Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

In all things... moderation.

Just look at a hot dog - doesn't take a PhD in anything to be able to tell they can't be healthy!

From http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/food/hotdogs.htm - "The study found that children eating more than 12 hot dogs per month have nine times the normal risk of developing childhood leukemia. A strong risk for childhood leukemia also existed for those children whose fathers' intake of hot dogs was 12 or more per month.... Recommendation: Do not buy hot dogs containing nitrite. It is especially important that children and potential parents do not consume 12 or more of these hot dogs per month."

Really!? 12x p/month!? R u serious!!?? I guess if one eats 2x hot dogs twice a week, that'd be 16, but really, hot dogs shouldn't be part of anyone's staple food. Buying em weekly, curb back to monthly :-)

Meat guy sounds like a scientist working for a meat company doesn't he? His comment read very reasonably until he wrote "Meat processors can't make money if they do not treat their animals humanely." What a load!

All commercial hot dogs contain derivatives of Vitamin C, Ascorbic acid, sodium citrate, Sodium Erythorbate or Sodium Ascorbate, these are added to reduce the nitrites added in the hot dog to effectively cure the meat and reduce any residual Nitrites to minimum levels. Celery Juice requires a fermentation process to convert the nitrtrates to nitrite, something that may not be completely done.
Never grill a natural hot dog, the residual nitrates can combine with the polycyclic hydrocarbons generated in the grilling process causing Nitrosamines, a known carcinogen. THis is why nitrates were banned from sausage and Bacon in all USDA inspected plants since the 1970s.

Recently the celery juice marketers have increased the amounts of nitrates to unnatural levels through concentration of the juice, several are selling it fermented, to reduce the nitrates to nitrite, a more effective curing material than Nitrate. Celery juice is far less safe than the refined chemicals which are added at parts per million, rather than in a range from a loosely controlled liquid which is converted through an imprecise process. THat is why many times you will see different colors in a pack of Natural hot dogs, or why they change color when you reheat them, the cure is not fully established.

Face it, an all beef hot dog is safer than a natural or organic. Meat processors can't make money if they do not treat their animals humanely. Abused animals are low in weight, low in meat quality, and therefore unprofitable.

I have worked with processors of both types of hot dog, "natural" cure and normally cured, normal is safer, the chemicals added are pure and controlled, the process is safe, and it doesn't contain nitrates which were banned in normal cures over 30 years ago, but are legal and present in natural cured products.

Interesting. I'm not a biochemist by any means, but have been doing a little research into nitrites - from a cancer-causing perspective, apparently there is a difference between nitrite additives and nitrites that occur naturally in vegetables. Vegetables with nitrites also contain high levels of vitamins A and C, which it is theorized work to block the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines in the human gut, explaining why nitrite containing veggies help protect from cancer, while synthetic nitrite additives in cured meats are shown to cause cancer.

All this talk reminds me so much of "natural flavors", put the word natural in front of something, and people assume it's better.

People hear "celery juice" and think... oh that sounds wholesome. They do not realize the level of nitrates in concentrated celery juice extract.

The worst part is these "uncured" meats generally taste inferior since the celery juice extract adds off flavors and doesn't give the same quality cure as the normal cures.

deanj, the celery juice isn't added for flavor, it's added specifically for those nitrites. People who are buying "no sugar added" products usually understand that, say, fruit juice has sugars in it to start, although different kinds of sugars from what's usually added. People do NOT generally understand that "no nitrates added" does NOT mean "no nitrates or nitrites of any kind." Presumably, Robyn's point is to try to educate these people.