Designing a Choke-free Hot Dog

There's a good article on stats.org that examines the statistics and concludes that this whole thing, as with many public health stories, is overblown: http://stats.org/stories/2010/choking_hot_dog_feb23_10.html

The key finding: "it is reasonable to assume, based on this data, that the number of children who die from choking on hot dogs is somewhere between 1.5 and 5 per year in the United States. The risk is overwhelmingly to children aged three and under, based on the natural tendency of infants to put stuff in their mouths. While each death is a terrible tragedy, it is not clear that this is something that this amounts to a “significant and unacceptable choking hazard” to the public warranting recall procedures, product changes and more warnings than already exist. The problem with the American Academy of Pediatrics paper is that it uses percentages without the context of frequency, so that you end up comparing percentage fatalities for widely different time periods without any indication of the actual number of deaths."

I feel like this post, the essay on the phrase "it turns out," and the post on eating slower to reduce caloric intake, all showed up at the same time for a reason.

"It turns out, eating slower will help you avoid choking on hot dogs, too."

How about parents just not be idiots and cut the hot dog up into small pieces for their children? The fact this is even an issue just shows how much common sense we've lost as a species. It's much better for parents to have the burden of responsibility than relying on the entire food industry to cater to their needs. Personally I don't think the food industry should be obligated to help parents be dumber and less engaged in their children's safety. If someone makes a "kid safe hotdog" will people buy it? Absolutely. My concern is it makes parents less aware of other risks of choking if they have an expectation that any food item for children has no choking risks. That is impossible. If your child scarfs down food without chewing they can choke on almost anything. As a parent it's your obligation and responsibility to prevent it.

Turn them into meat-based cephalopods with Octodog

http://www.octodog.net/

Given that the rate of deaths atributed to diet-related conditions is several orders of magnitude higher, I think this is trying to optimize for the wrong metric.

How about jumbo franks? I can't see a 4 yr old could swallow without chewing first, at which point, it is chewed into smaller bits and thus no choking.

Alternately, an accordion-like zig-zag groove lengthwise (like a line of ketchup/mustard) could ensure a piece that was lodged was not wider than each groove, and thus would be unstable enough to not block the airway.

Given that the root cause of nearly all the world's problems is over-population, we should recognize that we need to build _more_ opportunities for "Darwinian Correction" into society. So leave the Hot Dog alone, and leave the Golden Gate Bridge alone. :-)

All jokes aside, I didn't realize that there was actually a hot dog choking problem. I can't say I wouldn't give a "choke free" hot dog a try though. Eating a coil of meat could be fun.

I feel like this is another attempt of humans to avoid natural selection.