Just What are Hot Dogs Made of? About Hot Dog Nutrition

A new billboard in Indianapolis compares hots dogs to cigarettes, so what are hot dogs made of? How many calories are in a hot dog? Are hot dogs really bad for you?

How Many Calories in a Hot Dog?

One part of this question is easy. A standard 57 gram hot dog has 188 calories.  Of course since it's usually served on a white bread bun, which has little nutrition and 110 calories, plus about 50+ calories in condiments, you're looking at about 350 calories in a hot dog.

Hot Dog Nutrition

The calories in a typical hot dog aren't really the problem as a typical hamburger is about 400 (This isn't counting supersizing anything, either the hot dog or the burger.) A hot dog's nutrition contains:

13 grams of fat, which is about 150 calories out of the whole
5 grams of protein
513 mg of sodium (you need less than 2300 grams of sodium a day, 1500 if you're a over age 51)


What are Hot Dogs Made of? Hot Dog Ingredients

The hot dog nutrition shows it's mostly fat and sodium but that probably isn't enough to convince most people that a hot dog isn't good for them. What are hot dogs other ingredients?

Contrary to rumors about hot dogs, they don't contain tails, hooves and snouts of pigs or meat that was thrown on the cutting room floor. You can get got dogs made of pork, chicken, turkey or all beef. Meat fat is added, plus cereal filler to bind it together, along with egg white and seasonings. This is put into a casing and precooked, packaged and sent out to stores.

The hot dog nutrition above doesn't sound so bad either, does it? However, it isn't the meat and other ingredients which make hot dogs bad for us but the preservatives, ingredients such as sodium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate and the nitrates and nitrites found in not only hot dogs, but any cured meat like bacon, ham, sausage and lunch meats. Some studies have found that there is a link between nitrates and cancer but other studies don't support that.

Nitrates, in fact, also occur naturally in fruits and vegetables. However, in the presence of protein, like meat, they are more likely to be converted into a harmful substance in the body. In the presence of Vitamin C, such as the case with fruits and veggies, they appear to be harmless.

More on the Health Risk of Nitrates

Are Hot Dogs Good for You?

The bottom line is that, unless you consume hot dogs, along with cold cuts every day, you probably aren't at an increased risk of developing cancer from eating hot dogs. However, as with anything, moderation is the key.

If you do choose to enjoy a hot dog now and then, make sure you also consume plenty of fruits and vegetables during the day. If you're pregnant, I'd suggest avoiding hot dogs altogether. Some studies have linked eating hot dogs during pregnancy to brain tumors in babies and why take the chance? Also, if you have kids, buy them the nitrate free hot dogs.

If you opt for "all natural hot dogs" be sure to read the label, as they may still contain the typical hot dog ingredients such assodium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbat.

The bottom line on what are hot dogs made of and are they good for you depends on what sort of health and diet decisions you make on a daily basis. In our family, we've cut out all cold cuts, hot dogs and bacon because of the ingredients and the fat content. We're trying to eat a more natural diet of organic meats, fruits and veggies and hot dog nutrition just doesn't fit in for us.

I realize that these days, many parents have trouble just putting food on the table at all and if the kids get hot dogs a couple times a week, at least they are eating. If this is you, just try and make sure you save a little room in the budget for fruits like apples or oranges and veggies like carrots and peas. Most kids will eat those as well. Just do the best you can, one small decision at a time.


Read about the Indianapolis billboard comparing hot dogs to cigarettes.

Don't Have Time to Fix a Salad? Try Shakeology

Recently, my daughter got me started on Shakeology. What is Shakeology? It's a nutritious shake with 70 healthy ingredients in a glass. It's an easy and convenient way to get superfoods into your daily diet. Foods like gogi and acai berry, spinach, wheatgrass, blueberries, cherries, raspberries and many more.

Add up what you'd spend at the grocery store to buy all of these superfoods. Then think about the time it takes to keep them fresh and prepare them. Based on this information alone, you might think Shakeology shakes would be very expensive but they are surprisingly affordable. Plus, with your first order of Shakeology, you get the Shakeology workout cd's as well. With the combination of super nutrition and exercise, you lose weight and feel great!

What are the benefits of Shakeology?

Shakeology can help you lose or maintain your weight and many users report lower cholesterol, more energy and improved digestion.

Shakeology is low on the glycemic index, which, as any dieter or diabetic knows, shows that ingredients are metabolized slowly, without raising blood sugar. This shake scored a 24 on the glycemic index which is important for helping to regulate blood sugar and lose weight.

Here's a video about the glycemic index.

