Label Check: Just Say No to Hot Dog Bashing

Hey! It’s an American Tradition that is here to stay!

Dietcrushers check labels. Get ready for that cook-out this weekend by learning what’s in that package of HOT DOGS!

It’s almost common knowledge that hot dogs contain an assortment of products that somehow taste great on a bun filled with catsup, mustard, and relish.

We all have our favorite chopped vegetables, magic sauces and simmering stuff that makes a hot dog on a bun an American favorite.

How is it possible that so many Americans gobble up more than 8 billion of them during the summer months alone and tolerate the hot dog bashers! Summer is the time of the American outdoor barbecue and none would be complete without a hot dog on the grill.

Does this family food standard come in so many forms that fact checking labels is a life-saving requirement?

Or has the American Hotdog been smoked with a bad rap?

A hot dog is a sausage.
All you need is a sausage maker and the right materials to make them.
And that means you can put anything in them that you want,
and people do make sausages out of almost anything.

Even so, when you think about a hot dog and a sausage the way they are made is about all they have in common.

Hot dogs have an obvious appearance and flavor that says it’s a hot dog and not a brat wurst or a kielbasa.

Different meats can be added, but traditional hot dogs are made from seasoned ground pork and beef that is stuffed into a casing. With a little twist and a visit to the smokehouse, the hot dog is ready.

That’s very simplistic, but it’s the basic process that gets you from here to there. What happens inbetween those two points is what you need to check on.

The overwhelming interest in hot dog safety comes from the chemicals used to protect the product from food borne organisms such as botulism.
The most common are sodium nitrites which you’ll find in almost every commercially produced, mass-consumed hot dog.

The other sodium products, such as sodium diacetate and sodium erythorbate have other functions like helping to plump up the hot dog, maintaining color and increasing the cure rate.

Hot dogs can contain specific meats, but according to the USDA they can also contain up to 15% meat byproducts. Few people really consider what that means and probably don’t want to know, but imagine it this way….

Years ago a friend of mine chose to quit eating hot dogs that he helped make at a large commercial hot dog manufacturing company.
He said when an animal comes into the factory for processing, every part of it will somehow get used. The place that gets the remnants that couldn’t be used in anything else ended up on the hot dog meat pile. He used a large shovel to get these lovely pickings into the huge meat grinders that eventually turned out thousands of hot dogs every day.

That’s another place that the hot dog gets it’s bad name, because even though that’s what my friend said, it’s not completely realistic. At least it isn’t today.

The USDA Fact sheet has this requirement:

The finished products may not contain more than 30% fat or no more than 10% water, or a combination of 40% fat and added water. Up to 3.5% non-meat binders and extenders (such as nonfat dry milk, cereal, or dried whole milk) or 2% isolated soy protein may be used, but must be shown in the ingredients statement on the product’s label by its common name.
… they consist of not less than 15% of … muscle meat with raw meat byproducts.

The byproducts must also be named. So you won’t be getting heart, kidney or liver in your hot dogs unless it says it on the label.

Is there room for hot dogs in a diet filled with summer family fun? Of course, unless you’re a food purist who doesn’t eat any type of preservative or food additive.

And for the rest of us, just don’t over do it. My personal belief is, that the joy you get from a great get-together exceeds the risk you might have from one or two hot dogs during an event.

And possibly, you could make other choices that are better for you at those events. Start a new tradition…fresh, organic hot dogs or sausages are easy to make with a good recipe and the proper equipment. You just might become the star of next year’s family reunion when your new family favorite hits the grill.

Safety Tip

Cut up a hot dog before letting younger children eat them. Foods like hot dogs can easily choke children who try to swallow one whole. We all know that young children tend to do things like that just when you turn around for a second. Take care of the kids and have a super time at all your family get-togethers.

Can I Train My Brain to Crave A Healthy Diet?

Do the words pizza, chocolate and ice cream get you salivating enough to run to the store?

There are times I think of trigger foods like that, and I’m heading to the kitchen faster than Pavlov’s dog.

My downfall in the quest to obtain a perfect physique has been pizza, chocolate and ice cream. I have eaten salads all day. Felt proud of my food choices and exercised like a champion, only to undue all that effort by giving in to cravings.

Feeding a craving is a subconscious move for me to avoid the stress and difficult decisions in my life. That might not be true for everyone, but it certainly is for me. I can deliberately tell myself to keep doing the tough stuff in my business and the moment I get lost in thought, I’ll find myself hunting through the cupboards.

How can I train my brain to put me on a healthy automatic pilot?

I already eat more vegetables than the average human eats. That doesn’t mean I don’t choose enough junk. I’m a realist about how to get out of shape, but training my brain to crave healthy foods is an unbelievable goal to get me on a healthy automatic pilot.

I Am told that my brain is ‘wired’ from prehistoric times, and that makes me crave chocolate cake when I pass by a bakery. Is this really where experts need to get justifications for their claims?

Although there may be something analogous to a drug addict craving the stuff again while passing a crack house next to the rehab center. However, the caveman analogy for how I act in life has never been reliable to me.

It simply appears like an obvious ‘fact,’ when it’s more like an obvious assumption.

I do know that I crave chocolate cake on a plate in front of me, because my mother baked me the best chocolate cake for my eighth birthday. I can still smell and taste the homemade-butter-cream-chocolate-fudge frosting. I can still see the huge piece in front of me while everyone at the table sang Happy Birthday to me.

While I’m thinking of it, I’d sure like a piece, but today I’m investigating how to train my brain to put me on a healthy diet.

How possible is that to actually reprogram my cravings to help me desire healthier foods?

According to CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen, there are three steps toward ‘switching your cravings.’

1. Clean Out Your Cupboards
For those of us who have yo-yo dieted, clean cupboards isn’t the biggest problem. Getting all those trigger foods out of the house is the first thing to do.

2. Carry Around Healthy foods
I don’t carry food around in my car, because even though I have cravings while driving, I don’t stop to fill them. Maybe I’m different about this, but my biggest problem area is at home. I can control myself eating out a lot better than I control myself at home. That’s why Item #1 is so important, because one high-fiber cereal box in the hand is equal to one empty box in the garbage. There’s just no need to carry food around with me.

3. Bury Craved Foods In The Middle of A Meal
Cohen quotes the subject in her articles to suggest that dieters avoid eating unhealthy craved foods for the first two weeks of a diet. The purpose is to unlearn the craving. After two weeks she allows a 100 calorie of the trigger food in the middle of the meal.

I’ll try one this on my upcoming 6 Week Body Makeover. Whatever you’re craving, put it in the middle of your meal, so it’s not the food of the meal linked to a benefit of eating. She says that putting a trigger food like chocolate at the beginning of a meal makes your mind link the good feelings you get with that first taste. Conversely, by having it for dessert or at the end, you’ll link that trigger chocolate as the best thing you ate.

Manipulating cravings of all types has been studied for hundreds of years in different disciplines from Philosophy to Psychology to Behavorial Therapists to Genetic Engineers. Possibly my caveman alter-ego craved chocolate cake for his 8th birthday, but that stuff is so old by now, I think I’ll look for more modern reasons for controlling my cravings.