How eating records have changed and why you can't attempt to eat biggest meal ever

Eating records have changed a lot over the years.

As more has been learned about the effects of gluttony, the world of record breaking has had to adapt.

These days, we don’t monitor record attempts for how much a person can eat in an unlimited amount of time.

Instead, we set a short time limit (three minutes at the longest) for a person to eat the most of one particular item, or we time how quickly they can eat a certain thing.

For example, you could attempt the most pasta eaten in three minutes, the most sausages eaten in one minute, or the fastest time to eat a burrito.

Those with a penchant for spicy stuff can even go for the fastest time to eat 50 Carolina Reaper chilli peppers – that was the world’s hottest chilli pepper until it was dethroned last year by Pepper X – or attempt the fastest time to drink a bottle of hot sauce.

But there was a time when we monitored a record called largest meal eaten. It is still active today, but it’s not one that you can apply for.

It was featured in an episode of Guinness World Records podcast Behind the Book, when Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday shared the shocking and tragic tale.

It was 8 a.m. on a Sunday in 1983 when a 23-year-old woman arrived at the accident and emergency department of Royal Liverpool Hospital complaining of abdominal pain.

Her belly button had popped out like you’d expect to see during pregnancy, and she was finding it difficult to breathe.

Nurses questioned her and she confessed that between midnight and 4 a.m. she had sat down to a late dinner.

What she ate was what doctors believed at the time to be the biggest meal ever eaten by an individual.

According to correspondence published in the medical journal The Lancet (Volume 325, Issue 8432, 6 April 1985), her meal weighed 19 lb (8.6 kg).

Craig said: “That’s heavier than the heaviest bowling ball you’ll ever find at your local bowling alley.

“Little wonder then that this young woman is now, four hours later, in agony.”

The gigantic meal comprised 1 lb (453 g) of liver, 2 lb (907 g) of kidneys, 0.5 lb (226 g) of steak, two eggs, 1 lb (453 g) of cheese, two large slices of bread, 1 lb (453 g) of mushrooms, 2 lb (907 g) of carrots, one cauliflower, 10 peaches, four pears, two apples, four bananas, 2 lb (907 g) of plums, 2 lb (907 g) of grapes and two glasses of milk. 

An abdominal X-ray confirmed the diagnosis of acute postprandial gastric dilatation.

In other words, her mammoth meal has stretched her stomach to its absolute limits. - Craig

Various efforts were made to save the patient but tragically she died as a direct result of her final meal.

Craig continued: “Gastronomy has been our bread and butter, if you will, here at Guinness World Records ever since the first edition back in 1955.

“But few categories have undergone as much change as our eating records.”

These days, we wouldn’t accept applications for records such as the largest meal eaten, at least not from members of the public.

This is the kind of record that’s researched and submitted by medical experts and one that’s not considered safe for people to attempt themselves.

As well as stories like this from medical history, we’ve reported on the competitive side of eating ever since our first edition.

The book included records from people who had consumed huge amounts of food in one sitting, and even chronicled records for downing astonishing amounts of alcohol.

These records clearly proved popular with readers and, over the years, the list of gastronomic achievements grew. - Craig

By the 1970s, records like this covered half a page of our book.

There was even a record for eating live goldfish (210), but this is certainly not something we would condone or monitor today.

In the 1990s, the editors of Guinness World Records decided to draw a line under uncontrolled gluttony.

However, there had been warnings in the book since 1966, with the first ever one reading: “From a medical point of view, record attempts must be regarded as extremely inadvisable”.

But at the start of the 1990s, all consumption records were taken out of circulation and placed under review.

Craig said: “When gastronomic records were later reintroduced in 1997, the focus shifted from unfettered gluttony to the rate of consumption.

“What mattered more now was how quickly you could eat a small amount of something or how much of something you could eat in a short amount of time.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is how popular these food records are.

Countless people have built careers as speed eaters – like Leah Shutkever and Mike Jack - and you’ll find plenty of social media channels centred around people travelling the world to take on eating challenges.

But even if you see someone scoffing a meal weighing more than 19 lb (8.6 kg), the one eaten by that unidentified woman remains the biggest ever recorded in medical history.

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