Community Chat

[qualitygal]

I've seen that about the hot dogs.  We rarely have them.  I'm not crazy about them. Burgers yes.

by the way, sugar feeds cancer cells. As long as we're talking "dangerous foods".

[beckyb1012]

I only get one around the same time as the OP.  But her photo sure does not look like any Sonic chili cheese dog I have ever had.  If I had that place in my town I would have way too many of those 35 minutes off my life at this point.

[Sooner]

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@Melbalee wrote:
I dont know but when I had my colon test the Dr told me not to eat red meat. I was surprised.

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@Melbalee That's a sweeping statement.  There is such a difference in red meats.  There is greasy, fatty, lean, well-raised, not-so-much well raised, etc. etc.  

Turkey and chicken can be fatty and bad for you.  Pork can be extremely fatty or lean. . . to me it's about choices you make in quality, quantity, and how often you eat most things.  Even fish--you have to be careful with what you choose. 

[LyndaGee]

I like the Morningstar meatless ones.  To me, they taste just as good.  Guess if you put enough Sauerkraut, mustard, relish ...

[ID2]

Oh please! Who believes a statement that every hotdog you eat takes away 35 mins of your life? Why not 25 mins, or 3 hours? Insanity! 

[qualitygal]

Remember the song "The hokey pokey"?  That's how it feels with these food reports. One week, it's ok, next week it's not, then it's ok again, and then it's not.  That's what it's all about!  woo hoo.  LOL  Did they say who was this study about?

[Mominohio]

I saw/heard the same 'reporting' about this and I simply ignore it, it's simply stating the obvious, like we don't already know that hot dogs aren't good for you. I hate the scare tactics. 

People choose what they want to eat, how much and when (at least for now, but I'm sure that freedom is on the line too). It's great to be informed about nutritional science, but the bottom line is what people choose to eat or not eat is up to them, and rating how many minutes/days/years it takes off one's life is simply ridiculous. How many of us know more than one advanced age person in the 90 plus category that never eats well and never did. I know quite a few. And I know they are glad they didn't abstain from every little treat they were told would kill them. 

For me, life is about balance. Others choose which end of the spectrum they want to live on. 

[qualitygal]

@Mominohio  think it's time to live on the edge, what say you?  LOL

[icezeus]

Well I took 35 minutes off my life this past Saturday. I went through Sonic's drive thru for a drink. I actually think that their food is awful, but for whatever reason when I saw a picture of a Chili Dog with cheese I had to have it. 

[Porcelain]

I looked up the study. It's completely different than the headlines are showing. It's about many foods and how eating patterns can add or subtract minutes of healthy life from your life. As opposed to minutes spent being sick or otherwise unhealthy, not dead. And it's lots of different foods, not just hotdogs. And in their unique way of representing the info, healthier foods add minutes of healthy life to your life.

News outlets just glommed onto the hotdog part as a fun addition to their hotdog eating competition footage, in my opinion. We don't need to take it seriously as diet advice about hotdogs in particular.

Here's the abstract from the study, which emphasizes environmental sustainability as well as eating patterns.

"To identify environmentally sustainable foods that promote health, we combined nutritional health-based and 18 environmental indicators to evaluate, classify and prioritize individual foods. Specifically for nutrition, we developed the Health Nutritional Index to quantify marginal health effects in minutes of healthy life gained or lost of 5,853 foods in the US diet, ranging from 74 min lost to 80 min gained per serving. Environmental impacts showed large variations and were found to be correlated with global warming, except those related to water use. Our analysis also indicated that substituting only 10% of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meat for fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and selected seafood could offer substantial health improvements of 48 min gained per person per day and a 33% reduction in dietary carbon footprint."

Oddly enough, "HOTDOGS WILL KILL YA!!!! RUN AND HIDE!!!!" is nowhere in there. They just say to eat more veggies and healthy stuff instead in order to be healthier.