American Author And Activist Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Enjoyed from little league baseball games to outdoor family barbecues, hot dogs have grown to be one of America’s most iconic food products. Due to the ambiguity of its ingredients and manufacturing processes, however, hot dogs have also been known to stir up feelings of disgust and unease among consumers. To address this obscurity among consumers, a thorough examination of the manufacturing processes and ingredients is necessary to separate the myths from the facts. The average American hot dog holds a variety of ingredients. Although hot dogs are known to be made of some sort of meat, most of the ambiguity and suspicion rest on the kind of meat used and the processes of how they are manufactured. The disgust and horror, associated with hot dogs, can be traced to the controversial meat packaging industry of the 1930’s. American Author and Activist Upton Sinclair recorded the horrors of the meat packaging in his novel, The Jungle. Graphically, Sinclair described:
This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts, and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one - there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands

Additionally, hot dogs have been labeled as junk food, unhealthy, and even “cancer-causing” by some organizations (Aylward, "About hot dogs."). While it is understandable that hot dogs, associated with questionable practices of meat processing and “mystery meat” ("Hot dogs: without (too much) guilt."), are perceived negatively with their track record, the hot dog and sausage making industry has fought long and hard since then to win back the hearts of