OK, I want the truth! What is REALLY in hot dog meat?
People on here are ignorant. It depends GREATLY on the manufacturer of the product. I worked two years ago for a very well know company and the cuts of meats that went into the hot dogs was, I thought, a waste of good meat. I have no doubt that there are companies out there who use fillers which is the cuts of meats that aren’t any good for anything else but not all companies are like that. The worst thing about the company I worked for was that the meat wasn’t as lean as some of the other cuts. Just stick with the bigger companies and I am sure you will be fine.
“Frankfurter, Hot Dog, Wiener, or Bologna With Byproducts” or “With Variety Meats” are made according to the specifications for cooked and/or smoked sausages (see above), except they consist of not less than 15% of one or more kinds of raw skeletal muscle meat with raw meat byproducts. The byproducts (heart, kidney, or liver, for example) must be named with the derived species and be individually named in the ingredients statement.
According to www.sixwise.com “All hot dogs are cured and cooked sausages that consist of mainly pork, beef, chicken and turkey or a combination of meat and poultry. Meats used in hot dogs come from the muscle of the animal and looks much like what you buy in the grocer’s case. Other ingredients include water, curing agents and spices, such as garlic, salt, sugar, ground mustard, nutmeg, coriander and white pepper.” However, there are a couple of caveats. “Variety meats,” which include things like liver, kidneys and hearts, may be used in processed meats like hot dogs, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that they be disclosed on the ingredient label as “with variety meats” or “with meat by-products.” Further, watch out for statements like “made with mechanically separated meats (MSM).” Mechanically separated meat is “a paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separa
