Are You Feeding Your Kids Hot Dogs? Stop and Check this out!

When I was a youngster, we certainly loved eating hot dogs! It was an easy and delicious snack that we could just cook instantly using a microwave or a frying pan. And with so much variety on how to prepare hot dog dishes at home, school and almost all activities around us. So many of us enjoy this food snack all year long; day or night we loved it.

So now what’s the big issue?

According to a L.A. Times editorial:

Children who consume more than 12 hot dogs per month have nine times the normal risk of developing childhood leukemia, a USC epidemiologist has reported in a cancer research journal. Furthermore, there were two other reports in the same issue of Cancer Causes and Control suggest that children born to mothers who eat at least one hot dog per week during pregnancy have double the normal risk of developing brain tumors, as do offspring whose pops consumed hot dogs before conception.

So what’s in the hot dog to be worried of?

Well, nitrite additives in hot dogs form carcinogens. There are petitions to ban nitrites. Three different studies have come out in the past year, finding that the consumption of hot dogs can be a risk factor for childhood cancer.

Peters et al. studied the link between the intake of certain foods and the risk of leukemia in children from birth to age 10 in Los Angeles County between 1980 and 1987. 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.

Researchers Savitz and Sarusua studied childhood cancer cases in Denver and found that children born to mothers who consumed hot dogs one or more times per week during pregnancy have approximately doubled the risk of developing brain tumors. Children who consumed hot dogs one or more times per week were also at higher risk of brain cancer.

Bunin et al, also learned that maternal consumption of hot dogs during pregnancy was linked with an additional risk of childhood brain tumors.

Hot dogs contain nitrites which are used as preservatives, primarily to combat botulism (a rare and potentially fatal illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum). During the food preparation process, nitrites combine with amines naturally present in meat to form carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds. It is also suspected that nitrites can combine with amines in the human stomach to form N-nitroso compounds. These compounds are known carcinogens and have been associated with cancer of the esophagus, oral cavity, stomach, urinary bladder, and brain.

Fortunately, not all hot dogs on the market contain nitrites thanks to modern refrigeration methods. Nitrite-free hotdogs, while they taste the same as nitrite hotdogs when cooked, the nitrite-free hotdogs are seamlessly safe and healthy. So we can still enjoy our delicious snack all year round.




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