Think again. According to Fox News, researchers at startup lab Clear Food tested 345 hot dogs from 75 different brands and found that 14.4 percent of them had a few problematic ingredient in them.
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Also, vegetarian product labels often “exaggerate” the amount of protein they actually contain where one sample actually contained 2.5 times less protein than what was indicated on the label and 10 percent of the vegetarian hot dogs contained actual meat of a few kind.
Now if that wasn’t surprising enough, the company’s hot dog analysis revealed that 2 percent of the dogs they sampled actually contain human DNA.
Using new test technology to get to the molecular levels of food ingredients, the lab found a few hot dogs contain 2% of human DNA while others contain subliminal levels of allergens and additives that conventional food tests would miss.
Vegetarians hot dog eaters have even more to worry about: 10 percent of vegetarian samples contained meat. Veggie dogs were the worst off, accounting for 67 percent of the hygiene issues, and two-thirds of the human DNA found.
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, about 7 billion hot dogs will be consumed in the US, and on the Fourth of July more than 150 million hot dogs will be consumed alone.
The company’s website showed that 375 hot dogs and sausages held another ingredient that was not otherwise specified on the packaging.
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While you might assume these issues were worse in lower price products, Clear Foods found that pork substitution in particular was common “across the price spectrum being sold at a wide variety of retailers”. In a few other cases, more chicken or pork was included than listed on the label. Overall, the top hot dog brands to consistently score highly across their line of products were Butterball, McCormick, Eckrich, and Hebrew National, all of which scored an average of 96.