Shakeology is affordable - Where else can you get 70 super healthy foods for such a low price? Plus, there are other ways to save on Shakeology. Join the Home Direct program and receive free shipping. Join the Beach Body fitness club and receive a 10% discount on all products.

Shakeology is convenient. Just add to milk, juice or water, shake and drink. You can also make smoothie recipes with shakeology by adding bananas or other fruit, yogurt or just about anything.

You get a 30 day, money back guarantee from Beach Body. If for any reason, you decide Shakeology isn't for you, your money will be refunded. I can vouch for Beach Body's terrific customer service. I had a question about an order and it was answered and resolved quickly and cheerfully.

Would you like to know more about Shakeology? Watch this information video about where Shakeology ingredients come from.




I f you feel you don't have time to eat the way you should or if you'd like to lose some weight following a healthy eating program, try Shakeology today. You'll be glad you did.

Read more about getting superfoods into your daily diet.

Read about the top 10 antiaging foods by WomenFitness.net You'll find many of these antiaging foods in a Shakeology Shake.

Raw Food Recipes - It's Easier Than You Think

When we started drinking green smoothies a few months ago, I decided we should follow a raw food diet more often. My husband won't give up meat, but that doesn't mean we can't have bigger salads and raw food snacks. Once you collect your ingredients, making raw food snack recipes is very easy. You can even make up your own.

I started out with the book Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body by Stephanie Tourles, who also wrote Organic Body Care Recipes: 175 Homemade Herbal Formulas In Raw Energy, Stephanie has a great chapter on "raw food basics" which offers great info on digestive enzymes, organic food, the value of snacking and how you can make snacks a part of your day to increase energy.

The next chapter covers all the "how to" of the raw food diet. What foods you should have on hand and what equipment you need, such as a dehydrator and a food processor, which is also a must for green smoothies. After much research I decided to purchase a Vitamix but there are several good ones out there.

For many raw snack recipes you only need a bowl, a spoon and the ingredients, which includes nuts, dried fruit and something like raw peanut butter or almond butter to hold everything together in a ball. Refrigerate your raw snack for 24 hours and they keep in the frig for about 2 weeks - if they last that long.

Once I made a few of the raw snack recipes in the book, I was able to make up my own recipes, using various ingredients like oatmeal and flax seed.

As the name implies, though, Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks also has recipes for delicious raw food smoothies made of fruits and veggies, juice blends, raw food bars and granola. Your kids will love these healthy snacks and recipes. They make nutritious additions to your kid's school lunches too.

The Vitamix website offers great recipes and information on green smoothies and the raw food diet. If you find a Vitamix is a good purchase for your family, you can also get free shipping with this link - a $25 value!

Find more information on beginning a raw food diet.

How Much Sugar Are You Consuming? - How to Read a Food Label

Since I learned how to read a food label, I have become pretty avid about it. What I've found has been shocking in that foods that are advertised as good for you contain massive amounts of sugar and chemicals, such as MSG, which are harmful. Ingredients on a food label are listed in the order of you find in many supermarket foods. Check the cereal your children are eating. What are the first ingredients? If sugar is number one or two, this is not a healthy cereal for your family.

How to Read a Food Label to Determine Sugar Content

Ingredients are listed in order of amount that the food contains. As an example, for a cereal, what you would like to see on the label listed first is whole grains of some sort, with sugar far down on the list.

Another way to check for sugar is to look for the sugar amount per serving. Kellogg's Fruit Loops has 15 grams of sugar per serving, while Cheerios contains just one gram. To see how much sugar your cereal contains, go to "How Much Sugar is in Your Cereal?" for a comprehensive listing.

Be aware too, when reading labels, that sugar hides under many different names - all of them still sugar. Here are some other names for sugar you'll find on food labels:

• Corn Syrup
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Corn Sweetener
• Brown Rice Syrup
• Dextrose
• Molasses
• Malt syrup
• Lactose
• Maltose
• Rice syrup
• Tapioca syrup
• Fructose
• Fruit juice concentrate

Also keep in mind that natural sweeteners such as honey are still sugar, although they do contain some vitamins and minerals.

How many grams of sugar should your or your children eat per day? The answer is - as little as possible but for women not more than 25 grams of sugar daily and for men, not more than 38 grams daily. How much sugar you can eat and still maintain health depends on age and weight so children need considerably less, especially of artificial sweeteners, which serve as rocket fuel in their blood streams.

Excess sugar in our daily diets contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, tooth decay, premature wrinkles and much much more.

How do I avoid sugar in the diet?

