Let's Roast These Wienies!

Have you ever wondered how the millions of people in the world have managed to survive? Consider the quake in Haiti, the droughts in Africa, the squalor of the slums in Rio not to mention war! All take their toll on the human condition yet somehow we manage to survive.

Of course in more advanced countries, like our own, Big Brother does all he can to protect us. From teddy bears whose eyes might be swallowed, from bikes whose paint may contain lead. On this level, especially, I wonder how I made it! I had my share of toys which had parts that surely put me at risk. I had a bike, though I never thought to eat any of the paint on it. Wash and shine it, yes. But eat it?

Ah, but even eating is becoming hazardous to our health. Especially kids who are prone to choking. It would seem I wasn't but apparently far too many are. Because of this, a group of pediatricians are pushing for the redesign of some of our more common foods. Especially the hot dog. The hot dog?

It's the shape, you see. Long and cylindrical. It poses a risk. What? If the kid tries to swallow it whole? They've really looked into this. A member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Injury had this to say,

"If you were to take the best engineers in the world and asked them to design a perfect plug for a child's airway, you couldn't do it better than a hot dog. It's the right size, right shape. It's compressible so it wedges itself in. When they're in that tight it's almost impossible, even with the correct training and the correct equipment, to get it out. When it's wedged that tightly, that child is going to die."

So would an adult, should one find themselves in the same situation, I should think!

Grocery manufactures, somewhat dryly I would imagine, suggested there be some responsibility assigned to parents, teachers and other care givers tending children. I should think!

It's not much fun living in this world of regulation that's being foisted upon us. Now they want to take away hot dogs as we know them. What to do at a ball game? Or around a camp fire? Or from the street vendors heaping it with onion and mustard and relish, maybe kraut or chili?

I won't even get into their suggestions about candy!

In thinking of the dangers of hot dogs, however, I would think pediatricians, of all people would be more concerned about the nutritious value of the ingredients rather than the likelihood a child would get himself into the stuffing of a hot dog down his gullet so tightly he suffocates!

Wouldn't you?