It is extremely unlikely that you could out-eat world champion competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi, but what if you had three friends on your team? As it turns out, 4:1 are not good enough odds to take on the champ. In the World Lobster Roll Eating Challenge in Boston, a team of four young Massachusetts residents (about 19 years old or so) tried, collectively, to eat more than Kobayashi. Even with $10,000 prize money as an incentive, the four could only put away 25 rolls to Kobayashi's 41.Kobayashi, who has been called the Lance Armstrong of the competitive eating world, took home the prize money instead of the local team.

As with many things that Kobayashi eats, this number is the new world record for lobster-roll eating. He only tasted his first lobster roll the night before the competition and said that he thought he could beat his record in the future, now that he was more familiar with the food.

Already the master of hot dog eating, competitive eating superstar Takeru Kobayashi set a new world record with a different kind of sausage: bratwurst. He ate 58 bratwursts in 10 minutes, smashing the previous record of only 34 1/2 brats. He said that he really liked the brats, but they were a little harder to eat than hot dogs are, most likely this is because the dogs are eaten with buns, while the brats involve more chewing. Joey Chestnut, considered to be one of the up and coming stars of the sport, came in second with only 45 brats. The IFCOE has a breakdown of the prize money from the contest, revealing that Kobayashi took home $8,000 for his work.

And for anyone who's counting, the 160-lb Kobayashi ingested 16,820 calories, 1,450 grams of fat, along with 19 days' worth of the recommended (minimum) daily amount of sodium.

The Nathan's Famous annual hot dog eating competition is today at Coney Island, where all qualifying competitive eaters will stuff-their-faces off in pursuit of the yellow prize belt, a new world record and the chance to beat the number one ranked eater in the world, Takeru Kobayashi. Kobayashi's record stands at 53.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Nutritionally speaking, that comes out to be a week's worth of calories in those few minutes. Mark, who runs CalorieLab, sent me this intriguing nutritional label that breaks down exactly what the eaters will be trying to consume to break that record: 16,532 calories; 1,077 grams of fat (415g saturated); 1,605mg cholesterol and 36,596mg sodium. On the plus side, the eaters will be getting a fair amount of fiber, calcium and iron in those few minutes.

Check out the whole piece, with further details, at CalorieLab news.

As disturbed as I am at the thought of eating that much food in one sitting, I'm still curious to see who wins. Very curious. If I had to guess, I think that it will be Kobayashi again. I'm still pulling for the up-and-coming Joey Chestnut, whose participation will make for a very interesting match because he managed to set a new American record by eating 50 hot dogs in his qualifier.

Anyone else care to hazard any guesses about the winner?