SIZE DOES COUNT

Plans to make a 750-metre-long sandwich along a roadside in the West Bank town of Jenin were stopped by Palestinian Authority health officials this week. They judged that 180 kilos of meat, as well as vast quantities of vegetables, might rot in the sun. The organisers say they will set another date to make an attempt on the record - this time in the shade.

For some reason or other, August seems to be a popular month for trying to break the ‘longest sandwich’ record. Just a year ago, the 700 or so villagers of Kfar Qatra, a village 25 kilometres southeast of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, used 3,500 loaves of the local type of bread, 140 kilos of labneh (a Lebanese yoghurt), 21,000 olives, and 280 kilos of tomatoes and cucumbers to make a giant sandwich that measured 720-metres long.

The Kfar Qatr sandwich, which was cut into 14,260 pieces, was an effort to beat the Guinness Book of Records entry for the ‘longest sandwich’ set up five days before the Lebanese big bake by Pietro Catucci and Antonio Latte in the Italian town of Mottola.

The Italian job, which measured 634.50 metres and included 920 kilos of flour, 512 litres of water and 25 kilos of salt, was filled with 547 kilos of salami and mortadella and decorated on top with mayonnaise and tuna: it was eaten by 19,000 people in aid of charity.

The recent Palestinian record attempt was evidently more political than charitable. "Jenin is well known for fighting the Israeli occupation, and we wanted to give a civilised view of the city," said the sandwich project's manager.

Will the Israelis hit back with a ‘biggest bagel’ attempt? If so they will have to beat the record set up in July 1988, when Lender's Bagels of Mattoon, Illinois, made a blueberry bagel that was 34.9 centimetre high, had a diameter of 149.86 centimetres, and weighed a record 323.86 kilos.