Don't ask Americans to give up hot dogs

My grandmother used to tell me that hot dogs were made from whatever fell on the floor at the meat processing plant. For some reason, that intrigued rather than revolted me.

How could the wiener makers take those scraps and fashion them into such a beautifully streamlined, tasty package? It truly was a miracle.

As U.S. government standards attest, my grandmother's version of how hot dogs come about wasn't far from the truth. No, they aren't made from discarded scraps or from eyeballs, hooves, ears and other shunned pieces of the pig. But the FDA does allow hot dogs to contain pig snouts and stomachs, cow lips and livers, goat gullets and lamb spleens.

The government encourages manufacturers to list these parts on the label, but I have never seen a package of franks that tells me I'm eating goat gullet. I would pay extra, however, for hot dogs that contain pork belly, which, after all, is where bacon comes from.

But trying to disassemble a hot dog into its various components is like saying a beautiful song is just a bunch of notes strung together. A hot dog, by its nature, is an aggregation of humble elements whose sum is much more tantalizing than its parts.

For all we know, a hot dog that doesn't contain at least a scrap of pig snout may be far less scrumptious than one that does. Better that we concentrate on taste and texture and not worry about it.

Unfortunately, some do want us worrying about what goes into hot dogs and how many hot dogs go into us. Members of the Cancer Project have created a 33-second TV ad vilifying hot dogs, claiming that they represent a serious health risk.

The ad features kids eating hot dogs in a school cafeteria. One of the little boys chirps: "I was dumbfounded when the doctor told me I have late-stage colon cancer."

He doesn't, of course. The insinuation is that the hot dog he is eating in the school lunch room eventually will come back to haunt him in later life.

It's a hard-hitting ad but one that picks on an easy target. No one, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that hot dogs are health food. In fact, the hot dog is one of the most maligned foods on earth.

That doesn't stop Americans from spending more than $4 billion annually on hot dogs, kielbasa, bratwurst and other manifestations of meat in a tube. I'm not sure if that includes interlopers such as turkey or tofu franks.

The no-doubt well-intentioned people with the Cancer Project say hot dog consumption represents something of a national health crisis. They say that eating a hot dog a day -- or the equivalent in other processed meats -- increases the risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent.

But few people eat a hot dog every day. And other health experts say a hot dog every now and then probably won't hurt you.

That works for me. My hot dog cravings come around only about once a month anyway.

But when they do, a turkey dog won't cut it. I need a real kosher hot dog, like Nathan's, with some snap to the skin. Condiments, of course, can be an issue. Some like their dogs relatively unadorned; others prefer to pile stuff on.

As for me, it depends on my mood. On some days, nothing is so sublime as a dog topped with mustard and sauerkraut. On other days, only a chili-cheese dog will do.

I recently had a hot dog in Chicago (one of the cities, by the way, where the anti-hot-dog ad is running) that was a thing of beauty. If you ask for one with everything, you get a hot dog with mustard, relish, tomatoes, chopped onions, fiery little peppers called sport peppers, pickles and a dash of celery salt.

That's not just a hot dog; it's a well balanced meal. In fact, it might not be bad even if you took out the hot dog.

But even a regular picnic hot dog, grilled but not blackened, doused with mustard, ketchup and relish, is worth the occasional health risk. In fact, giving up hot dogs would be unpatriotic.

As for the ingredients, I will paraphrase (mangle) the old saying attributed to Otto Von Bismarck: "Hot dogs are like laws. It's better not to see them being made."

This story was originally published September 5, 2008 at 12:50 AM with the headline "Don't ask Americans to give up hot dogs."