July is National Hot Dog Month and we thought it would be fun to explore some facts about one of America’s favorite foods:
• On Independence Day, Americans are expected to enjoy 150 million hot dogs. That’s enough to stretch from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles more than five times!
• A standard beef hot dog has 190 calories and offers 7 grams of protein. It also has 30 percent of our Daily Value of Vitamin B12 – a crucial nutrient for normal metabolism, brain development in children, and mental clarity in adults.
• Hot dogs were first sold at baseball games in 1893.
• The world’s longest hot dog was 668 feet long. That’s long enough to cover two football fields!
• More hot dogs are consumed in Los Angeles than in any other city.
• Hot dogs were one of the first foods to be eaten on the moon.
• Each year, consumers spend more than $3 billion on hot dogs in U.S. supermarkets.
• Mickey Mouse’s first on screen words were “Hot Dog!”
• Wienerschnitzel is the world’s largest hot dog chain with 358 locations, and serves more than 120 million hot dogs per year.
• A prime spot outside of New York’s Central Park Zoo costs hot dog vendors nearly $300,000 per year.
• Frankfurt, Germany, claims to be the originator of the hot dog and they celebrated the hot dog’s 500th birthday in 1987.
• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ate a hot dog during his visit to the U.S. in 1959, and admitted that the Americans had the Soviets beat at sausage making.
• In the movie “Sudden Impact”, Dirty Harry said, “Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog!” (Please don’t tell him that I do!