Jamie Loftus is an Emmy-nominated comic and author. She’s beforehand labored as a author for exhibits like Robot Chicken, Teenage Euthanasia, and Star Trek: Lower Decks. She can be an award-winning host and producer of investigative podcasts like My Year in Mensa, Lolita Podcast, Aack Cast, and Ghost Church.
Below, Jamie shares 5 key insights from her new guide, Raw Dog: A Naked History of Hot Dogs. Listen to the audio version—read by Jamie herself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Every meals story is a labor story.
The meals tales we inform one another are inclined to skew private or cultural. That’s why each Food Network present you’ve ever watched with a fever opens with the chef telling you that it is a soup their grandma used to make, it is a hoagie their husband cherished earlier than he disappeared below mysterious circumstances one morning, that is the dessert that makes them really feel closest to their nation of origin from a thousand miles away.
What I hardly ever see mentioned is the labor concerned in getting us these meals, labor that’s usually underpaid and overworked. This was one of many first main elements of the recent canine that’s hardly ever written about. But it’s simply as related because the fuzzy feeling or bizarro style of the dish. The sizzling canine tells a narrative of sophistication, of CEOs exploiting manufacturing facility labor, busting unions, and discriminating in opposition to a majority poor and immigrant workforce, allegedly in order that the product can stay low-cost. There have been only a few enhancements in meatpacking factories since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle prompted modifications in legislation towards animals and laborers within the early 1900s. Looking on the horrific, fully authorities and corporation-sanctioned situations wherein meatpacking staff had been pressured to show themselves to COVID-19 lengthy earlier than a vaccine was out there turned my abdomen.
The factor is, working situations don’t must be like this for the recent canine to stay inexpensive. What could be essential is for CEOs to be much less predatory and grasping about their private income, and permit the once-strong unions within the meatpacking sector to rebuild. There is an moral and inexpensive solution to devour a sizzling canine, however you’d by no means understand it from the shamelessness with which most American firms deal with their staff.
2. Every sizzling canine origin story you’ve heard is made up.
There are a slew of sizzling canine origin tales. There’s the one on the baseball recreation the place the seller gave out little white gloves to carry a sizzling sausage earlier than realizing maybe a bun would work higher. There’s the one the place the recent canine and the recent canine cart had been invented on the identical day. There’s additionally the one the place it was too wet for ice cream and peanuts and a concession stand proprietor improvised. All lies, however they sound fairly good, proper?
“The reality is far more collective.”
All these business myths have two issues in frequent: they happen within the early 1900s, and so they depend on one man pulling himself up by his bootstraps and prompting a sizzling canine empire. It’s a fantasy we see quite a bit in the present day, whether or not it’s Bill Gates beginning Microsoft out of a storage or Elon Musk doing no matter bizarre lie he’s telling proper now. The actuality is much extra collective, with sizzling dogs creating out of the sausage traditions of German, Polish, Austrian, and Greek meals traditions, turning into well-liked in the course of the Great Depression for its affordability and being additional refined by Industrial Revolution equipment. It’s not horny, nevertheless it’s true.
3. Justice for ladies sizzling canine eaters!
No space of the recent canine universe is impervious to systemic injustice, together with the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest on Coney Island.
Legendary Japanese aggressive eater Takeru Kobayashi initially got here to New York to compete within the early 2000s and his signature approach, showmanship, and athletic build immediately exploded the recognition of the competition. For some time, Kobayashi was the Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest. He appeared on TV, garnered sponsorships, and was Major League Eating’s major champion, earlier than a white male competitor offered a problem within the type of present champion Joey Chestnut. The homeowners of Major League Eating noticed a chance to edge Kobayashi out of the game for a champion they felt was a “real American,” giving Kobayashi dangerous offers and poor therapy till he left the game altogether.
“This meant all the expected injustices.”
That’s nothing to say of how poorly ladies sizzling canine consuming champions have been handled traditionally! My favourite individual within the Hot Dog Expanded Universe is Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, a lady who immigrated from South Korea to the U.S. and was managing a Burger King on a naval base when she found her expertise at aggressive consuming. The relaxation is historical past: she launched to the highest of the sector and have become a well-liked determine, earlier than Major League Eating cut up the competition into males’s and ladies’s contests in 2011. This meant all of the anticipated injustices—low money from prizes, a bright-pink competitor’s belt, and being relegated to broadcast on ESPN-3 as a substitute of the main-channel occasion of the lads’s contest.
If the one factor this guide can do is get the ladies’s contest again on ESPN, it is going to all be value it. Justice for ladies sizzling canine eaters!
4. The individuals who drive the Wienermobile are most likely having intercourse with one another.
Maybe you possibly can have guessed this one, however I’m right here to verify. After trailing a pair of Wienermobile drivers for a number of weeks, I used to be in a position to entry the horny sizzling canine gossip nobody knew they wished—sure, the pairs of individuals driving the Wienermobiles throughout the nation to advertise Oscar Meyer merchandise are very possible hooking up with one another.
Here’s the way it works: after a rigorous nationwide search, twelve recent school grads are chosen to be drivers of the granddaddy of promotional automobiles, the red-and-yellow Wienermobile, for a full 12 months. Pairs are sorted into the six automobiles at random, and drivers get to know one another and…. they’re of their early twenties. There are quite a lot of Wienermobile pairings which have led to marriage over time and may attest that steamy summer season driving throughout the nation is extraordinarily frequent. When you’re spending six months dwelling in a sizzling canine and a resort, what else are you going to do? Whoever will get to tour a Wienermobile of their space, please take a black mild to it for me, I wish to see about one thing.
“There are a number of Wienermobile pairings that have led to marriage.”
(Ironically, I realized this from the one pair of drivers who didn’t appear to be in love with one another. They as a substitute described it as an “arranged marriage.”)
5. You have to toast the bun.
This is a polarizing take and possibly will trigger you to lose any respect and belief we’ve constructed over the course of this phase. But my God, you’ve received toast that bun.
In my 200+ sizzling canine journey, I can not overstate what number of high quality dogs had been ruined by poor bun infrastructure. Especially when you’re having fun with a regional make with a number of toppings—assume the Chicago canine with the complete salad on prime, or a superb chili canine with a hefty serving. The very worst factor that may occur is for a tender, underprepared bun to show to liquid gluten in your arms beneath a top quality sizzling canine. Every vendor can provide themselves the reward of a superior sizzling canine and a cheerful buyer with a light-weight toast. I’ll and have gone to the mat on this difficulty, and also you all have to face the truth that I’m appropriate.
To take heed to the audio model learn by creator Jamie Loftus, obtain the Next Big Idea App in the present day:
