The largest commonly eaten nut is the brazil nut. The 4-5cm nuts grow on one of the largest species of rainforest tree, which reaches about 30–45-m tall and 1–2 m in diameter. The nuts are grown in coconut-like shells that weigh approximately 4.5-lb and contain up to two dozen brazil nuts. The coco de mer, the fruit of a palm tree grown in the Seychelles, is usually considered to be the largest nut in the world. Also grown in a coconut-like shell, the mature fruit can reach up to 65-lbs and contains several seeds, which are also the world's largest.

The rest of the world's largest nuts tend to be of the inedible variety. The world's largest pecan, for example, is located in Brunswick, Missouri and is 7-ft. high. x 12-ft. long, and weighs about 12,000-lbs. The world's largest peanut is in Ashburn, Georgia

Incidentally, the world's largest nutcracker is located in Germany. The device stands about 19 ft high and can crack any nut up to the size of a coconut (which is a drupe, not actually a true nut).

A masters student at UC Berkeley, Mike Wooldridge, started thinking about the relatively young "sport" of competitive eating and noticed that there were many records, but no way to compare performance results across food groups. He set out to see if he could normalize, or standardize, the results from all types of eating contests and make it possible to compare the performance of the eaters across different foods.

Mike analyzed 23 records and converted them into a rate of ingestion (ROI), resulting in a kilograms per minute value for every food.

The blue bars are the average ROI of given foods (easier foods have higher bars) and the yellow bars are the eaters' records. The big spikes are some of world champion eater Takeru Kobayashi's records, but you can see that, because the rest of the yellow bars are approximately equal, the eaters mostly perform up to the same standards, despite the food involved in the challenge.

[via Trencherwomen]