Guinness World Records confirmed Monday that a health food supermaket has entered the record books for the largest number of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese wheels cracked open simultaneously.
The Texan Whole Foods Market chain carried out its record bid on Saturday, with cheese departments in its stores across America, Canada and the UK breaking open 270 parmesan wheels.
The supermarket calculated it would take around 30 minutes for all the cheesemongers to open up and portion the 85-pound wheels using the traditional method, which involves five different knives and is approved by Italy's Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium.
One of the supermarket's cheesemongers in New York took just 81 seconds to open his wheel.
Italian artisans still make Parmigiano Reggiano according to an 800-year-old method, ageing each wheel for a year before branding it with a certification mark and leaving it to mature further.
The cheese wheels in Saturday's world record attempt had been aged for 24 months.
Guinness staff in New York and London oversaw the cracking ceremony, and the official record was certified after all the other supermarket branches sent in confirmation of the cheese breaking.
Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium president Giuseppe Alai said he was pleased with the record which ''gave further recognition'' to the cheese.
The consortium has had to become increasingly assertive in defending its product's name from improper use, including in the US.
Five years ago it scored a key legal battle by managing to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.
In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American parmesan denied permission to export worldwide and the US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Codex Alimentarius.
More recently, the European Court of Justice ruled in February that Germany had broken European Union rules by allowing the name 'Parmesan' to be used for a German cheese that mimicked Italy's glory.
Germany had argued that 'parmesan' had become a generic term for grated cheese.
Parmigiano Reggiano has the EU's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.
Authentic Parmigiano is a uniquely hard but crystal-grained, crumbly and tart-sweet cheese which adorns most pasta dishes. It is not cut but wedged open.
