Oscar Mayer Comes Up With Nonfat Hot Dogs

Cutting back on fat is at the top of most everyone’s to-do list these days.

“Ten years ago, if you gave a group of people skim and whole milk, most would have preferred whole,” says Linda Gilbert, president of the trend-tracking HealthFocus Inc. “Today they are likely to prefer skim.”

But does that apply to the old “tube steaks” - hot dogs, frankfurters, wieners, red hots, et al? Hot dogs have never been a health food. Until now, that is.

Wiener wizards at Oscar Mayer and the turkey technologists at Butterball have come up with nonfat, meaty missiles that look, feel and even taste like descendants of what butchers in Frankfurt, Germany, were turning out 100 years ago.

In the United States today, hot dogs are made through a unique process that mixes meat, fat and water, then whips it up in a giant blender to such a frenzy that the meat proteins encapsulate microscopic globules of fat and water in a kind of thick emulsion.

It’s a little like making mayonnaise from lemon juice, oil and egg yolk, only that the hot dog mix is cooked to solidify it, says Robert Cassens, professor of meat and animal science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“That’s why your standard hot dog stays juicy, why it doesn’t melt or go greasy when you heat it as a hamburger does, even though it has just as much fat,” he explains.

Fat-free franks are made in the same manner, says Ronald Waters, vice president of research and development for Oscar Mayer, which has been trying to trim fat from its hot dogs since the early 1980s.

“There’s really no mystery,” he says. “We use common ingredients, primarily very lean cuts of turkey and beef, plus hydrolyzed milk protein. The preparation is much the same, only no fat goes into the mixture.”

The links are fashioned from a lean meat and water emulsion as in regular hot dogs and the protein structure is “set” with heat. Factors such as the speed at which the emulsion is made and the cooking temperature make it work.

Waters emphasizes that fat is not removed from the hot dogs; it doesn’t go into them in the first place. Neither do common fat replacers such as starches and carrageenan.

Butterball’s franks are similar but use only turkey meat. In either case, the nutrition information is reassuring.

Besides having no fat - compared to 17 grams in the regular version - the Oscar Mayer Free weiner has only 40 calories (versus 190), 15 milligrams of cholesterol (versus 35 milligrams) and 460 mg sodium (versus 570). And it has more protein - 7 grams compared to 6 grams in the regular hot dog.

The counts for Butterball’s fatfree franks are the same except for 100 milligrams more sodium and 1 gram less protein.

But what about flavor? We cooked three batches of dogs - Oscar Mayer Free Hot Dogs, Butterball Fat Free Franks and Oscar Mayer (regular) wieners - in the conventional manner: boiling water, then plunging the franks into the hot water off the heat.

Seven tasters sampled dogs from each group, first plain, then in a bun with condiments of their choice, including mustard, pickle relish, chopped raw onion and sport peppers. The brands and types were not identified.

No one had much difficulty identifying the conventional hot dog when it was sans trimmings. All tasters recognized its soft skin and texture and characteristic flavor.

When we added up scores, the conventional hot dog with its 13 grams of fat earned 50 of a possible 63 points. Oscar Mayer Free received 34 points and Butterball Fat Free got 33.

But with the dogs decked out in full ballpark finery, most of the tasters had trouble telling them apart. When you’ve got a mouthful of mustard, onion, hot pepper and bun, how precious are differences in the meat?

And consider this: The bun wrapped around a fat-free hot dog has more fat than the meat.