The Hot Dog Needs a Redesign

Despite the warning labels, the leading culprit in children choking isn’t the toy with small parts; it’s the hot dog. "If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child's airway, it would be a hot dog," says an emergency-room pediatrician leading a push for hot dogs to be slapped with warning labels—and “redesigned” so they don’t get stuck so easily in kids’ throats, USA Today reports.

Not everyone agrees with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ call for warning labels and redesign. “As a mother who has fed toddlers cylindrical foods like grapes, bananas, hot dogs and carrots, I 'redesigned' them in my kitchen by cutting them with a paring knife,” a hot dog industry spokeswoman said. And a healthy eating advocate said, “the last thing we need is to redesign candy and junk food with cool shapes.” (More hot dogs stories.)