This is How You Drum Up Business

On my commute into work this morning we were pulling into the train station and an advertisement caught my eye. The ad had a picture of someone that looked like the guy from the old Dunkin Donuts commercials - the one that says, "Time to make the donuts." So the billboard has a picture of the D and D guy holding two hotdogs with the works - ketchup, mustard, relish, kraut, onions. These dogs look tasty, even at 7a.m. But beyond the hotdogs looking good I actually read the billboard, and it read: "Want cancer with that? Call us to join in our hotdog lawsuit."

So, I started thinking about it, and 1.) I don't think anyone serving a dirty water dog is actually going to offer this a topping, and 2.) I don't think anyone ordering a dog would actually want cancer on top of their meal. Besides, do hotdogs really cause cancer? As we all know, I am not about to use WebMD as my source for performing this research, this time I am going to use the master of the universe search engine - Google.

The first link that pops up is file://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/food/hotdogs and this seems like a reasonable site to use given its name. As I read through the document there is one sentence that catches my eye, "Do other foods contain nitrites?" Nitrites are believed to be the cancer causing agents found in hotdogs…and in all other cured meats, bacon, and fish. Holy smokes…Slim Jims cause cancer? I mean Slim Jims are cured meat aren't they - and therefore contain nitrites. By the way, the Tabasco flavored Jims are awesome, nitrites or not - those are staying in my diet. I'll cut out bacon, that's easy.

So back to this billboard, 450 hot dogs are eaten every second of every day in the U.S. according to a fellow blogger's blog at http://everydaymatters-patricia.blogspot.com/2008/07/hot-diggity-dog.html and Americans eat 4 million pounds of bacon each day. So why is the billboard singling out hotdogs? Why not have D and D guy with a slab of bacon? Here's why:

• A hotdog weighs 90 grams
• There are 453 grams in a pound
• Americans eat 450 hot dogs per second
• There are 60 seconds in a minute
• This equals 27,000 hot dogs eaten every minute
• There are 60 minutes in an hour
• Therefore 1,620,000 hotdogs are gulped down per hour
• By my calculations there are 24 hours in a day
• 38,880,000 hot dogs digested by Americans each day
• This many hotdogs times 90 grams equals 3,499,200,000 grams of hot dogs
• Which equates to 7,724,503 pounds of hot dogs eaten each day
  

Compare this to the mere 4 million pounds of bacon and you have your answer. I am joining the hotdog lawsuit revolution.

PTFP: 7 in. (I should probably start stretching)