A hot dog is not a sandwich, proclaimed the authorities – aka National Hot Dog and Sausage Council – after a debate broke out last week on the proper status of the weenie.
The question played out on social media, NBC's "Today" Show and ESPN. Here's a sampling:
"You really can argue it both ways, which is of course what gives the debate so much, er, meat," said Garber. "On the one hand, hot dogs, structurally, hew to that most sandwichy of arrangements: They are processed protein, surrounded by processed carbohydrate. On the other hand, though, hot dogs are cylindrical, rather than sandwichily prismatic, in shape."
"And vertical, rather than horizontal, in orientation. Oh, and there’s the broad fact that we don't call them sandwiches, which might suggest that the matter, ongoing debates notwithstanding, has already been settled," she said.
The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council tried to give the definitive answer Friday with its own
statement, saying that "a hot dog is an exclamation of joy, a food, a verb describing one 'showing off' and even an emoji. It is truly a category unto its own."
"Limiting the hot dog's significance by saying it's 'just a sandwich' is like calling the Dalai Lama 'just a guy,'" said Janet Riley, president of the council. "Perhaps at one time its importance could be limited by forcing it into a larger sandwich category (no disrespect to Reuben's and others), but that time has passed."
Ted Berg, of
USA Today's For The Win blog, calls this, well, bologna, charging that a hot dog is indeed a sandwich.
"No reasonable human being could ever argue that a serving of franks and beans is a sandwich," Berg wrote. "But when served between pieces of any sort of bread — sandwiched, you might even say — then there should really be no doubt. It's a protein served inside bread, with or without condiments. That's like the purest form of sandwich."