Metro.co.uk reports that eighteen year old Kathryn Ratcliffe from Newcastle, UK broke the record for eating grains of rice during the Chopsticks Championship. How does someone win this honor? She ate 96 grains in two minutes - breaking the existing record of 64 grains in three minutes.

Kathryn broke her first world record at the age of 12 and she now holds four records! Her other records are for eating Smarties with chopsticks, eating jelly with chopsticks, and separating jelly beans by color into separate pots with a straw.

I wonder what Kathryn has planned next. More with chopsticks? More with straws? Perhaps she'll retire after her fourth win. I doubt she'll quit now. I see many records in her future.

Pernod Ricard is launching a new champagne at a price that will make Cristal and Dom Perignon look like two-buck Chuck, as $400 per bottle price tags seem small when compared to this one. The wine and spirits group said that it would be launched under their Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque brand and it will be priced at $1,270 (€1,000) per bottle. This makes it the most expensive champagne in the world. Unfortunately, aside from the price tag, the company was fairly quiet about the other details of the release, though chairman Patrick Ricard did say "We won't do many cases and won't be offering it in France."

The group is actively pursuing ways to increase the perception of their brands as very upmarket, so perhaps this will be the first of many releases from the company. Regardless it will certainly set a benchmark in the champagne industry.

At the rate at which new "world's biggest burgers" are cooked up by restaurants all across the world, we should probably give up in trying to say which one is the biggest. After all, it will only be a few weeks before it is replaced with something larger. That being said, there is a new giant burger on the block, this one from the Clinton Station Diner in New Jersey. The Diner was previously known for its 50-pount Mt. Olympus burger, which is nothing compared to the 8th Wonder of the World. The massive cheeseburger weighs 105 pounds and is 28 inches across and 11 1/2 inches tall. After measuring the heavyweight sandwich for the Guinness Book of World Records, it was carved up and passed out to customers - in 7 pound slices.

More photos after the jump.

[via Competitive Eaters]

Lyle's Golden Syrup, manufactured by the British sugar company Tate & Lyle, has just been honored by the Guinness Book of World Records with the title of world's oldest brand. The sweet syrup is a byproduct of sugar refining and was first put into the distinctive green and gold tin in 1885. The packaging and the syrup have remained almost completely unchanged since that time. The product is found in more than 85% of British households and is popular in countries all over the world.

In the US, the syrup is found at some specialty stores, but is not terribly easy to come by. It has the consistency of corn syrup, but a much more unique flavor that carries over into whatever it is used to sweeten. There are any number of recipes that the syrup can be used in, but treacle tart and ANZAC biscuits are two that are well loved world wide.

We already heard about the world's largest pizza party, but this gallery has pictures of some of the biggest pizzas in the world. It's not complete, since we don't know what some of you are doing in your homes when the record keepers aren't there to measure your creations, but it definitely gives you a reference point the next time you walk into a pizzeria that serves unusually large slices.

The world's record for largest pizza belongs to a 122.6-ft. pizza that was made in Norwood, South Africa in 1990. This monster pie used almost 10,000-lbs. of flour, 3,968-lbs. of cheese, 1,984-lbs. of tomato puree and 200-lbs. salt. For perspective, 4 cups of flour is the equivalent of one pound, and that would make plenty of dough for a large pizza. That means that the record setting pizza could have fed a slice or two to at least 40,000 people.

While one would expect that diamonds are a big draw for thieves, wines seem like a much less likely target. Luxist reports that one of the top restaurants in Sweden had its entire collection of French Bordeaux wines stolen - over 600 bottles of wine. The reason that this particular collection is so significant is that it holds the Guinness World Record for the most unique wine collection in the world. It included bottles from the six Grand Cru vineyards: Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Haut Brion, Chateau d'Yquem and Chateau Latour. All totaled, the value of the stolen bottles is around $500,000.

It seems likely that the bottles will be resold gradually over time and because a bottle of Mouton Rothschild is probably more difficult to track than diamonds are, the restaurant may not be able to recover its collection.

I guess I had s'mores on the brain after writing about them yesterday, since I was inspired to look up the record for the world's largest s'more. The Guinness Book of World Records lists a s'more made in 2003 as the largest. It was constructed in California from 20,000 marshmallows, 7,000 Hershey's chocolate bars, and 24,000 graham crackers. All totaled, it weighed about 1,600-lbs.

The Guinness category was retired, however, which means that an even larger s'more made this year went unrecorded!

The current largest s'more measured 1,936-sq feet and was constructed to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Virginia State Parks. It was made with 8,000 Hershey's chocolate bars, 40,000 marshmallows and 55,000 graham crackers - nearly double the size of the previous record holder, though it didn't use quite as much chocolate.

See a close-up of the s'more's construction after the jump.

Australian actor/comedian Paul Fenech (Fat Pizza) recently made a 12,000-mile pizza delivery, from Austraila to New Zealand, via Spain and South Africa. The three-day trek was done to raise money for 13-year-old Niko Apostolakis, a non-hodgkins lymphoma sufferer in Wellington, New Zealand, and to raise awareness for CanTeen, a youth cancer charity group. To make getting through customs easier, the pizza was cheese-free. Apostolakis didn't have to eat the three-day-old pie once it arrived, Stuff reported. Fenech apparently took down a slice upon delivery, however, according to NineMSN. Oddly enough, the previous record was held by another T.V. show, Neighbors, for a London to Australia delivery.

