A frank way to keep kids safe from choking

Messing with the hot dog is like messing with the American summer.

We'll consume an estimated 7 billion dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Call them wienies, call them franks or call them red hots.

But should we call them dangerous? The American Academy of Pediatrics says so, because children can choke on them.

Now an inventor says he has come up with a revolutionary idea for an improved hot dog design: Make incisions down the sides so that, as it heats, the dog will open into a floral-type design that will more easily break apart if stuck in the throat.

"What we're trying to do is make a safer hot dog," said idea man Gene Gagliardi Jr. of Creativators LLC in Pennsylvania.

So, are we likely to see these strange-looking things served at backyard barbecues and ballparks across America? "I don't think so," said Janet Riley, president of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. "I think a wholesale redesign of the hot dog from its iconic shape as a long, tubular food product is a bit unlikely."

The pediatrics academy cited a study that found a child dies from choking on food about once every five days in the United States, and that 17 percent of those asphyxiations among children younger than 10 were caused by hot dogs. It called for warning labels on packages of hot dogs.

Riley does not discount the risk of kids choking on hot dogs - or carrots, grapes or any cylindrical food. But, she said, many hot dog manufacturers already put messages on their products advising parents to cut up the dogs for children.- McClatchy Tribune