A Life, Lived: Redesign the Hot Dog?

You know that today was a slow news day when this story started to make the rounds. Apparently some idiot doctors have decided that we need to throw out a hundred or so years of tradition because children might choke on a hot dog.

I shall file this under the category 'stupid'. If I had such a category.

Redesign the hotdog, doctors urge

Hot dogs need to be redesigned so they aren’t potentially lethal to small children, American pediatricians said Monday in a new policy statement.

“We have laws and regulations that require warning labels on toys that pose choking hazards,” said Dr. Gary Smith of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the lead author of the policy published in the current issue of Pediatrics.

“There are no such regulations on high risk foods, and children are much more likely to put food in their mouths than a toy.”

The highest risk food is the hot dog, Smith said. Its size and shape means it can wedge itself tightly into a child’s throat, entirely blocking air passages.

“If you were to design the perfect plug for a child's airway, you couldn't do much better than a hot dog,” he told the Star. And unlike other risk foods such as grapes and popcorn, however, hot dogs are man-made and manufacturers can easily change their shape, he said.

Other risky foods for small children include grapes, popcorn, hard candy, carrots, pears, apples and celery.

In Canada, about 44 children age 14 and under die every year from choking and another 380 are hospitalized, according to SafeKids Canada. Almost half of those cases are from choking on food.

SafeKids concurs with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation to slice hot dogs lengthwise. The pediatricians go one step further, calling for a new shape for the dogs.

“No parents can watch all of their kids 100 per cent of the time,” Smith says. “The best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence. There is nothing to stop you from redesigning the hot dog. Safety sells. Someone can create a safety dog that isn’t round and airways-sized.”

Sweden has had age-labelling on foods for infants and young children since 1979 and warning labels on prepackaged shelled peanuts since 1981, Smith noted.

Janet Riley, president of the U.S. National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, told The Associated Press she agrees with the need for education, and points out more than half the hot dogs sold in the United States have warnings to parents to cut them into small pieces.

“As a mother who has fed toddlers cylindrical foods like grapes, bananas, hot dogs and carrots, I 'redesigned' them in my kitchen by cutting them with a paring knife until my children were old enough to manage on their own,” Riley says.

Smith disagreed. “Just telling people to be careful or blaming the parents is an uninformed approach.”

The pediatricians are calling for:

Warning labels on foods that pose a high choking risk
A recall of food products that pose a significant choking hazard
The establishment of a nationwide food-related choking-incident surveillance and reporting system
A commitment from food manufacturers to design new food and redesign existing food to minimize choking risk, to the extent possible

In the meantime, the policy recommends parents and caregivers:

Do not give children younger than 4 any round, firm foods unless they have been cut into very small pieces. Cut hot dogs lengthwise and cut grapes into quarters.
Do not give toddlers other high risk foods, such as hard candy, nuts, seeds and raw carrots.
Never let small children run, play or lie down while eating.
Keep coins and other small items out of reach of young children at all times.

In my day parents watched their children to make sure that they were safe whilst eating. It wasn't expected that the entire food industry would change the shape, size, texture of all foods to make sure that wee Johnny or Sally didn't turn blue and keel over whilst gnawing on an weiner.

Now in the interest of full disclosure . . . I like hot dogs. I don't eat a ton of them or anything but I do appreciate a well-made one. I like my hot dog round too. . . .

I understand that as a society we know things that we didn't know when I was a kid. Frankly, it is a miracle that I lived to the age of 9 in a smoke filled chevy with no seatbelts. Sure we need to protect kids from misfortune - dear lord, if we don't who is doing to care for me while I'm in an old-aged home.

I'm not sure that I want to be cared for by a kid who had to be protected from all of life's little challenges. i want to be cared for by someone who is tough. Someone who has faced challenges, met them head on, and didn't choke on the freaking hot dog!

As one might expect, such a story elicited some lovely comments:

Isn't the best way to protect kids simply to not feed them garbage that has no nutritional value? Should we redesign pickles and carrots too because of their shape? The world doesn't need to be designed around a three year old, thank you very much.
What will the future be like? Everyone being fed pur?ed food only after signing a waver? Come on people! You cannot save your children from all evils in this world. Teach them how to eat their food properly (and slowly) and there won't be a problem. You can't design all "risks out of existence." Kids need to learn for themselves, and that includes how to each their food properly.
We should bio engineer babies to have much larger or much smaller throats and air passages. As well the death penalty should be reinstated to punish parents who do not properly supervise their children and/or feed them too much junk food. Also , maybe regulation and penalties for the companies that manufacture these highly dangerous food products. By the way, did you know that the fall of the roman empire can be attributed to the high mortality rate among young romans who ate sausages.
Very young children need to be watched when eating solid food - no matter the shape of that food. After a certain age if your child is incapable of (or simply ignorant of) the adequate mastication techniques required for survival then the fault does not lie with Oscar Meyer.
... and while we're at it, we should take the wheels off our cars to prevent them from hitting people.

Dear lord. Lots of laughter over hot dogs today. I am a happy man.