The best way to avoid sugar in your diet is to avoid packaged, processed foods and focus on whole natural foods lie whole grains, fruits and veggies. In our cereal example, for instance, choose oatmeal or other whole grain cereals that you cook. If you really need sweetener, choose a little honey or stevia, a natural plant sweetener with zero calories and no known side effects.

Try some of these delicious natural food recipes:

Raw Energy Recipes

Perfect Health, the Natural Way

It isn't easy to avoid sugar in your diet but it can be done with a little planning and effort. For your family's sake, it's well worth it!


For more information on reading food labels, visit usda.gov/ or AskDrSears.

Benefits of Green Foods in Your Diet

Did you know that Green foods can boost your immunity to illness, help fight cancer and other diseases and help keep your bones strong? These are just a few of the health benefits of green foods. Another great benefit is that green food products are easy and convenient to use daily. Add a scoop to your daily smoothie, to a glass of juice or water, for a powerful green nutritional punch.

Green foods increase your immunity to illness

Green foods are an excellent source of chlorophyll, which help fight disease like colds, flu and even HIV. Chlorophyll containing Spirulina and cholorella helps to increase circulation, boost immunity and eliminate wastes from the blood stream.

Green Foods help fight cancer and other diseases naturally

One of the benefits of green foods is that they are loaded with antioxidants, iron, beta-carotene and gamma-linolenic acid, or GLA, with is a source of omega 6 fatty acid which is being studied for it's anti-cancer properties. The nutrients in green foods help protect the body from Alzheimer's, heart disease and more.


Green foods build strong bones

High acidity in foods like processed foods and animal protein can leach calcium from our bones. Green foods are very alkaline, which helps counteract the high acidity. Green foods also contain calcium and magnesium, nutrients which help create strong bones. The Vitamin K in Green foods also helps circulate blood calcium into the bones.

There are many green food products out there - So which one is the best? Here are some recommendations, which can be purchased through Amazon.com:

Barlean's Organic Oils Barlean's Greens, 9.3oz, 9.3oz Bottle - Barleans offers 100%, pure green food nutrients in convenient powdered form. Add to your daily smoothie, stir into yogurt, juice or water.

Garden of Life - Perfect Food Raw Organic, 240 g powder - Contains 37 nutrient dense, raw organic ingredients

Nature's Plus Spiru-Tein High Protein Energy Meal, Vanilla 2.4 Pounds - Spiru-Tein comes in many delicious flavors to make a great smoothie drink. Green foods, such as spirulina are included.

Spirulina Pacifica 400 tabs - You can also get spirulina in convenient tablet form to take daily.

One delicious scoop of green foods can get your day on the way to health and long term benefits are many for those who would like to avoid so-called "age-related" disease.

More information on Green Foods from Dr. Andrew Weil

For more healthy weightloss tips, visit my website Path2HealthyLiving.com

100 Healthy Living Tips #11 - Enjoy the Health Benefits of Ginger

Ginger is a powerful herb with great health benefits, plus it's easy to find, affordable and tasty. Adding ginger to your daily diet helps reduce inflammation which causes arthtitis and joint pain, heart disease, allergies, ulcerative colitis and more. Ginger also aids good digestion and has been used as a treatment for digestive ailments, such as diarrhea, nausea and gas.

Ginger is also a warming herb and is used in Chinese medicine to reduce fever, reduce the congestion of a cold and sooth tired muscles.

What's the Best Kind of Ginger?

Ginger can easily be found in teas, powder and fresh. Fresh is the best type of ginger and is available in the veggie section of your local supermarket. Fresh unpeeled ginger keeps about 3 weeks in the frig.

How to make Ginger Tea?

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan.

Peel a 2-inch piece of ginger and slice into very thin strips. Add these to the boiling water.

Reduce heat  and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Strain out the strips of ginger and enjoy.

Add honey and lemon to taste.

Ginger is also great in recipes.Click here for a list of delicious ways to add ginger to your daily menus.

Other Immune boosting tips and recipes

100 Healthy Living Tips #9 - Add Heart Healthy Oils to Your Diet

Evidence is piling up that healthy fats are essential to good health. They help protect your body from age-related diseases like heart disease and arthritis and high blood pressure and cholesterol. So which fats are heart healthy? The oils which contain unsaturated fats such as olive oil, flax oil, walnut, peanut and grapeseed oils help you stay healthy and contain omega 3 and omega 9 fatty acids. An added bonus is that these oils provide a wonderful variety of tastes for any cook.

So today's healthy living tip is to replace less healthy oils, like vegetable oil and corn oil, with these healthier oil alternatives.

