On Wednesday 1,500 cooks in Iran unveiled an attempt to smash Italy's Guinness Record for the world's largest ostrich sandwich. The event took place in Tehran's Mellet Park. At 4,920 feet, the humongous hero, which contained 1,543 pounds each of ostrich and chicken meat, easily beats the Italian record of 4,521 feet, set last May.

There's only one problem though. The sandwich was devoured in minutes by a hungry crowd before Guinness officials had a chance to measure it. The organizers are hoping that Guinness will accept video footage to authenticate the record.

It's a shame that something which took two days to prepare was gobbled up in mere minutes. The hero contained a mixture of ostrich and chicken meat with mustard and spices. The gigantic sandwich made from gigantic flightless birds was the brainchild of Tehran's city council along and a group of ostrich farmers. Ostrich meat is renowned for its flavor and is high in protein and low in cholesterol. Iran is the world's third-largest ostrich breeder behind South Africa and China.

The Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser is so big that it looks like it might eat Brad Sciullo. Nonetheless the 21-year-old chef from Uniontown, Pa., took down the 15-pound burger along with 5 pounds of toppings in four hours and 39 minutes. For his efforts the 5-foot-11, 180-pound received $400, three T-shirts, a certificate and what the owner of Denny's Beer Barrel Pub calls "a burger hangover."

Sciullo is the first person to ever successfully eat this outlandishly huge burger within the 5-hour time limit. The colossal cheeseburger was dressed with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish. Four hours and 39 minutes is a glacial pace compared with the people on the International Federation of Competitive Eaters circuit. The IFOCE is all about speed.

I'm guessing that Sciullo might spend a good 4 hours in the bathroom after eating that much ground beef. At least the chef doesn't have to face any burgers when he returns to work. He works at an Italian restaurant called Pasta Lorenzo's in Uniontown.

I'm a huge fan of Korean food. It's spicy and so full of fresh, vibrant ingredients that I always feel superhealthy after eating it. So when I heard that a gigantic bowl of bibimbap would be served on the stretch of New York City's West 32 Street better known as Korea Way last Sunday I dropped everything and hopped on the subway. For those unfamiliar with Korean cuisine, bibimbap is a dish consisting of rice mixed with a wide array of ingredients. There's usually plenty of veggies, a bit of meat and there's always gojujang, a fiery chili pepper paste. The version that was served up to a hungry horde that day is known as Jeonju bibimbap. Before mixing the ingredients were laid out in a stunning visual display that used five colors (green, white, red, black and yellow) and resembled the Korean flag. The 507-pound bowl of bibimbap contained 19 ingredients and took 27 people 43 hours to prepare.

Conventional wisdom states that a nuclear apocalypse would leave two things on the planet Earth: cockroaches and Twinkies. To this equation, however, I feel obliged to add a third item: McDonald's hamburgers. As any fan of the double arches can attest, McDonald's burgers have a tendency to hover in the stomach, undigested, for a disturbingly long period of time. That, however, hardly qualifies them for Twinkie and cockroach status. After all, between Twinkies' incredible slate of preservatives and the cockroach's ingenious design, we're probably talking about the most impressive preservation technology imaginable. How could the humble McDonald's hamburger possibly compete?

Consider this: Karen Hanrahan, an Illinois educator and nutritional consultant, has a twelve-year old McDonald's hamburger that has yet to decay. After she purchased the burger in 1996, Ms. Hanrahan removed the meat from the bun and stored both parts in a cupboard in her house, occasionally taking them out to show to her various classes. While the bun has apparently become hard, it has not developed mold, nor has it been attacked by flies, ants, or other vermin. Meanwhile, the meat is shriveled but still recognizable.

There is some question about whether the burger's impressive longevity is due to preservatives, poisons, or merely McDonalds' state-of-the-art cleaning program, which keeps bacteria out of the restaurants. Regardless, I'd argue that Ms. Hanrahan has made it pretty clear that McDonalds' burgers are likely to last for the duration!

That's one tall glass of sparkling wine. Technically it's a Spumante glass, and it's the world's largest as recently certified by Guinness. The gargantuan glass was unveiled a few days ago in the city of Spoleto at a celebration of wine known as White Night.

It took 11 magnums (or a little more than 6 gallons) of Spumante to fill up the monster glass, which is 6.5 feet tall and 1.4 feet wide. Naturally they used Spumante Asti DOGG. I sure could of used 6 gallons of refreshing sparkling wine during the heat wave that engulfed New York City earlier this week.

Dolcevita posted a video of the authentication ceremony by a Guinness judge who flew in from London. It's 10 minutes long and entirely in Italian, so I chose not to post it here. It is kind of cool to watch them measuring the glass with stoic seriousness and then fiIling it. I speak fairly good Italian, but the only words I picked out were the emcee commanding silencio to the hordes of Italians cheering on a gigantic wine glass. Only in Italy.

[via Neatorama]

I'm the first person to admit that my sports knowledge is infinitely less than my food knowledge. Hell, I didn't even know that Terrell Owens was a football player much less a Dallas Cowboy, until I read an article that said he received his signing bonus in the form of a giant tub of popcorn. The mammoth container took two people to carry.

