Redesigning the Hot Dog

In my neighbourhood there's a place called "Buddha Dog" that serves locally-sourced foods and organic gourmet hot dogs, and their dogs are wee - I'd eat no less than 2, and the average guy would have at least 4.

So to reduce the choking hazard, I'd say think size not shape.

I realized all of my responses are in fact obscene.  Sineed's suggestion just made things worse, so I think I'll content myself with moving this to Humanities and Science

Actually  the shape of frankfurters is a health problem. Though as Lou said chewing would help, but still people are known to snort and chock on their food when laughing and such, and  frankfurters are damn hard to dislodge, they are like corks in wine bottles

Truthfully I would like to see them be a spiral, like spiral fries, though I hate those, for several reasons.

Spiral fries why:

1. The frankfurthers would be less messy to eat, as the condiments would fit in the spirals and not squash out everywhere.

2. They would not fall off roasting sticks, one could actually shape them around one.

3. They would be more fully cooked through as the tube containing the meat would be thinner, so there is less chance for food poisoning

4. People who have been forced to give a man a blow job would be able to eat them and not be triggered.

5. People would not be chocking on them and dying.

Failing a sprial design, there could be  triangler ones, which would also prompt better cookability.

That said, I only eat tofu dogs.

A friend of mine, now deceased I think, was a Seventh Day Adventist minister, and that church is a huge corporation running hospitals and health food stores. They sell veggie weiners - quite bland, but better than the disgusting crap sold in supermarkets.

Omg -- hot dog pron! How could you put that before me, Doughnut?

Srsly, you're talking about redesigning the sausage, a kind of ancient thing in numberless cultures, and I just don't think that's gonna fly far. The specific problem with North American frankfurters imho is their texture -- they are rubbery because they are over-processed, over-blended and over-consistent all the way through, which is why they would act as a plug in the throat no matter what shape the original was. Most sausages are mealier than franks are, and you're more likely to break them down in the chewing before you swallow. (I hope you're reading along closely here, oldgoat.)

People can choke on almost anything, though. We should all learn to do emergency tracheotomies. All you need is a Swiss Army knife and a ball-point pen ...

Me too! The thing is, you really don't have long when someone is choking. Try Heimlich manoeuvre first, and then try fingers down the throat. But the third step is ... And I don't think there is a fourth step.

I know what they mean. I had a piece of Polish sausage lodged in my aorta the other day and had to resuscitate myself in Canadian Tire parking lot. It was quite a scene.

It's interesting, the picture that j.m. posted of the cut up weiners in a pot boiling.  In fact, cutting them that way does not reduce the choking hazard for children, because they're still in circles that fit in their windpipe.  You're supposed to cut them in half lengthwise for children.

It's one of the first things they teach you in ECE.

I guess the second thing they should teach you is not to feed kids that crap. :D  Seriously though - hot dogs ARE a major choking hazard, for people of all ages.  It's true that people should just chew, and people do, but people also sometimes choke on things, or things sometimes go down the wrong way, and the problem with hot dogs is, when they get caught, they're just about impossible to dislodge because they fit the windpipe perfectly.

There's nothing wrong with recognizing a design flaw and correcting it.  There are probably tons of chokings per year due to the shape of hotdogs.  And the way they are COMMONLY served and eaten, the way they're advertised to be eaten, and the way everyone has always eaten them (whole, and by taking bite-sized chunks out of them that keep them cylindrical in the mouth) is dangerous. 

So what's the problem with changing it when a problem is recognized?

Warning labels: my favourite was on a package of rat poison.  It lists off the nasty toxic poisons it contains, and then in big type: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS.

Or how about those packages of nuts that have the nut warning on them?  People will suffer warning label fatigue and start ignoring them altogether.

Wow, Fidel!  Just...wow!

We had a patient who had suffered a spinal cord injury and was in a wheelchair.  He also suffered from frequent choking episodes, and he told us what he did at home was to run his electric wheelchair at top speed into a wall, and get thrown against his seatbelt.  Food dislodged.

I've got a great idea. Don't eat over processed (meat or soy) zero nutrient food and don't feed it to your children. Then you will not need to concern yourself with its shape.  

Excellent point!

Okay, so now back in realityland, where people occasionally fall short of nutrition perfection, what do you do about a design flaw that creates a choking hazard for the millions upon millions of people who consume the product?

How about hotdog eating lessons for the wee ones?  What they learn could save their life when eating a banana, too.

"Alright, everyone, Chew-two-three-four, chew-two-three-four!  Let's get those molars doing the work!..."

To be fair, if you don't notice a groundswell of support for the idea of redesigning sausages, I have to think that there's a limit to the degree to which most people want the entire world padded for our safety.  If you have kids, or you're worried about your own ability to chew, isn't cutting the hotdog sufficient?  Other than people who decide they don't need to do that, where exactly does that plan fail??  Are people who can't take 2 seconds to slice a hotdog in half really going to choose the "safety dog" at the grocery store?  Or do we all get to eat new and improved hotdogs that are as big around as a pencil because some halfwit won't slice his own hotdog?

I find this image VERY disturbing....

The food item that made me more sick than anyting in my life was a sidewalk-cart bratwurst on a bun in Toronto around 1978. Just a mess of fat and salt, and it caused me stomach distress like nothing else. I've never touched bratwurst since. That was my first and only.