Choke-Proof Hotdogs: What’s Next? Outlawing Grapes?

February 23, 2010 / 9:01 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Any mother worth her title knows that grapes are the number one choking hazard. At my kid’s pre-school, they actually make parents cut up grapes due to the risk. No warning on hotdogs, though. Until now:

Nutritionists have long warned of the perils of hot dogs: fat, sodium and preservatives to name a few.

Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label — not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children.

Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs “redesigned” so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster’s throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs.

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”

Full disclosure: I got yelled at a lot because I didn’t cut up the grapes, so you probably know where I’m going with this.

Could America get any less risk-averse? I mean really.

This is the country that conquered the West, sent a man to the moon and just beat Canada’s ass in hockey and we’re going to re-design a hotdog so kids don’t choke?

What kind of message do we send to our kids when we mitigate against every little risk? We send a message that Americans are WEENIES. Kid-sized weenies and big, overbearing, obsessive parenting weenies.

With all the problems in the world, hotdogs should be relegated to the category of awesome. I do not want to go out to the baseball park and eat a re-engineered hotdog. In the future, however, I shall praise my own courage in buying a foot-long at the park. I ate the whole thing without choking! I could have died!!

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  • http://randomlycandice.wordpress.com Candice

    Remember when it was risky to ride your bike down the big hill without using the brakes? And then the joy you felt when you realized you survived the crash?

    I don’t recall my parents cutting up grapes, they’re really big proponents of chewing, so that tends to limit the risk of choking alone, but in the case we did choke we were reminded to chew up our food before swallowing.

    But in the case of the small children who haven’t quite mastered the fine art of chewing (how long before there’s a parenting class for that?), I believe that most parents are aware enough to cut up food into smaller than bite-sized pieces. But accidents happen. Kids choke, fall down, color on the walls, lets just put them in little bubbles and feed them with tubes to ensure their safety. *eye roll*

    Unfortunately, this is the kind of stuff that gives us warnings on bleach saying, “DO NOT DRINK!” It only takes one.

  • http://darthkeller.wordpress.com DarthKeller

    You’d think the “regulatory” Left would embrace stupidity, I mean, with Darwin claiming that those stupid enough to drink bleach, or choke on hotdogs are most definitely NOT fit to survive. Of course, that’s just my cynical world view…. Sorry

  • Bob

    Are kids these days too stupid to chew? Are parents now too stupid to teach their kids to chew?

  • mj

    This is important!

    I got to see a local puppethead do a technical demonstration of how to cut up a hotdog on last night’s news.

    In my day, we were tough! We ate them whole, in a bun, with condiments. Life was much tougher then.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=636362720 Chuck Robey

    I have a better idea instead of redesigning the hot dog make it mandatory that before the parents can take a child home from the hospital they must become first aid and CPR qualified no exceptions and for those parents like my wife and I who do home birthing which is far safer then hospital births we should also be made to get the same training before the midwife will assist in the delivery of the baby.