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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Neil Shaw

Man eats 88 Jaffa Cakes in three minutes to set new world record

A man scoffed a staggering 88 Jaffa Cakes in three minutes during an eating competition - believed to be a new world record.

Max Stanford, 34, averaged a chocolate-covered treat around every two seconds, and washed them down with six glasses of warm water.

And the dedicated muncher smashed the previous record of 36 Jaffa Cakes in 180 seconds, set in February 2020.

Max, who considers himself a semi-professional competitive eater, said he only did one practice ahead of the mammoth task,

The British Eating League contest was held at the George Pub and Grill in Stockton-on-Tees, Co. Durham, last Saturday.

Max, a charity worker from London, said: "I'm really glad I won but I'm not particularly competitive against others.

"Breaking my own records is really important to me. In my practice I ate 20 in 40 seconds but I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep that up for three minutes.

"I do it as a hobby because I like to give other people something to switch off to.

"I love that everyone watches it and thinks they can do it, and maybe they can, but I have a particular talent for it.

"Plus I train hard. The training is the same time and effort that is required to run a marathon.

"I love that I'm good at it and I can always train to be better."

Max usually eats one huge meal a day, which he makes as healthy and as bulky as possible to increase his stomach capacity.

He then eats the rest of his meals in a 'normal size', he said.

Max also competes in an eating challenge roughly once a week, and posts them on his Youtube channel.

He recently ate over 12lbs of chicken tikka masala and rice, and scoffed 20 chocolate advent calendars in another challenge.

"Away from the challenges I have a really healthy diet," he said. "It's really liberating to be able to eat loads of food.

"It's just really fun and I love seeing other people enjoying my videos. I really want to encourage others to take up competitive eating."

Max claims that the Jaffa Cake event is the only one of its kind where the eating is watched and verified - so counts as an established world record.

And pub owner Craig Harker, 35, who set up the British Eating League and started hosting eating challenges a few years ago, said: "It was unbelievable. Max is amazing.

"He’s fit and charismatic and has turned competitive eating into a sport. It defies the way people think about food and is changing the game of competitive eating in the UK."

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