Eating M&M's With Chopsticks Is One Of The Strangest Competitive Eating Challenges

Could you eat a bag of M&M's? Most people do it with no problem. Now, could you eat them using only chopsticks? Now that's probably easier said than done. While eating M&M's with chopsticks may sound like an incredibly bizarre request you'd hear from cheesy game shows, you can get your name in the record books if you manage to do it fast enough — and wear a particular piece of attire while doing so.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Malaysian citizen Avery Chin currently holds the record for consuming the most M&M's candies using chopsticks in under one minute. Chin consumed 25 pieces of the bite-sized candy using only chopsticks on November 9, 2022, while celebrating Guinness World Records Day. He also did it blindfolded, relying solely on muscle memory and coordination to complete an already daunting challenge. Chin knows his way around unorthodox records, having also achieved "most magic tricks performed in one minute," "most magic tricks performed blindfolded in one minute," and "most costume changes illusions in one minute."

Although Chin is the current world record holder for this particular challenge, another person shares a very similar title. In 2011, a woman from the United Kingdom managed to set her own record — and on TV, no less! 

Kathryn Ratcliffe of the United Kingdom set her record for eating the most chocolate candies using chopsticks in 2011. As Guinness World Records explains, Ratcliffe first entered the history books after consuming an incredible 65 pieces of M&M's candies in one minute using only chopsticks (also referred to as smarties candies in some countries). Ratcliffe achieved this record on the CCTV Guinness World Records Special recorded in Beijing on August 18, 2011 — a decade earlier than Avery Chen, though she did so without a blindfold. 

But Ratcliffe wasn't done demonstrating her proficiency with chopsticks. Only two years later, in 2013, she set another record by eating a whopping 175 pieces of the candies, this time in the U.K. Here, Ratcliffe had three minutes, presumably because it would have been nearly impossible to eat that much candy in one minute.

Although there are a surprisingly high number of records for eating M&M's using only chopsticks, these bite-sized chocolate candies aren't exactly new when it comes to world records. Many people have set or broken world records by fiddling with M&M's candies in a variety of different ways.

If you love M&M's and dream of breaking a world record but can't manage chopsticks, don't worry. There are still plenty of ways you can get into the record books using these multi-colored chocolate candies. If you're particularly skilled at engineering and stacking, you can be like Ibrahim Sadeq and achieve the record for the tallest stack of M&M's. Guinness tells us that on April 7, 2022, Sadeq set a world record by perfectly stacking seven M&M's on top of each other.

If you don't think your stacking skills are up to par, you can try your hand at making art with them. In 2017, Mars, Inc. actually broke the record for largest M&M's mosaic as part of a marketing stunt in Bulgaria (via Guinness). Using a combined 291,490 candies, the mosaic is a picture-perfect recreation of the M&M's logo using a palette of red, brown, white, yellow, and green candies. If you find yourself skilled in sorting, you can take a lesson from Oscar Lynagh of Australia, who sorted 500 grams of peanut M&M's in only one minute and 22 seconds. 

Whether you're stacking, sorting, or eating them with chopsticks, there's a lot you can do with M&M's in the world of records. But there's also no shame in simply enjoying them by the handful, something anyone can very easily do.