With all the great college football games this past Saturday, it was inevitable someone would offer me a bratwurst. And as fate would have it, I would inevitably write about bratwurst because I once won the “Worst Brat” award in elementary school. Being an expert in Old High German, I knew “bratwurst” derived from “brat,” for “meat without waste, finely chopped” and “wurst,” for “sausage.” To my ears, any meat named from an “Old” language sounds already spoiled. And I’m not sure I want to be eating meat some butcher pulled out of the waste receptacle and finely chopped to hide its true origin on a pigs body.

Besides, the brat I was offered was a large, sweaty, swollen and tightly skinned log of mottled fat and pork, the same way I imagined I’d look if I ever ate one.

So, instead of indulging in the food, I did what any good professor would do: I indulged in the food label.

After “pork,” none of the ingredients–corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, citric acid, propyl gallate–tempted me in the least. Especially not “BHA,” the ingredient allegedly added to “preserve color and flavor,” and which I think stands for “bad hog appendix.”

This particular brand of bratwurst boasted a colorful product label with the slogan “Heaven on a Bun.” Because eating one brat gives you 20 percent of your daily value of cholesterol, 38 percent of your saturated fat and 200 of 270 calories from fat, I can see how after eating a brat you’d be closer to heaven– at least clinically closer. My mind, however, couldn’t help seeing a red figure with horns and a tail thrice pronging a grilled brat with a pitchfork inviting me to someplace other than heaven.

So I gave in and ate one.

As it turns out, a brat is quite tasty and filling, despite the fact it’s not a significant source of vitamins A or C, calcium or dietary fiber. Despite these insufficiencies, you’ll get a little iron, also an essential nutrient, from the rusty outdoor grill.

The package instructions, “cook until golden brown,” are perfect. Not only does the brat emerge hot and juicy at that color, it also evokes the ancient gold myths of King Midas, Phaethon and the Chariot and Jason and the Argonauts– an important humanities boost for any college student, especially one who will inevitably flunk nutrition class.

So, every now and then, it’s healthy to break away from those old college habits– studying day and night, avoiding social events to study, scolding your non-studying friends– to enjoy a little bit of heaven, even if it’s on a bun. Life could be wurst.