Drew Manning has been in great shape all his life, playing sports growing up and being passionate about fitness, so after some people told him he didn’t know what it’s like being fat and craving sugary foods, he realized they were right and decided to experience those things first hand.

So the personal trainer came up with a year-long program where he would get fat in the first six months and try to lose weight and get back in shape in the other six. He decided to track his progress on his website fit2fat2fit.com, where he posts photos, videos and updates on his weight and state of mind throughout the whole period. His journey into the world of fast food and soda began on May 7, with an introductory video where he explains why he’s doing this crazy experiment and enjoys his first fatty food – a dozen donuts. At least he tried eating all 12 of them, but after seven, he was ready to throw up.

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Because he doesn’t like the way farm animals are being treated, Jonathan McGowan, an English taxidermist from Bournemouth, Dorset has been eating roadkill instead of supermarket meat for the last 30 years.

44-year-old Jonathan McGowan first tasted roadkill at the age of 14, when he cooked a dead adder. It didn’t taste very good, but it did make him curious about how other dead animals might taste like. ‘From a young age I was always interested in natural history and being brought up amongst the farming, hunting and shooting communities of the Dorset countryside meant I was right in the middle of everything. Everywhere I looked there were dead animals; fish that had been caught, pheasants that had been shot and animals that had been run over in the road so naturally I became drawn to nature and how it worked.” He remembers he used to cut up dead animals to see their insides and all he could see was fresh organic meat better than what he saw in any meat shops. That’s why he didn’t see any problem with cooking and eating it. His parents knew he was bringing animals home to stuff, but he didn’t tell them he sometimes ate them too, because he knew they wouldn’t approve.

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Chef Marc Guibert at Lindeth Howe Country House Hotel in Windermere, Cumbria has created the world’s most expensive dessert– a pudding worth an astonishing $34,000.

I have a sweet tooth and I rarely find the power to resist a good dessert, but I’m really not the kind of guy who splurges thousands of dollars on a few bites. But as history has taught us, there are people out there willing to do just that, and chef Marc Guibert is catering to their needs with his extravagant chocolate pudding decorated with gold leaf and diamonds, worth over $34,000. Layered with champagne jelly and biscuit joconde, the expensive pudding is covered with dark chocolate, glazed with edible gold leaf and topped with a 2-carat diamond.

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If you’re sick of picking splinters from between your teeth after chewing dozens of pencils, you’re going to love Cecilia Felli’s newest invention – a licorice pencil called Matitizia.

Inspired by people’s habit of chewing on wooden pencils, Italian designer Cecilia Felli has created a truly revolutionary tool that’s not designed to stop them from munching, just improve the experience. Either because they’re stressed or simply bored, people love to chew on their pencils. They don’t taste particularly good and there’s a risk of lead poisoning, but people don’t seem to mind much, but Cecilia Felli thought she could help by allowing people to bite on their pencils without worrying about the consequences. The Matitizia is a pencil made of delicious licorice with the lead-containing core going only half way up, so the chewer doesn’t have to worry about his health. Whether you’re stressed by your job, crave a cigarette one day after quitting (again), or feel incredibly bored, Matitizia will leave a nice taste in your mouth.

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Eating hot curry is definitely not as fun as watching other people eat it, and two eating contest participants found that out the hard way after they were rushed to the hospital trying to eat as much Killer Kismot curry as possible.

The Kismot Restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland organizes its world’s hottest chilli eating contest every year, daring competitors to down as much  as they can of the establishment’s signature Killer Kismot curry. The fund raising event gathered twenty brave souls ready to risk their throats in order to raise money for charity, but only 10 of them ended up tasting the mouth-burning delicacy. 21-year-old Curie Kim, who’s name is ironically pronounced “curry”, had to be taken to the hospital twice in just a few hours, after suffering severe stomach pains, vomiting and indigestion. She only had a few tablespoons of curry but said they caused her pain like she never endured before. On the bright side, the young student finished second and took comfort in the fact that at least she suffered for a good cause.

