Hot Dogs Are Not Sandwiches, Says Official Council

Hot dogs are not sandwiches, says an official council, and hot dog lovers everywhere can rejoice that their meat and bread meal of choice has a distinction all of its own.

If you’re wondering why any of this actually matters, it has been a hot debate between sandwich lovers, hot dog lovers, and people who have to categorize everything they eat. Is it an open-faced sandwich? It is meat between two pieces of bread, after all.

USA Today reported the great hot dog sandwich debate mustered up some controversy on the Today show, ESPN’s Sportscenter, behind the scenes in the NFL locker room, and even Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina had to weigh in on the hot dog situation.

That’s when the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council thought over the hot dogs’ finer points and got down to the meat of the situation. The council declared once and for all that the debate was finally over. Hot dogs are not sandwiches.

“A hot dog is an exclamation of joy, a food, a verb describing one ‘showing off’ and even an emoji. It is truly a category unto its own.”

The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council president and “Queen of Wien” Janet Riley declared in a press release, “We therefore choose to take a cue from a great performer and declare our namesake be a ‘hot dog formerly known as a sandwich.’ ”

ABC News reported that the council did not take the debate lightly. It considered the hot dog’s history and the USDA’s definition of an open-faced sandwich and a closed one. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council did not ignore the fact that the hot dog was known as a “Frankfurter sandwich” or a “Coney Island sandwich” in the past, but they did say that “terminology changes.”

Hot dogs are a type of processed meat which have lately fallen under fire because of a study claiming that processed meats increase the chances of developing cancer.

Eating red meat was connected to colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. The link to cancer and processed foods was stronger, according to the study, reported USA Today.

The North American Meat Institute took the study, done by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), with a grain of salt.

“Red and processed meat are among 940 agents reviewed by IARC and found to pose some level of theoretical ‘hazard,’ ” North American Meat Institute spokeswoman Betsy Booren said. “Only one substance, a chemical in yoga pants, has been declared by IARC not to cause cancer.”

It is recommended that people eat a healthy balance of red meats and other healthy foods to get the best out of their diets.

America’s love affair with hot dogs continues, despite any warnings from health studies. Americans eat billions of hot dogs, mostly in the summer. The average person eats about 70 hot dogs a year in the United States, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. Most families, around 95 percent, serve hot dogs in their homes.

Most hot dogs are made with pork, beef, chicken, and turkey meats. Some are a combination of these ingredients. They come in a variety of flavors and lengths.

In the meantime, the great debate of whether hot dogs are sandwiches has been settled once and for all. Hot dogs are not sandwiches — hot dogs are just hot dogs. In fact, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council says hot dogs are “THE great American food, beloved by all.”

[Photo by Cindy Ord / Getty Images Entertainment]