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Can A Flat Hot Dog Save Lives?
On average, every five days in the United States, one child dies from choking. Hot dogs are the number one cause of food-related choking deaths, according to study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Association of Pediatrics.
Tragically, just this week, 3-year-old Anna Hendley of Indiana died after choking to death on a hot dog at her babysitter’s house.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has urged the food industry to stay away from shapes and sizes of foods that pose choking hazards and to put warning labels on those which do (such as hot dogs).
One Connecticut grandmother has worked to redesign hot dogs so they won’t get stuck in young children’s throats. Hedy Palliardi heard the news about the hazards of hot dogs and had a brilliant idea.
“It came in the form of a dream, and I acted on it,” Palliardi told The Hartford Courant. “I had a dream about a flat hot dog.”
Palliardi and her brother, who used to work at a food processing company that made hot dogs, came up with a way to make a flat hot dog.
“It’s a big, fat hot dog, without the skin, said Palliardi. “All we do is slice it. It solves the problem, which is the choking hazard.”
At the moment, Palliardi’s Flat Dogs are only available in Connecticut, but Palliardi has plans to sell them nationwide. But until that time, Angry Mom at Momlogic advises parents to “cut toddlers’ hot dogs into quarter-sized pieces or don’t give them hot dogs at all.”
Would you consider buying a flat hot dog?
photo: flickr/TheBusy Brain
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0 Comments
aaaaaa commented on Jul 29 10 at 12:10 pmno…then it would be bologna! Just cut them into small pieces… common sense!
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Jul 29 10 at 1:01 pmI’ve choked on rice before, so I don’t necessarily think it is the shape of food that is the danger. Second the motion on cutting up food into really small pieces and also a big advocate of small children sitting down while eating, not snacking while racing around.
goddess commented on Jul 29 10 at 2:01 pmDear goddess, more BS to save us from stupidity. Why not require and expect adults to smarten up! However did us, and our children survive the dangers of hotdogs, nuts grapes and round candies??????
Jenny commented on Jul 29 10 at 2:33 pmI’m darn sure people have known hot dogs are a choking hazard since at least the 1980′s, because I remember my mother cutting my hot dogs up until I was like 9!
We do not need to “build a better hot dog” we need to be SMARTER THAN THE HOT DOG and use some freaking common sense.
BTW- My son has almost choked to death about 5 times already in his short 4 years of life. On things like rice, food I’ve cut into tiny pieces, and LIQUIDS. Kids choke. Learn CPR and Heimlich while you’re learning to have common sense people!
robyn commented on Jul 30 10 at 9:39 amyes, kids can choke on all sorts of things, but the fact is that hot dogs are precisely the right diameter to choke a child..as are grapes and many types of candy…true, kids can “choke” on rice or water…but that is more a matter of swallowing incorrectly or “breathing in” the food (aspirating). true, parents need COMMON SENSE, but real choking (ie food completely obstructing breathing) is terrifying and heartbreaking. i say, learn cpr, and if a totally engineered food like hotdogs can be re-engineered to be safer, why not? inexplicably, kids love the darn things!
bob commented on Aug 02 10 at 10:35 amI’d like to know more about this dream of hers.
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