, there's been no official public announcement, and Quoibia is still considered the record-holder.

Constructing a normal-sized wedding cake can be difficult enough. Now try to construct one that weighs over 15,000 pounds. That's what the chefs at the Mohegan Sun Hotel and Casino did on February 8, 2004, in Uncasville, Connecticut, where they made the record-breaking Largest Wedding Cake to display at the New England Bridal Showcase that was taking place at the hotel.

Executive Pastry Chef Lynn Mansel thought up the idea, with the logic being that it would get some publicity for the bridal showcase. The cake had seven frosted tiers total, stood 17 feet tall, and required actual construction machinery to assemble. Chefs used a forklift to raise the tiers and even placed people in a lift so they could decorate the upper levels. After taking measurements and lots of pictures, with the Mohegan Tribal Health Department acting as observers, the cake was used as a sample for guests at the showcase. Chefs planned to send any leftovers to a pig farm.

There's nothing like a Guinness World Record attempt to prove how much you trust your friends. On April 11, 2021, martial artists Prabhakar Reddy P and Vijay Sai Panthangi teamed up in Nellore, India, to break the record for Most Watermelons Sliced by a Sword on a Bed of Nails in One Minute. One man lay on a literal bed of nails while the other placed watermelons on the first man's stomach, slicing the watermelons with a 27-inch sword and repeating this with 81 melons. As one does.

Believe it or not, this was not the first record in this category. Back in 2018, Vispy Jimmy Kharadi and Vispi Baji Kasad, also both martial artists, chopped up 49 watermelons with a 30-inch katana in a similar attempt, although no bed of nails appeared to be involved. Kasad noted that the hardest part was ensuring the sword didn't touch the skin.

Continuing the theme of "Why would you put yourself through this?" is the record for Most Stinging Nettles Eaten in One Minute. This record was set by Alex Williams in the U.K. on April 25, 2005, who ate 5 feet of nettles on a TV show. Lest you think this was just something he decided to do suddenly, no. Eating raw stinging nettles as part of a competition is a real thing in England, which hosts the yearly World Nettle Eating Championship in Dorset. However, the contest focuses on how much you can eat overall, while the Guinness record focused on the time restriction of one minute. The organization no longer allows attempts based on how much someone can eat without a time or quantity restriction, to avoid promoting gluttony and injuries that can occur from overeating.

Stinging nettle leaves are edible and very nutritious if you cook them (nettles and garlic make a delicious vegetarian springtime soup). But when they're raw, nettles are unpleasant at best. The leaves are covered with tiny hairs that irritate the skin — eating them raw can temporarily turn your tongue black. That annual contest in Dorset, by the way, started after years of arguments and bets. According to one version of the origin story, one farmer had nettles growing up to 15 feet and 6 inches tall; he challenged anyone to find a taller nettle and said he'd eat his raw if someone could. So, of course, someone brought in a slightly taller nettle. The farmer went ahead and ate his nettles as promised. That farmer's name was Alex Williams.

Matthew Lucci managed to break the record for the Highest Popping Toaster on November 19, 2012, sending toast hurtling 15 feet into the air. This wasn't due to a weird toaster that was too aggressive when ejecting toast. Lucci actually attached a motorized flywheel to the interior of the toaster, and when the toast was done (the requirements for the record included actually toasting the bread), the flywheel would catch the bread and send it skyward. The previous record was 8.5 feet in 2008, and was pulled off with a toaster that was actually part of an art show.

While Lucci's record was observed at a high school, one Guinness World Record manager noted that Lucci was not even 10 years old at the time he broke the record. In an interview with New Scientist magazine, manager Sam Mason said that he'd noticed children often seemed to be better at setting and meeting goals than some adults.

This is the record-breaker that no doubt made onlookers very happy because they got to help dispose of the food involved, and by dispose of it, we mean eat a lot of chocolate. The record for the Largest Chocolate Sculpture of a Rabbit is held by Equipe da Casa do Chocolate, which created this chocolate wonder in Brazil on February 25, 2017. The rabbit took eight days to construct with nine people working. It was almost 15 feet tall, and its total weight was over 9,300 pounds.

The final product was a giant, smiling rabbit with green eyes, buck teeth, and what looked like overalls. When the rabbit was finished, lucky observers got to dismantle it, taking some of the chocolate slabs home and eating parts of the giant chocolate Easter treat onsite. It took only two hours for the crowd to demolish the sculpture. The team said that the tools they used were similar to those used in construction work, such as trowels and hot blowers, and pictures show them working on stacks of brick-sized pieces of chocolate.

Apples seem to be a favorite among those looking to break records, and two records actually involve breaking apples. One is Most Apples Crushed by Hand in One Minute, which Yoshihiro Yuji broke on November 13, 2024, in Saitama, Japan. You can see him on video crushing each apple, and you can tell it wasn't easy; toward the end of the minute, a couple of apples seemed almost impossible to break. Still, he made it, crushing 25 before the time was up.

The other record is Most Apples Crushed With the Bicep in One Minute, and there are both male and female record-holders. The male record-holder is Drew Mitchell of Australia, who broke 14 apples with his bicep in France on March 3, 2016. The female record-holder is Linsey "Mama Lou" Lindberg of the U.S., who broke this record in Italy on July 3, 2014. This isn't Lindberg's only record, by the way. She also holds the record for most telephone directories torn (by a female).

The last record on this list is likely the most painful. Yes, even more than those stinging nettles and that bed of nails. Mike Jack is a Canadian YouTuber known for speed-eating records, and on September 9, 2023, he set the record for scarfing down 100 Carolina Reaper chili peppers in 36 minutes and 38.81 seconds. He also set the record for speed-eating 25 Carolina Reapers in 4 minutes and 36.26 seconds in 2024. You can watch him eat the 100 peppers on TikTok. Notice that he definitely had a physical reaction, so he isn't some superhuman who has no response to capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their burning heat.

The Carolina Reaper was known as the hottest chili pepper in existence until Pepper X was released in 2023. Jack's feat is impressive given that Reapers score an average of 1,641,000 Scoville Heat Units on the Scoville Scale. Again, that's an average; the peppers can be as hot as 2,200,000 SHUs. For comparison, jalapeños range from 2,500 to 8,000 SHUs. Carolina Reapers are so hot that there's a recorded case of just one pepper causing a stroke in an otherwise healthy 15-year-old boy, according to the National Library of Medicine.