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Have you ever wondered what a giant Toffifee candy would look like? Well, now you don’t have to, because sweet-loving Laura Parry and her brother David have already made one, as well as several other giant versions of popular English sweets.

23-year-old Laura and her brother David, 20, spend one day each week cooped up in the kitchen creating giant calorie bombs shaped like popular English snacks. The two university students came up with the idea on a day off from their summer jobs say neither of them are culinary geniuses, but they just thought they’d give it a go. And considering so far they’ve created impressive super-sized versions of treats like the Bourbon biscuit, Cadbury Fudge, Angel Slice and Jammy Dodger, I’d say their idea was brilliant. The Toffifee looks especially tasty to me, which had to cut with a saw to get a cross-section photo.

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A counter-top restaurant in Lima, Peru has been selling fresh frog juice for the last 15 years, and some locals drink it every day because they say it gives them strength.

There’s nothing like a glass of fresh juice in the morning, right? Peruvian restaurant owner Carmen Gonzales would agree with this 100%, only she has a different kind of juice in mind – frog juice, For the last 15 years she and various other juice stand owners have been serving her Jugo de Rana to locals and tourists brave enough to try it, and business is better than ever. She sells about 80 frog-based drinks every day, and some of her clients have them as breakfast drinks, early in the morning, because it gives them energy for the entire day.

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A restaurant in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture has become famous for serving arguably the world’s largest sushi dishes, up to 20 cm in diameter and nearly 6-kg-heavy.

The Umewaka Restaurant in Anjo City, Japan is unlike any other sushi restaurant in the world. Here the world-renown Japanese delicacy doesn’t come in bite-size servings, unless your name is Francisco Domingo Joaquim and you have the world’s largest mouth. At Umewaka, everything from the futomaki roll to the nigri zushi comes in super-sized servings no one man could hope to finish in one sitting.

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Chicago-based company World’s Finest Chocolate has set a new record for the world’s largest chocolate bar, with a delicious treat weighing a whopping 5.5 tonnes.

In a bid to topple the previous record set in September 2010, by the Armenians at The Grand Chocolate factory, workers mixed thousands of pounds of ingredients to create a calorie bomb no chocoholic could hope to finish. They used 5,500 pounds of sugar, 2,000 pounds of powder milk, 1,700 pounds of cocoa butter, 1,400 pounds of chocolate liquor and 1,200 pounds of almonds, and managed to topple the old record by over a tonne. The 12,000-pound heavy, 21-meters-long and three-feet-high chocolate bar was unveiled inside the company’s factory and simply left attending children speechless and drooling.

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Steven Magee, a 29-year-old hungry demolition man has become the first person to actually finish the giant breakfast plate offered by the Hungry Horse cafe, in Corby, England.

No matter how much you love English breakfasts, The Big One at Hungry Horse cafe is hard to swallow. But, where sixty other people before him failed, Steven Magee, a young Scott who says he usually only has cereal for breakfast, managed to become the first person to go through the whole thing. He needed 1 hour and 20 minutes, and six cups of tea to down three sausages, three burgers, three fried eggs, three bacon rashers, three black pudding slices, three square sausage slices and triple servings of beans and mushrooms. That sounds like enough, but he also had to go through triple helpings of potato waffles, potato scones, hash browns, fried bread portions and three rounds of bread and butter and toast.

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Now here’s something you don’t see every day – a skilled Taiwanese chef uses leftover lobster shells to create intriguing miniature motorcycles.

We’ve seen amazing miniature motorcycles made from computer parts, used wristwatches, and wood, but the ones crafted by chef Huang Mingbo are definitely something you don’t see everyday. Apparently he’s not a fan of throwing away lobster shells after preparing a delicious dinner, so he came up with an ingenious way of repurposing them. The food carving expert showcased his lobster shell motorcycles during a cooking art seminar in Fuzhou, southeast China, leaving attendants baffled.

