“Bad rap” is an expression that means, “bad reputation” and me even writing something perhaps negative about hot dogs at this point should be regarded as lèse-majesté, but I must continue since this was one of the more pertinent questions related to my experiment.

On my second out of three visits to Lucky’s Last Chance in Queen Village I was with my parents. Me and my dad split four of the specialty hot dogs on the menu (as of today I have tried EIGHT of Lucky’s different wieners, but I’ll get into that more next week), but my mother ordered a burger. I asked her why she wouldn’t join in on our tasting as she had ordered a burger that evening instead. She told me that she “prefers” burgers because she had always thought of hot dogs as being “bad.” I think this is an idea we’ve all encountered. “Sodium”, “nitrates”, “mystery meat,” “shortened life span” are all words and phrases that come to mind or are associated with the hot dog. Holly has also called out the shape and “phallic nature” of franks as adding to their rap sheet. In terms of the health-related tittle-tattle, I can believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but what is the truth? Ok – if hot dogs are really that bad for you, are they any worse than any other junk food one can eat? I happen to know that there are some burger patties out there that go through a similar procedure to the notorious hot dog.

As Jamie Loftus goes into much of the “how it’s made background” of glizzies in her book Raw Dog, allow me to offer you the closest thing I can to a unique insight on meat processing: a story my late Uncle Don told my father, who then told me at my second out of three visits to Lucky’s Last Chance in Queen Village. And oops – this is a burger story. Back in the day, my Uncle Don (my father’s younger brother) worked at a meat processing facility (which I will not name to avoid accusations of slander or calumny) on 4th and Spring Garden. He was charged with “mixing up” the hamburger meat. He would make 100 pounds of hamburger, but in this mixture was only 25 pounds of “beef.” My dad used hyperbole with what he said next to drive his point home with a bit of comedy, “and of this ‘beef’ was everything they could find in the factory related to cow – cow dick, ass, nose – whatever!” Next added was 30 pounds of beef fat, oatmeal to fill/bind the patties and unflavored gelatin. This concoction was then sent through a freezing coil that shaped the patties, froze them, and cut them at the end so that they could be packaged and sent to restaurants. This recalled a food truck I saw making a delivery to my university’s dining hall while I was on campus, the side reading, “BEEF: GRADE D FOR UNIVERSITIES AND PRISONS.” Awesome. The story closes with a remark on how the burgers would shrink to a third of their frozen size once cooked. My cousin Sandy, Don’s daughter, to this day will still not eat a certain brand of meat based on her father’s experience and advisement.

So, maybe not as bad as hot dogs since that story had no mention of those pesky preservatives. What tf is a nitrate you ask? Not totally sure! But this is what my research has gotten me. Nitrates are made of nitrogen and oxygen and exist naturally in some foods like leafy green vegetables which I will likely never mention again on this blog. These nitrogen/oxygen particles can also be added to certain foods to prevent the growth of bacteria – think anything you would classify as “processed” – lunch meats, cheeses and motha-effin’ hot dogs. These added-in nitrates eventually break down into nitrosamines, a transformation that is prevented by the antioxidants present in the natural nitrate foodies when those are eaten. Nitrosamines increase certain health risks, including the development of cancer. Yikes! I don’t have anything quippy to say to write myself out of this…did you know that because of those same cancer-causing molecules you can also eat hot dogs straight out of the package? Raw?! That’s cool, right?!

Let’s talk about sodium. I know you don’t want to, but yes, we have to. Just stay with me because I have another hot, uniquely Bianca insight coming at you. I have noticed that each hot dog I eat is commensurate to one pound gained the following day. Now, calorically, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, but sodium, water-retention related – it just might. This might not be true for the rest of you, but as someone who is a bit obsessed with their weight (and so decided to take on a one-woman hot dog eating contest with herself imagine that), I am acutely aware of how certain foods and activities I eat or do can make the scale move. I also feel that I am especially sensitive to salt based on the remarkable and unquenchable thirst I get whenever I eat a meal I did not prepare myself. I had plenty of opportunities to test this theory this past summer and if I had one hot dog for dinner, my weight would go up by at least one pound the next day. Two hot dogs? Two pounds; so, on and so forth. This tracks - most hot dogs contain about 25% of the daily recommended value of sodium. High sodium diets are often tied to an increased risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. They are also linked to bloating from water retention and in some cases, higher body fat.

I got my annual bloodwork done today and I will get my results back in a couple of weeks, but I am writing to you from a place of some…fear. What will the blood say (lol, sorry I have been watching a lot of Dexter)? What have I done? Why did I choose to penalize my body in this way? Is there anything I can do now to reverse any potential damage done? When I have children, if I even can at this point, what deformities will they be born with? Hot dog hands a la Everything Everywhere All at Once? (This movie is also called Everything All the Time if you are my mother). Some of you did call out your concern to me via IG. I can’t take back the dozens of dogs I have consumed this summer. And I can’t quit this blog yet since there are still so many dogs I haven’t gotten the chance to write to you all about and I want to persevere to see this project through to the end. BUT what I can do is move forward with confirmation of what we all kinda already knew was true – dogs are great fun, but not great for you.

*Sorry* no pictures provided for this entry, but feel free to toggle over to the STUFF TO LOOK AT tab if you need a palate-cleanser. Beautiful captures of our favorite femme-fatale the hot dog. More added every week!