What's In A Hot Dog?

Today, we're going to take a look at what's actually in a hot dog

Sausages actually go all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, but this particular style of cased sausage is likely German

You're probably wondering who decided to also call them hot dogs and why

This time, it was German immigrants in New York in the 19th century

who sold them as dachshund sausages, likely due to the resemblance to the breed of doggo that goes by that name

It's from the name dachshund sausages that the name hot dog was ultimately derived

Despite America having a pretty iffy relationship with Germany for the first half of the 20th century, the hot dog quickly became an American icon

Seriously, wieners were everywhere. And a big part of the credit for that has to go to a Polish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker

who opened a little place called Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Stand at Coney Island in 1916

By the time of the Great Depression, Nathan's hot dogs were famous throughout the nation

And by the mid-30s, Oscar Mayer was mass-producing hot dogs for supermarkets and promoting them with a Wienermobile

After World War II, Americans were flush with cash, and they started moving out to the suburbs where everybody had their own little backyard

Those backyards were the perfect place for hosting barbecues. Hot dogs quickly became a cookout staple, and that included the big cookouts like those thrown for the 4th of July

For as long as there have been hot dogs there have been people who suspected that hot dogs were filled with the most disgusting ingredients they can possibly think of And with good reason Early 20th century meatpacking plants were a nightmare routinely using super shady ingredients like sawdust and horse meat and a whole bunch of other nasty things we won name in case you eating

After that, meatpacking plants were regulated and had to abide by strict guidelines designed to protect consumers from eating anything too disgusting

A few unfortunate things have still slipped into the mix here and there. For example, Americans have reported additional ingredients including hair, metal shavings, ants, silverfish, insect larva, a rubber band, needles, a coin, a pill, bone, wire, plastic, and part of a box cutter

Such ingredients are extremely rare. As of 2015, out of the billions of hot dogs sold and consumed nationwide, the U.S. government had just 38 reports of foreign objects found in hot dogs

So that must mean hot dogs aren't as bad as you think, right? Well, here are some facts, and then you can decide

The USDA says that at least 54.5% of a hot dog must be real meat, but they're often made from what they call the ts of the animal

Those are the meat cuts discarded by the slaughterhouse, which include things like fatty tissue, sinewy muscle, liver parts, and sometimes even meat from the animal's head

That stuff is then cooked to kill bacteria, turned into a paste via emulsion, mixed with any number of filler products, and then pureed and stuffed into a sausage case

That being said, many have pointed out that by allowing the consumption of parts that would have otherwise been discarded, hot dogs make animal consumption more sustainable for society

So picking the right hot dog for you might be more complicated than it seems

Maybe next time just go for the chicken fingers