Big food: record breakers

Lebanese chefs celebrate victory over Israel on Saturday in the form of the largest bowl of hummus ever made. Weighing more than 10 tonnes it easily puts their rivals' heftiest effort, a mere 4 tonnes, in the shade. Chickpeas in our time? We can only hope
Photograph: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

The ongoing 'hummus wars' aren't just limited to hummus, either. Here Lebanese chefs are stirring up a world-beating three and a half tonne tabbouleh and yet more trouble with their Israeli neighbours
Photograph: Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty Images

Simultaneous record breaking here as the Guinness book's entries for the world's largest bowl of spaghetti and most poorly attended record attempt are smashed in Garden Grove, California back in March. Even the promise of 'free spaghetti' displayed in the banner doesn't seem to have helped overall levels of enthusiasm, possibly because the tomato sauce (let's hope) and giant fork makes it look like the scene of a gangland burial
Photograph: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features

A 32.5 foot long dosa and an Indian dressed as a cowboy at Sankalp in Ahmedabad on 19 August 2009. You couldn't make it up
Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images

Ooh dear, a more than slightly quease-making 590lb hamburger in Toronto earlier this month. Absolutely guaranteed to be burnt to a crisp on the outside yet still bacteriologicially thriving in the middle (and hopefully annoy the Americans into the bargain)
Photograph: Patrick Dell/AP

A clown in front of a 46m long torta at the annual Torta Festival in Mexico City, in July last year. Not sure which is more sinister, to tell the truth
Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

Valencia is home to the world's largest edible recreation of primordial ooze - the man with the stick has been posted to prevent the escape of any newly-evolved life forms. Actually, on second thoughts it could just be a giant paella
Photograph: Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images

Worryingly, the original caption for this pic reads: "An attempt at the world's longest sausage wound into a large coil prior to its consumation." Yikes. Apparantly "organizers of the attempt wish to enter their 530 metre-long sausage in the Guinness book of records [no sniggering at the back], beating the previous record of 392 metres held by Romania"
Photograph: Hrvoje Polan/AFP/Getty Images

A giant pizza, measuring more than 5m in diameter and weighing 124kg in Naples, September 27 2004. Thankfully there doesn't appear to be any overt nationalism associated with this effort, it's just a big pizza
Photograph: AP

Another big dish without any obvious political undertones, but why anyone would want to make the world's largest impepata di cozze isn't immediately apparent. What are the brains behind this marvel trying to say - mussel beach?
Photograph: EPS/Rex Features

Costas Dasios, a restaurant owner in the western Greek port of Patras made the world's largest kebab, weighing in at 1.7 tonnes. Please god, let's hope this isn't the opening salvo of renewed good natured food-based hostilities between Greece and Turkey
Photograph: Dimitris Dimitriou/AFP/Getty

The preparation of a 1,500m ostrich meat sandwich in Tehran which failed to secure an official world record because people started tucking in before it had been verified
Photograph: Hasan Sarbakhshian/AP