Food That Is Bigger Than Food

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Welcome back to our food column, Hot Links, in which Dan Meyer explores the neglected culinary stars of YouTube. Each week, Dan presents a selection of videos highlighting specific food themes, from amateur cooking and local restaurant commercials to elderly drinking buddies and kitchen disasters, all of it culled from the infinite supply of odd YouTube wonders. We encourage you to fall into this culinary video K-hole and include your own comments and contributions below.

Any time food gets too big to eat, it becomes entertaining. One curiosity for me is looking at abnormally large fruits, vegetables, or animals. When you start to explore this universe, you'll find that it's a place filled with record-breaking pizzas, lasagnas, burgers, and other foods that would taste better if they were proportionally sized to your mouth. The process of making and growing these overweight items is a waste of time, a waste of food, and a waste of everything but your attention. But there's an endless supply of videos on this theme, and this small selection is an attempt at singling out the pointlessness of it all. Enjoy.

Picking the World's Largest Watermelon

It's been almost three years since I found this video, and it's still one of my absolute favorites on YouTube. It's the kind of thing I look for all the time and almost never find. If you really want to be transported to a hot summer day in Hope, Arkansas, you should watch this at home, on the big screen, with the volume turned all the way up. The best moment comes when they drop the first watermelon they try to pick and it cracks wide open—without hesitation, everyone in the picking party begins feasting on the wreckage. Stay tuned until the end, when they drive the watermelon to some nondescript loading dock and the entire town arrives to weigh the beast.

World's Largest Fried Egg!

I don't think that I have to convince anyone that this video is disgusting. Before watching this, I didn't think that you were supposed to fry an ostrich egg, but as soon as she actually started frying it, I knew for a fucking fact that you're not supposed to. Even though I am fighting the urge to throw up, I appreciate the effort behind someone thinking, Oh, that's something you can do, and just doing it.

Iowa State Fair 2102: Biggest Boar

These things get so big that some of them can't walk. Watch as they explain that making these gigantic beasts is a hobby with a lot of luck involved. Almost every moment of this video is worth screen-grabbing, but the shots of the boar with green mulch all over its nose and the beauty pageant winner posing behind him are incredible.

World's Biggest Pineapple

I don't know what I'm looking at here, but if that's a pineapple, call me Miss Chiquita.

World's Largest Cheesecake Unveiled—Watertown Daily Times

I love cheesecake. I also love small-town bullshit. This video is an auto-win that combines both hobbies. This cheesecake is a contender for the Guinness Book of World Records, but in this video, they never show it firming up. It's a bit sad that they had spent nine years planning this—it actually looks like the world's densest swimming pool, with a cream cheese logo smeared on top. You can never go wrong with interviews conducted in extremely windy conditions. Thanks, Watertown Daily Times.

Largest Guacamole Serving, a Guinness World Record

One of the secrets to YouTube bliss is typing in anything that comes to mind, and finding a result that almost perfectly matches what's in your head. I didn't realize I would witness a wonderful homemade documentary of a great event. The editing is nice and the camera work is just what you'd expect, but it tells the story. The music is great, and it makes me very hungry. All around, this is an amazing deal.