So what is the best way to use these heart healthy oils? My two favorite oils are olive oil and grapeseed oil, which offer different flavors and different ways t use them.

1.  Olive Oil - Look for Extra Virgin or cold pressed. Contrary to popular beliefs, olive oil shouldn't be used for cooking at high heat as it looses important flavor and nutrients. Instead use olive oil in salad dressing, as a condiment to dip your bread and other low temperature uses. Olive oil contains Omega 9 oils a healthy
monounsaturated fat which is important in your diet.

Make a healthier salad by making your own salad dressing.


2. Grapeseed Oil is a wonderful oil for oil because it has a very high smoke temp (480°F/250°C for refined oil) so it is resistant to break down during cooking. Grapeseed oil can be used in Chinese stir fry and in place of peanut oil. Grapeseed oils is high in polyunsaturates and anti-oxidants which helps it to resist becoming rancid better than many vegetable oils.

Read more about the health benefits of grapeseed oil. 

3.  Flaxseed oil is most often sold as a food supplement and not for cooking. It contains an Omega-3 fatty acid called alfa-linolenic acid.

4.  Walnut Oil - Should also be used for low heat cooking applications and salad dressings. Adds a deliciously nutty flavor and is loaded with omega 3 fatty acids.

5.  Peanut Oil - Has a light flavor which doesn't detract from recipe flavorings and can be used in Chinese cooking. Peanut Oil has a high smoke point so can be used in high temperature cooking but is lower in polyunsaturated fats than grapeseed oil.

One thing to remember in adding fats to your diet is that although essential to good health, whether they are heart-healthy or not, they do add the same amount of calories to your daily diet.



Check out our other 100 Healthy Living Tips. More are added daily.

Healthy Weightloss Tips Video

Here's an inspiration weightloss video from Gaiam.com with some simple weightloss tips. It only takes a minute to watch. Gaiam also offers articles, forums and a supportive community for yoga, meditation, fitness and more.

Healthy weightloss should be more about a lifestyle change than going on a "diet." If you're dieting, it implies eating a certain way is a temporary thing. When you're done with the diet, you back to your old eating habits. This isn't the way to permanent weight loss.

If you think about eating healthy, more fruits and veggies, lean meat proteins, smaller portions, cutting out unhealthy fats and sugars - these should be permanent changes, not short term. That's not to say you can't have an occasional piece of chocolate cake or eat a huge meal at Thanksgiving, but overall, healthy weightloss means a change in lifestyle.

You CAN do it! Make healthy eating fun. Try new recipes, learn to use herbs and spices to make foods more delicious, visit your local farmer's market to see what delicious fruits and veggies you can incorporate into your meals. Your body will love you for it and your weight will just naturally stay where it should be with little extra effort from you.

Try these healthy weightloss tips from Gaiam.com and see how easy it can be.

Check out Gaiam’s Fitness Center and save 10% off $75, 15% off $100 and 20% off $125

Healthy Living Tips - Skip the Exercise by Skipping the Sugar

If you're like me, you may not be that crazy about sticking to an exercise program, even an easy exercise program. I want to be healthy and I'm not really anti-exercise, it simply means that I find the effort needed to get physically fit is usually very inconvenient at best. With work and families, life is super busy and taking the time to exercise regularly is not necessarily something we can always do.

Believe it or not, I am actually in the best shape of my life and it doesn't have anything to do with exercising at all. By making a few smart choices along the way, you can get physically fit and stay healthy, even without an official exercise program.

One of the easiest healthy living tips is to totally cut sugar out of your life. Although this is impractical to some extent, you can't imagine the health benefits that you can get by following this one health tip.

The easiest way to eat less sugar is to eat according to the glycemic index. This is a list of carbohydrate foods, arranged according to how quickly the sugars contained within them are dumped into our bloodstream. If you stick to the goods on the low end of the glycemic index, you can eat about as much as you want to. You won't be hungry and you won't suffer from the highs and lows caused by eating sugar.

Along with making eating foods the low on the glycemic index, you should be eating a protein at every meal. Vegetables are notoriously low in calories and in order for us to keep our metabolism running strong, we need to eat calories. Protein helps you build and maintain your muscle mass, even if you are losing weight.

Of course, healthy living does involve doing a little bit of exercise along with eating the proper way but you don't need to hit the gym on a regular basis in order to experience these benefits. Simple tasks like gardening and housework also burn calories. Just try to stay as active as possible in your everyday life. The benefits of doing so will be evident whenever you look in the mirror.