One Johnsonville Bratwurst weighs about 85 grams (3-oz. or 0.2-lbs.). We already know that Takeru Kobayashi set a new world record by eating 58 brats, sans buns, last weekend, but how does this compare to what a real person - i.e. a non-competitive eater - can eat? The St. Paul Pioneer wondered the same thing. Instead of taking the boring route and surveying people around the office, they tracked down some big eaters and asked the Minnesota Vikings' offensive line how much they thought they could eat. Even with an average weight of 245.8-lbs, compared to Kobayashi's 160-lbs., and the appetites to match the amount of energy they use on the field, most of the players said that they could eat fewer than a half-dozen of the sausages. The tackle, Mike Rosenthal, joked that he could eat 60, but every player said that there was no way they could do it in that time limit of 10 minutes.

Say what you will about competitive eating as a sport, but it clearly takes a specific set of skills to do it.

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.