What’s in a Hot Dog?
Eating vegan has plenty of perks: With vegan foods, you don’t hurt animals with your meals, support environmental degradation, or absorb unnecessary animal fats.
But there’s another reason to eat vegan: You save yourself from ingesting some of the surprising ingredients in meat.
A 2011 article in The Local East Village said that hot-dog eaters get much more than they bargain for, including glass, plastic, metal, bone, rodents, and other miscellaneous ingredients, when they chow down on animal flesh. Lost your lunch yet?
It’s pretty gross, and we got to thinking: How do meat hot dogs match up to vegan dogs, not only in nasty ingredients but also in heart-healthy ones?
We matched up Sarah Lee’s Ballpark Hot Dog and a Jumbo Vegan Smart Dog for comparison. The contest was not even close. Check it out for yourself:
Sara Lee’s Ball Park Hot Dog
- Calories: 180
- Total Fat: 15 g
- Saturated Fat: 5 g
- Protein: 5 g
- Main Ingredients: mechanically separated turkey, water, pork, corn syrup, beef
Source: Ballparkbrand.com
Jumbo Vegan Smart Dog
- Calories: 80
- Total Fat: 5 g
- Saturated Fat: 0 g
- Protein: 15 g
- Main Ingredients: water, soy protein isolate, wheat, gluten, evaporated cane juice
Source: Litelife.com
In case you’re not familiar with the term, “mechanically separated turkey,” as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a “paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones, with attached edible tissue, through a sive or similar device under high pressure ….”
Tasty, huh? We’ll take the aptly named Smart Dogs any day.
