Giant Fried Rice Bowl Loses Guinness Bid for Being Wasteful

The city of Yangzhou, China, is experiencing a few bitter disappointment this week after going for a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest bowl of fried rice and losing out after Guinness officials discovered a few of the rice had been wasted.

“We held back on the results because we were reviewing the information submitted by the organizers”, Sharon Yang, marketing director for Guinness China, was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

According to Guinness’ website, the largest serving of fried rice on record weighed 3,150 kilograms and was achieved by the Turkey Culinary Federation in Bolu, Turkey, on Sept 27, 2014.

In an announcement on Monday on its micro blog, Guinness World Records Ltd said the revocation was due to food wastage after the organizer failed to properly dispose of the fried rice as promised.

About 300 people took part in the record attempt on Friday, which involved them producing nearly 4.2 tons of fried rice. “Hereby, we have notified the organizer that the record was revoked”. It said that 150 kilograms (330 lbs) – a small fraction of the entire serving – of “inedible” rice was sent to pig farms but claimed that the rest had been sent to local canteens, without giving further details.

Internet users slammed the event, with local media reports and video footage showing the rice being loaded into trash trucks.

The giant pot of fried rice was cooked to mark the 2500 anniversary of the establishment of Yangzhou City.

Yangzhou’s tourism bureau, which supervised the event, acknowledged Sunday a lack of oversight.

“It is a shame to waste food and give it to pigs”.

In response, the organisers clarified that they had to consider safety and health issues.