EAT A HOT DOG AND REDUCE YOUR LIFE EXPECTANCY BY 36 MINUTES

As my Worldometer table has weekly been showing, COVID-19 and the Delta variant are now in worldwide decline.  

From the New York Times this morning, the USA reflects this drop:

There is a ten-day to two week lag from new cases to new deaths, as shown here:

The next worry will be the Fall and Winter, when people go indoors.  However, schools have returned, and yet we are experiencing those above declines.  Part of the reason must have to do with vaccinations.  76% of Americans have now received at least one  shot.

United States vaccinations

	At least one dose	Fully vaccinated
All ages*	65%	56%
12 and up	76%	65%
18 and up	77%	67%
65 and up	94%	83%

The latest guess is that 90% of the population needs to be fully vaccinated for herd immunity to be reached.

Said former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb and author of Uncontrolled Spread:    Covid has not only been one of the worst pandemics in modern times. It has been an unnecessarily terrible pandemic. Of the more than 700,000 Americans who have died from it, nearly 200,000 probably could have been saved if they had chosen to take a vaccine. That is a national tragedy.

Call it what you want, but you gaze down the list of the most popular order at Major League Baseball stadiums, and the hot dog stands out as #1.  This food item has actually been around since the 9th century BC.  Today, the best  American ballpark version?  The Dodger Dog ranks as #1.  Simple ten-incher soaked in beer, grilled and topped with ketchup, mustard, onions and sweet relish.

When I last went to Yankee Stadium I had a Nathan's Famous Natural Casing Dog

What is a hot dog?  A sausage on a bun with stuff added.  Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is a popular, but nauseating, July 4th attraction on ESPN, serving a public service, for the program surely must dissuade anyone from eating one, and as you will learn, thus extending your life.

The University of Michigan's School of Public Health reported that one hot dog can shave 36 minutes off your life.  Lead author Olivier Jolliet indicated that when Joey Chestnut ate 76 hot dogs this year, he reduced his longevity by 46 hours.  The school ranked 5800 foods by nutritional disease burden and environmental impact, and found that just substituting 10% of your daily calorie intake by an equal value of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood can reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third, and add 48 minutes of healthy life to your future.

Keep in mind, thus, that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could increase your life by 33 minutes.  As you can see in that graphic to the left, a hot dog is in the bad red zone.  The researchers...

...based our Health Nutritional Index on a large epidemiological study called the Global Burden of Disease, a comprehensive global study and database developed with the help of more than 7,000 researchers around the world. The Global Burden of Disease determines the risks and benefits associated with multiple environmental, metabolic, and behavioral factors—including 15 dietary risk factors.

Good a time as any to continue my reportage on my current quest to find what foods go well with Petite Syrahs, now my favorite wine.  For football and baseball watching, I had my first Arabiki hot dog with a Bogle Petite Syrah, priced at at $13.  I also drank a bottle of Kirin Beer because the sausage had a Japanese name.

If you're familiar with Arabiki, your first thought might be...but this is a tiny sausage from Japan.  Yes, but they copied a German wiener, and in Hawaii you can also find a larger size that is about the size of a Portuguese Sausage.  It went fine with Petite Syrah.  However, try placing this giant sausage on to a large bun topped with condiments.  It is theoretically impossible to consume it like a normal hot dog.  My mouth was too small and things kept falling back on the plate, as would be yours if you tried this.  I was tempted to say I used a fork and knife, but the reality is that I had sat down to eat my lunch it was too much of a hassle to stand up to get the right tools.  So I used my fingers.  You won't be able to do this in a ballpark because people would be watching.

I couldn't finish the entire bottle, so saved it for one of my artichoke-foie gras pate'-cheese combinations:

The meal also included chicken noodle soup and fried local octopus.  Looks like a lot of food, but this was a very small artichoke.  And yes, the Petite Syrah was perfect.

My next bottle was a Stokes' Ghost Petite Syrah, which cost $55.  Went well with spaghetti and tacos:

Sure, a $55 wine might better be paired with a rib-eye steak or rack of lamb, but I was not aware this Stoke's Ghost was that expensive until I finished it.  One more bottle of Petite Syrah left.

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