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Choke alert! Beware killer hot dogs

By Mark Cox
February 25, 2010 at 10:15 am

Apparently, when they talk about ‘dangerous dogs’ in America, they’re having a completely different conversation.

In a blaze of publicity, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement announcing that the tubular-shaped hot dog can present a ‘major choking hazard’ for young children. You don’t say.

Not content with stating the obvious and dissing the dog, the AAP has also put many other foods – including peanuts, whole grapes, raw carrots and apples – in the dock as ‘high-risk foods’ for unsupervised children.

Their suggestion is to ‘redesign’ the hot dog so it will be less likely to present a danger. However, this has met with short shrift from Janet Riley, President of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. (And how cool a job title is that? It’s only a short skip away from Chief of Cheese Waffles or Emperor of Doughnuts.)

Barely hiding her contempt, chipolata champion Janet retorted: “As a mother who fed my own toddlers cylindrical foods – like grapes, bananas, hot dogs and carrots – I ‘redesigned’ them in my kitchen by cutting them with a paring knife until my children were old enough to manage on their own.”

But all this ire and sausage-flinging points towards a very sombre fact: thousands of parents and carers wouldn’t have a clue what to do if a young child or baby started choking. In such a scenario, it’s only a matter of minutes before permanent brain damage and death occur – and too many children die each year in these circumstances.

However, the good news is that it’s very easy to get clued up on what to do. Visit our choking tips webpage or special children’s first aid website – or, even better, go the whole hog and sign up for a first aid training course. And once you done that, treat yourself to a hot dog. But be careful.

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Tags: emergency response, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training, red cross

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 10:15 am and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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