Everyone in anatomic pathology is familiar with various resident pranks including the introduction of H&E sections of hot dogs into the daily slide work. However, I was unaware that such pranks have sometimes resulted in journal publications. Justice has now triumphed with the appearance of the following article: Applying morphologic techniques to evaluate hotdogs: what is in the hotdogs we eat?. I must also comment that I found this article more instructive than many that appear in our journals. This gives me some hope for the future. Below is an excerpt from the article (boldface emphasis mine):
Americans consume billions of hotdogs per year resulting in more than a billion dollars in retail sales. Package labels typically list some type of meat as the primary ingredient. The purpose of this study is to assess the meat and water content of several hotdog brands to determine if the package labels are accurate. Eight brands of hotdogs were evaluated for water content by weight. A variety of routine techniques in surgical pathology including routine light microscopy with hematoxylin-eosin- stained sections, special staining, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy were used to assess for meat content and for other recognizable components. Package labels indicated that the top-listed ingredient in all 8 brands was meat; the second listed ingredient was water...and another type of meat ....Water comprised 44% to 69% ...of the total weight. Meat content determined by microscopic cross-section analysis ranged from 2.9% to 21.2% ....The cost per hotdog ($0.12-$0.42) roughly correlated with meat content....In conclusion, hotdog ingredient labels are misleading; most brands are more than 50% water by weight. The amount of meat (skeletal muscle) in most brands comprised less than 10% of the cross-sectional surface area. More expensive brands generally had more meat. All hotdogs contained other tissue types (bone and cartilage) not related to skeletal muscle; brain tissue was not present.
So what lessons can be learned from this article? First of all, it's a little shocking that meat was the top-listed ingredient in all brands but comprised as little as 2.9% of the wieners by microscopic cross-section analysis. To be fair to the hot dog manufacturers, the original weight of the actual "meat" ingredients may not accurately correlate with the cross-section analysis described. However, I think that the manufacturers should at least give us a small taste of the meat, bone, and cartilage extracted from the animal. However and In defense of the manufacturers, they have also resisted the temptation to throw a cow brain or two into the mix.
Secondly and in light of what we have learned from this article, restrain yourself if you have even a passing interest in watching C-SPAN when bored. To quote Otto von Bismarck: Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
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