Wednesday 24 February 2010

And You Can Forget All Those Amusingly-Captioned Pictures Too!

The respected American Academy of Paediatrics is calling for sweeping changes in the way hot dogs are designed and labelled to minimise the chances of youngsters dying.
Hmmm, surely that should be 'the formerly-respected...', shouldn't it?
Every year food-related choking kills up to 77 children in the US and up to 15,000 more are treated in emergency rooms.

About 17 per cent of the food-related chokings are caused by hot dogs, according to a report by the academy.
So they want them 'redesigned', clearly in an effort to kill two birds with one stone and avoid the chance of being pictured eating an amusingly-phallic shaped food item too...
The academy said: "Food manufacturers should design new foods, and redesign existing foods, including meat products, to avoid shapes, sizes, texture and other characteristics that increase choking risk to children."
Perhaps we should just liquidise all their food? Until they are, say, about 17 or so?
US federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys including small balls, balloons and games with small parts.

Unless food makers voluntarily put more warning labels on high-risk foods, there should be a similar mandate for food, the academy said.
Oh, my lord...

16 comments:

TDK said...

Hot Dogs are guilty of an advertising standard breech too. I mean, can they honestly use that name?

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

Quite. Food manufacturers should redesign grapes and peanuts.

GM food, anyone?

NickM said...

Julia,
"Amusingly phallic shaped". Well, trek over to the batshit-mentalist feminist site AROOO and discover the truth of that. For as their mission statement they claim to be a blog where "Women are not called cunts of any form". There are different forms of cunts? As a heterosexual male I need to know! Also somewhat cryptically their mission statement proclaims, "No blow-jobs".

For you see penetration is evil and anything longer than it is wide is a symbol of the clearly evil patriachy.

So they are doing it with hot-dogs now. Great. I have heard graduates (in the liberal arts) from the Ivy League seriously reckon the entire Cold War and the build-up of nuclear missiles was phallocentric. As an astrophysical fluid dynamicist my wise words on hypersonic drag and the aerodynamics of lobbing something from North Dakota to Siberia (or vice-versa) were unheeded.

What do I know? I never read Freud or Jung. I am an untutored ruffian but I do know about compressible flow and what an aerospike is and a fair few things about re-entry (behave Nick!)...

I despair. Hot-dogs, Pershing IIs and penises... Well there are reasons (note the plural) why they bear a (very) passing resemblance. They all of course have very different uses (hopefully).

A mate of mine almost went off his rocker during his Eng Lit degree. It was feminist criticism that did it. It was being told that writing with a pen or pencil (and yes, the lecturer stooped to point out that those words sound a bit like "penis") is masculine whereas using a computer is feminine because it is "nurturing" the text on the hard disk in a womb-like manner.

I kid you not. Quite where that puts Jane Austen is beyond me.

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

Nearly choked myself on an aniseed ball since posting the last comment.

Naughty aniseed ball. Wicked aniseed ball.

Should I sue the manufacturer? Or the sweet shop? Or should I campaign for a ban?

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

NickM,

Thank you for that; it's made my morning. Sadly, though, from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary...

Main Entry: pen·cil
Pronunciation: \ˈpen(t)-səl\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English "pensel", from Anglo-French "pincel", from Vulgar Latin *"penicellus", alteration of Latin "penicillus", diminutive of "peniculus" brush, from diminutive of "penis" tail, penis

nbc said...

Nick has the solution though he may not have realised it. From this:

anything longer than it is wide

Everything needs to be cubic.

Problem solved.

Aniseed cube anyone?

Longrider said...

Oh, my lord...

Says it all, really.

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

Aniseed cube? What will we do with the sharp corners?

English Viking said...

I nearly choked on my hate for these morons.

BTW If you know anybody whose weener looks like a hot-dog, they have a got a serious problem and need to go to the Doc, rapid.

PS Word Verification: Pentre. Sounds a bit like... fnarr, fnarr...

blueknight said...

Peperami it's a bit of an animal. Well it certainly looks that way.

There is nothing more phallic than Mars bar. It's even got the veins on it.....

Mrs Rigby said...

wv = fookin.

Honestly, it is!

And it's a good enough comment all on its' own.

JuliaM said...

"I mean, can they honestly use that name?"

At fairgrounds and boot sales, yes, they probably can! ;)

"GM food, anyone?"

Heh! They'll have us all eating pulp before long...

"There are different forms of cunts? "

Well, there's that old chestnut about Japanese women... ;)

"I have heard graduates (in the liberal arts) from the Ivy League seriously reckon the entire Cold War and the build-up of nuclear missiles was phallocentric."

Lol! That's /doublefacepalm material if ever I heard it...

JuliaM said...

"Should I sue the manufacturer? Or the sweet shop? Or should I campaign for a ban?"

The latter, of course! It's the 21st Century thing to do.

"PS Word Verification: Pentre. Sounds a bit like... "

How does it do that!? ;)

"There is nothing more phallic than Mars bar. It's even got the veins on it....."

I'll never look at one of those again without thinking of that comment...

"wv = fookin.

Honestly, it is!"


Damn thing's becoming sentient!

Simon Fawthrop said...

There is nothing more phallic than Mars bar. It's even got the veins on it.....

And the reputation.....although I believe Marian Faithful has since denied the story.

TGS

limo hire said...

Hot dog ....one of the best and the favorite one..

blueknight said...

The Marianne Faithful story.
No truth in the rumour that the Police asked her, 'Are you coming quietly?