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Fixing the Design of the Hot Dog, Part II

By Bruce Carton

Eric Lipman told you here back in February about the scourge that is the design of the hot dog. In February, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement on Prevention of Choking Among Children that identified the hot dog as the food on which children are most likely to choke and die. The AAP even called for a redesign of the hot dog to make it safer for kids. Apparently that was all Eugene D. Gagliardi, Jr. needed to hear, and he leaped into action. Consumerist reports that Gagliardi -- a food designer who is credited with inventing Steak-umms (genius!) and popcorn chicken -- has come forward with a new, patented hot dog with eight slits that open during cooking. This causes the hot dog to easily break up into smaller pieces, "potentially reducing the likelihood that a child could choke on it." You see, Gagliardi's hot dog invention ... comprises an elongated food product having a central axis extending along its length and two portions, a segmented portion comprised of at least two segments that are separable from each other, and an unsegmented portion which is substantially contiguous to the segmented portion. A consumer's biting into the...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on May 27, 2010 (boomark / email).