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A lot of people have been saying McDonald’s makes fake burgers, but the world’s biggest Big Mac is so fake it’s not even edible.

I know one guy who would love to sink his teeth into this fast-food monument, but sadly it’s just for decoration. The world’s biggest Big Mac was unveiled back in 2008, at the burger’s birthplace – a McDonald’s restaurant in Huntington, Pennsylvania, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. It stands 14-feet-tall and is just one of the McDonald’s exhibits hosted by the restaurant\museum.

Created over 40 years ago, the Big Mac is the world’s most popular sandwich. It was created by Jim Delligatti, a McDonald’s franchise owner from Uniontown, and following its immediate success, it was added to McDonald’s menus nationwide. Billions of Big Macs are sold all over the world every year, with 550 million sold in the US alone. Weighing nearly half a pound, with 540 calories and 29 grams of fat, the Big Mac isn’t exactly a nutritionist favorite, but almost all of them eating one every once in a while is not a big problem, as long as it doesn’t become an everyday habit.

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Okistugu Kado, a sushi bar owner from Osaka, Japan, creates detailed vegetable sculptures, inspired by movies like Star Wars.

Okitsugu, Oki to his friends, decided to combine his passion for cooking with a talent for carving and the result is nothing less than impressive. The talented chef spends countless hours carving all kinds of fruits and vegetables and putting them together with bamboo skewers and toothpicks to create popular Star-Wars characters. Why Star Wars? Well, he admits he’s always been a big fan of the franchise and he’s even part of a Japanese group that calls itself the Jedi Order.

39-year-old Oki has been carving vegetables for the last 15 years, and he has a background in ice-sculpting, as well. So far he’s created dozens of vegetable sculptures, and even though some take him over 10 hours to complete, he claims that doesn’t bother him because when he’s carving he forgets about time. Darth Vader, Yoda, R2D2 are just some of the famous Star Wars heroes he’s carved and served to his guests, over the years. If you fancy a taste of Star Wars veggies, head over to Okitsugu Kado’s Minayoshy restaurant, in Osaka. In the meantime check out more of his work here.

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They might look good enough to eat, but Jasmin Schuller’s desserts aren’t at all what they seem. The artist made them using weird ingredients like meat scraps, blood and grease.

Austrian artist and photographer Jasmin Schuller proves you don’t unnecessarily need image processing software like Photoshop to put consumer perception to the test. For her Sweat Meat series of so-called desserts, all it took was outstanding craftsmanship and attention to detail.  She used plenty of meat scraps, two liters of blood, a bucket of animals grease and five kilos of raw meat, and processed them all into mouth-watering treats. For example, that ice-cream sundae is made from various minced meats, covered in “delicious” grease cream, and topped with a cherry carved from a pig’s heart. The cherry syrup is actually blood.

Although only cannibals would find Jasmin’s Sweat Meat truly delicious, the photos she took look so delicious I bet they’d even tempt vegetarians.

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I thought making ice-cream was pretty easy, but it seems that if you really want to get it right you have to take courses at the Gelato University, in Bologna, Italy.

Ice-cream making was one of the last thing I would have imagined required attending a university, but in reality thousands of students from all over the world study the art of making quality ice-cream at the Carpigiani Gelato University, in Bologna., every year. Gelato lovers, and entrepreneurs who want to learn the secrets of making great ice-cream and take it back to their homelands pay around €800 ($1,138) for a week of courses and accommodation at a nearby hotel. They attend technical lectures on traditional gelato-making techniques by veteran ice-cream makers, and take part in practical courses where they learn to use the world famous Carpigiani gelato machines.

Believe it or not, the Carpigiani Gelato University has been around for a long time, and as more people around the globe fall in love with the Italian gelato, it gets more students with each passing year. In 2011, the number of students has gone from 9,000 to 12,000 and for the first time in history, the number of foreign tourists has surpassed that of Italians.

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