Will eating a hot dog shorten your life by 36 minutes?
CNN reports researchers from the University of Michigan conducted a study and found consuming the backyard barbeque favorite may take 36 minutes off your life.
The study examined 5,853 foods commonly eating in America and the effect they had on the number of minutes of life potentially gained or lost. "We wanted to make a health-based evaluation of the beneficial and detrimental impacts of the food in the entire diet," professor Olivier Jolliet, the senior author of the study, told CNN.
The study created a way to measure how a serving of food either helped someone's life or hurt it and measured the effect in minutes.
"For example, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of processed meat, or 0.1 minutes are gained per gram of fruit. We then look at the composition of each food and then multiplied this number by the corresponding food profiles that we previously developed," Professor Jolliet explained.
The researchers found an average beef hot dog, which has around 61 grams of processed meat, could cause a loss of 27 minutes of healthy life. When researchers accounted for the hot dog's sodium content and trans fatty acids, the loss was estimated to be 36 minutes.
In better news, foods like nuts, legumes, seafood, fruits, and non-starchy vegetables were reportedly found to add minutes to someone's life.
The researchers acknowledge the study is not meant to cause people to begin tabulating how long they may live in minutes based on what food items they eat, but to inspire people to make better consistent food choices.
"Is it the ultimate metric that will tell you exactly what to eat tomorrow and entirely determine your life expectancy? No," Jolliet told CNN. "It is a useful metric that can help you make more informed choices and makes it simpler to identify and make adequate small changes in our diet."
As always, moderation -- even with hot dogs -- is vital when it comes to how your diet may be affecting your overall health, so there is likely nothing to worry about if you eat a hot dog now and then, but a daily hot dog might not be the best choice!
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