The folks over at Gothamist decided to liveblog the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog contest, which is fortunate for everyone who wasn't able to make it out to Coney Island today to watch in person. They reported that, after a grueling 12 minute battle, Takeru Kobayashi emerged victorious with a new world record of 54 hot dogs! That breaks his previous record of 53 1/2.

If you recall from earlier, this means that Kobayashi ate more than 16,500 calories in that short time period. Is it worth it? Well, not only does the winner get the glory of being the most recognized eater in the world, but he (Kobayashi, in this case) gets to take home the mustard-yellow championship belt for another year.

Update: You can view a videoclip here.

A new competitive eating world record was set over the weekend when eater Joey Chestnut out-ate the competition by eating 49 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes. Sonya Thomas and Pat Bertoletti tied for second place with 37 sandwiches each. All three passed the former record of 36.5 sandwiches.

There is a video available here of the event, which was held at the Arena Football Fan Fest in Las Vegas. It is a fascinating sight - if mildly disgusting - for anyone who has never witnessed a professional eating competition. The crown cheers on the eaters while they battle the sandwiches, which an announcer describes as being glue-like. Sonya, who weighs 105 pounds, really has her technique down to a science and Chestnut, in a post match interview, describes how much concentration is needed to compete, given that your body doesn't really want to eat all that grilled cheese.

Though there has been some debate in the past about who makes the world's biggest burger, the Guinness Book of World's Records officiated at the weigh-in of a 29.5-pound burger at the Foxwoods Resort Casino's Fuddruckers restaurant. They granted the 18.5-in. wide by 8-in. tall burger the title of "world's largest commercially available burger." It costs $250 and must be ordered 48 hours in advance.

There is one burger that is said to be larger: the Mount Olympus burger at the Clinton Station Diner, in New Jersey.  According to the diner, it weighs 50 pounds. A look at what goes into it reveals why it is not classified as the world's largest burger - Guinness officiation or not: it only has 25 pounds of beef in it. Twenty-five pounds of toppings on a bun, even with meat, makes a salad and not a burger. The Fuddruckers burger, by contrast, started with 33 pounds of beef and, while it did cook down to about 25 pounds, there were only 4.5 pounds of toppings on the final product, making it meatier than the Olympus and more title-worthy.

[via Supersized Meals, images Norwich Bulletin]

This week, competitive eater Pat Bertoletti set a new ice cream-eating world record by consuming 1.75 gallons in eight minutes. The ice cream used was vanilla from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory.  Bertoletti, fourth in eater rankings,  also holds the records for key lime pie, chocolate and corned beef and cabbage.

It is possible to image eating almost any food quickly, even if you can't really conceive of doing it yourself. Ice cream, on the other hand, is not an easy food to eat because of the risk of brain freeze, the intense headache that results from consuming cold foods too quickly. Some of the eaters appeared to be affected by the cold, but Bertoletti ate the ice cream as though it were no colder than a pile of warm mashed potatoes. I'm not sure if "impressive" fully describes the performance, but watch the video to see for yourself.

By munching his way through 34 ears of sweet corn in only 12 minutes, Joe LaRue set the world record for corn eating over the weekend at the Sweet Corn Fiesta at the South Florida Fairgrounds. For his efforts, LaRue took home $1,500 grand prize. He and other competitors said that technique and speed were crucial in corn-eating, since the biggest obstacle eaters must overcome is jaw fatigue. LaRue's winning technique involved a side-to-side typewriter eating pattern, wrap around sunglasses to minimize distractions and a Rage Against the Machine CD to get him motivated. The event was officiated by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

[Image of Joe LaRue from IFCE]

There are a lot of college kids who think that they can drink a pint, mug or stein of beer faster than any of their buddies. No doubt that there are some who are quite quick on the draw, but when it comes to Guinness, there can only be one fastest drinker. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest pint of stout was downed in a mere 2.1 seconds by Peter Dowdeswell in London, on April 24, 2001. The stout was Guinness. Mr. Dowdeswell is a competitive eater and avid beer drinker, who began his career after deciding to try to break every beer-drinking record in the 1975 book of world's records. He also drank a yard of ale (2 liters) in 5 seconds.

Who doesn't love a good pub crawl? The camaraderie and the drinking are two selling points that many people are loathe to refuse, though the possibility of breaking a world record should be enough to convince any hesitant participants. The city of Maryborough in Queensland, Australia has just completed the world's largest pub crawl, a feat confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records. About 2,000 of the city's 26,000 residents participated in the crawl, which required that they visit at least 10 pubs in under six hours and down at least one drink in each pub for a stamp on their official card. The drinks did not have to be alcoholic, but it's a safe bet that the majority of the over 19,000 drinks downed were beer or another alcoholic libation. Of all the participants, only 1198 official cards were collected by the city to confirm the record. A city official said that some of the more "confused" participants may have forgotten to turn theirs in. The city will attempt to break their own record when they host another crawl on June 11th, 2006.