A hot dog a day...

I have a friend who eats atleast one of those jumbo 100% beef hot dogs + bun a day. One hot dog has 15g of fat and 6g saturated. How would eating one of those daily effect her health? If she eats plenty of fruits and vegetables etc will it counter it some? I'm kind of worried for her health and curious about the effects of hot dogs daily would have. Any one have any opinions?

Whether it has a positive or negative effect on her health is really dependent on what else her diet consists of and what she'd replace the hotdog with.  If all she eats is cake/chips/cookies then a hotdog a day would make her diet healthier.  If all she eats is grass fed beef, broccoli and milk then it would make her diet less healthy.

Ideally, saturated fat should be kept at a minimum but 6g isn't dangerously high. One hot dog a day isn't going to kill anyone. (Having said that, I think hot dogs and sausages are the most disgusting "food" anyone could consume & wouldn't recommend them to anyone.)

Yeah! In my opinion, if she eats alright anyway, that's fine! Gehehe, bi-product, processed, economy meat is my weakness :D

honestly, i wouldn't be worried about the fat so much as the sodium in hot dogs...i don't think one daily hotdog in an otherwise healthy diet would be harmful

If that hot dog is preventing her from eating a loaded cheeseburger or a family-sized bag of chips or something, then it's definitely the better option.

If she limits herself to one, and eats well the rest of the time, then you should be praising her for her restraint and moderation. She's doing better than 99% of the rest of the population, and she really won't have any health problems.

I don't raelly think it's your business wheather or not your friend eats a particular food. o.O It's always going to be the overal affect of someone's diet that could indicate any real health problems...but like I said, probably still not your business. :l

It's hard to tell what foods are good or bad for you now a days. Foods are in the news one day as being great for your health and then next in the news saying it will kill you. I hear a lot of bad things about hot dogs so it's one of those foods I am always confused about.

joanne811, I think it's great that I care about my friend and I myself am curious about what effect hot dogs have on a persons health. I like hot dogs too, not just her.

A nice grilled hot dog is actually one of my diversions of choice.  I don't know about every day though.  But when a weekend rolls around and I take a little break, a hot dog on the grill with some spicy mustard and some relish (about 300 calories total) doesn't hurt a thing.

As has already been mentioned, the real question is: what is the rest of the diet?  If a healthy eater otherwise, there are worse things than hot dogs.

There's a great section in Michael Pollan's excellent 'In Defense of Food' which illustrates how our perceptions of healthy and unhealthy get skewed with trends and the latest nutrition advice.   In a study a group of Americans were asked to pick from a list of different foods which one would keep them in the best health if abandoned on a desert island with only this one food to eat...

I wish I had the book with me and could quote the chapter, but the choices were something like hot dogs, bananas, apples, beanshoots, chocolates... quite a few others besides.  The participants (influenced by healthy eating advice) all chose things like bananas, apples and beanshoots.  When, in fact, the two foods that would actually keep them alive & kicking the longest would have been the hotdogs and chocolate.... and these got the fewest votes!!!  (For anyone scratching their head, the fruit and beanshoots would contain insufficient nutrients and energy)

So don't worry too much about your friend.  It takes years and years of deliberately eating rubbish, sitting around doing nothing, getting obese and maybe taking up smoking or heavy drinking as a hobby to permanently damage someone's health.  But yes, do encourage her to start trying different foods!!!