The Average Hot Dog Is Consumed In 6.1 Bites

National Hot Dog Day in July celebrates a summertime staple on a bun. Enjoy one piping hot and add some relish and mustard to go! One thing we want to know – is it a sandwich or not? Find the answer here

This day pays homage to the frankfurter, the footlong or wienie, wiener, wienerwurst or even red hot. They taste just as great no matter what we call it.

• Over 25 million hot dogs are sold at baseball stadiums each year.
• That’s enough to circle the bases 36,000 times.
• 7-Eleven sells the most grilled hot dogs in North America – 100 million annually.
• Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as far back as the 9th Century B.C.
• The average hot dog is consumed in 6.1 bites. (average-sized mouth tested)
• From Memorial Day to Labor Day every year, Americans typically consume 7 billion hot dogs. That’s 818 hot dogs consumed every second.
• According to the National Sausage and Hot Dog Council, the most commonly used condiment is mustard which is the topping preferred by 32% of Americans.  The second-place finisher, with 23% of the vote is ketchup and chili takes the third-place spot with 17% of the vote.
• The true origin of the hot dog is a mystery.
• Frankfurt, Germany claims to be the originator of the hot dog and celebrated the hot dog’s 500th birthday in 1987
• There are various theories about where the name “hot dog” actually came from.  The most common attribution, however, is to a cartoonist named Tad Dorgan, who drew a cartoon depicting the “hot dachshund sausages” being sold at a New York baseball game and called them “hot dogs” because he could not spell dachshund.
• In 2018, consumers spent more than $3 billion on hot dogs in U.S. supermarkets
• Los Angeles residents consume more hot dogs than any other city
• A hot dog is a sausage but a sausage isn’t necessarily a hot dog
• Miller Park in Milwaukee is the only Major League Baseball ballpark that sells more sausages than hot dogs per season
• Mickey Mouse’s first on-screen words were “Hot Dog!”
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs to King George and Queen Elizabeth. The king ate two
• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ate a hot dog during the first visit of a Soviet Premier to the US in 1959 and admitted that Americans had the Soviets beat at sausage making
• In 1871, Charles Feltman, a German-American restaurateur opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand selling 3,684 dachshund sausages in a milk roll during his first year in business.
• In 1893, sausages became the standard fare at baseball parks.
• The year, 1893, was an important date in hot dog history. In Chicago that year, the World’s Columbian Exposition brought hordes of visitors who consumed large quantities of sausages sold by vendors. People liked this food that was easy to eat, convenient and inexpensive.
• The average weight of a fully loaded baseball park hot dog vendor’s bin is 40 pounds
• Miller Park in Milwaukee is the only Major League Baseball ballpark that sells more sausages than hot dogs per season
• The man most responsible for popularizing the hot dog in the United States was Nathan Handwerker, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. An immigrant from Eastern Europe, he and his wife Ida borrowed $300 from friends to start their business on Coney Island in 1916. By the Depression, Nathan’s hot dogs were known throughout the United States.
• Nathan’s hot dogs were reportedly gangster Al Capone’s favorite food.
• The popular restaurant chain Carl’s Jr started as a hot dog cart on July 17, 1941, in Los Angeles.
• On July 4th, Americans consume about 70 million hot dogs. That, too, is a lot of hot dogs! If you laid out all of these hot dogs end-to-end, they would stretch from D.C. to L.A., more than five times over!
• The average American eats 60 hot dogs per year, which is more than 20 billion hot dogs consumed nationally each year.
• NASA has approved hot dogs as a regular item on Apollo moon flights, Skylab missions and space shuttle flights.
• According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC), Americans purchase 9 billion hot dogs per year from grocery stores!
• Adding in what would be consumed at restaurants or ballparks, the NHDSC estimates that the total number consumed in a year is approximately 20 billion hot dogs!
• There’s a reason hot dogs and their buns don’t match. When hot dogs were first sold in the United States, they were not sold in grocery stores. So, for the hot dog cooks ordering wholesale quantities, ten seemed like a natural choice for packaging. When wholesale bun and roll bakeries started to bake the matching buns, they worked with pans that baked long rolls in groups of four that are then stacked to make eight – not ten.
• Los Angeles residents consume more hot dogs than any other city.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in baseball stadiums.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in football stadiums.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in basketball stadiums.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

National Hot Dog and Sausage Council

Mobile-Cuisine

Hot-Dog

Just Fun Facts

Potato Rolls

The Hot Dog