Hot dogs, along with hamburgers, pizza, and pies, are one of the United States' all-time most popular foods, with 7 billion consumed at backyard cookouts and baseball ballparks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and almost $5.25 billion spent on sausages and frankfurters last year. Clear Foods just released a report after doing molecular-level analyses of major hot dog and sausage brands' ingredients labels. Although brands such as Butterball and Eckrich received high scores, others contained human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), while certain vegetarian "veggie dogs" contained meat.
Clear Foods uses "genomic technology" to make ingredient-by-ingredient studies of food. Its analysis included 345 hot dog and sausage products manufactured by 10 brands. Among all samples, 14.4 percent had at least one issue related to its ingredients, according to Nature World Report.
Two of the main problems with the meat samples were substitution and hygiene issues.
The samples sometimes contained substitution ingredients not on the contents label. They included chicken, beef, turkey and lamb.
Pork substitution was found in 3 percent of all sausage samples. It was even used as a replacement in chicken and turkey sausages.
Meanwhile, in terms of hygiene the company discovered human DNA in 2 percent of all hot dogs and sausages, and two-thirds of all vegetarian samples, according to WTSP. Clear Foods also found meat in 10 percent of all vegetarian products.
However, it was not all bad news. The food-analyzing company reported that many small and large hot dog manufacturing companies are ethically producing high-quality products.
Butterball, Eckrich, McCormick, and Hebrew National were major brands that earned top scores. Meanwhile, Gardein was the highest-scoring regional or specialty brand.
Frankfurt, Germany is often credited as inventing the frankfurter in 1487. However, the American hot dog likely originated from a common European sausage that butchers from various countries brought to the New World in the 1800s.
This video shows how hot dogs are made: