Killer Hot Dogs

Killer hot dog captured in the wild.

John Lott has the straight scoop on the newest peril to "the children". Forget obesity! The kid will choke to death long before he gets fat!

"Doctors Urging for a Safer, Choke-Free Hot Dog"
Choking to death on food of any type is very rare. There are about 60 million kids under age 15 in the US. 61 choked to death on food. I don't know how many of those choked on hotdogs, but I assume that given everything that kids eat it couldn't have been that many.

Mr. Lott is an outstanding statistician. How would he rate the risk?

So how many hotdog were eaten each year? Apparently about 9 billion!

Suppose that children eat hotdogs in proportion to their share of the population. That would be about 1.8 billion hotdogs (that may be high or low, but take it as a rough guess). If all choking deaths from food were due to hotdogs, that is 61/1.8 billion, a 0.0000034 percent rate. You are probably at more risk crossing a street.

I'm thinking the government should mandate "Pâté dogs"!

(I realize that the death of children is a serious subject. I raised five children, and I was concerned with each and every one of them and the possibility that they might choke on their food. At no time, though, did it enter my head that the government had a responsibility to cut my children's meat for them.)