If you're reading this and saying it can't possibly be true, you're right. T.O.'s actual signing bonus is a whopping $12.9 million. MJD the sports blogger who wrote the piece envisions a hilarious alternate scenario in which T.O. would be paid in $12.9 million worth of Dale and Thomas Popcorn. That works out to 1,003,331 million gallons of popcorn.

As I said, I'm no sports fan. I think all sport stars should get there actual salaries - not just bonuses - in popcorn, or better yet, peanuts.

Here in the States, we're familiar with all manner of nutraceutical snacks like fiber cookies and sweet chewable calcium supplements. These items are often marketed to women with nary a trace of sexism. Sadly, that's not the case for these Japanese cookies I just encountered.

The makers of F-Cup Cookies claim women can increase their breast size by eating two of these cookies a day. Each biscuit is said to contain 50mg of a breast-enhancing herb. No indication has been given as to how many days it takes to eat your way to an F cup or what size your butt will grow to as you snack your way to a bigger bosom. Obviously, the very idea of breast-enhancing cookies is ridiculous. Surely everyone knows F-Cup Cookie is the name of a famous Japanese porn star.

[via: Gizmodo]

Here at Slashfood burgers have been on our foodar since May. Heck, now that we're into summer they're on everybody's mind, including the good citizens of Akron, Ohio, who hosted the National Hamburger Festival this past weekend.

The hefty hamburger above was cooked up this weekend, but not in Akron. Weighing in at 10 pounds, Big Bad Bubba's Double Wide hails from Huntington, W. Va. Specifically Hillbilly Hotdogs, which last year created a 5-pound burger known as, you guessed it, Big Bad Bubba's Single Wide.

This weekend HH added the BBDW to its menu. This massive sandwich may sport a 6.5-pound patty, but it's still less than one-sixth the weight of the largest burger I've ever heard of. Either way, I'd love to see Kobayashi take one down, if only so he could declare himself a big bad bubba, even if he is only half-wide.

Whoever did up this car clearly has an almost pathological obsession with McDonald's and far too much time on their hands. I'd love to know whether the interior has a yellow roof and red velvet seats. Or a shake machine, for that matter. Mickey D.'s should cut this dude a check, since he's done such a fine job of showcasing their brand in such a bizarre fashion. There's even a Super Size Me bumper sticker. I wonder if the horn plays the entire "I'm lovin; it" jingle or just the "da da da da da"?
[via SuperSized Meals]

The other day I posted about the Rouge Burger and said that some may folks may feel that it stretches the very definition of the word hamburger. Today's Burger of the Day is a homegrown creation that shatters that definition. Mega Hamburger One comes to us from a crazed fellow named Marshall Astor. Apparently this badass burger is something he whipped up for hamburger night about five months ago. As he puts it, "things kind of got out of hand." Indeed they did.

Excluding bun and beef, Astor's burger has nine other ingredients. As you may be able to see from the photo, these include a fried egg, avocados and caramelized onions. What you may not be able to discern is the seared pineapple layer, just above the tomatoes. Chef Astor has been kind enough to provide witty and informative mouseover notes for each layer. He also lays out an attack plan for eating it. Squeeze it down to mouth size and hold on for dear life until it's all but gone, unless you want it all over the front of your shirt.

A team of Mexican bakers made a massive, sweet gesture toward madres and abuelitas across that country last Thursday. But the only thing sweet about the 2.2 metric ton celebration of Mother's Day is the fact that it was a cake. The gigantic dessert was made entirely with zero-calorie sweetener rather than sugar.

The heart-shaped cake was 16-feet wide and fed about 150 mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. And just how much artificial sweetener does it take to make an enormous blue-and-yellow cake? A tad over 200 pounds. Of course you'll also need 23 bakers, 881 pounds of eggs, 639 pounds of whipping cream and a really big oven, among other things. The folks behind the supersized sugar-free cake want to promote artificial sweeteners in Mexico, where obesity is increasingly widespread and some 7 million people suffer from diabetes.

I am by by no means a "morning person." Like many a sleepyhead, I often require a steaming cup of coffee to get my engine firing on all cylinders. Sometimes I overdo it, either due to quantity or strength. On those occasions, I wind up with a case of the java jitters by late morning. Which brings me to the subject of this post: Panama's leading coffee producer just brewed up what it hopes is the world's biggest cup of coffee. I assume the guys standing around the rim of the massive mug are wearing masks so that they don't die of overexposure to caffeine.

Once the folks at Cafe Duran stop shaking and sweating, they'll submit their results to Guinness for authentication. The company brewed up 750 gallons of coffee, placing it above the previous record of 650 gallons. As of this writing there's been no word of what kind of cup holder has been designed for the megamug.

If a group of Amish in Ohio have their way, Las Vegas may no longer hold the record for the world's largest buffet.

This past Saturday nearly 600 dishes were served up at the Amish Flea Market in Holmes County. More than 2,000 tickets to the gigantic feed were sold. Talk about your chow lines!

The bill of fare included Hungarian sauerkraut soup, corn casserole and garlic mashed potatoes. By noon 300 dishes had hit the tables; the number to beat was 510. It will be some time before the folks in Holmes County hear back from the powers that be at Guinness. So far there's been no word on how many pounds of scrapple and shoofly pie were dished out.