| Healthy,
But Only to a Point |
| I worked late on Tuesday night, as I often do, and when
I arrived home at about 8:30 I decided not to invest a lot
of time making my dinner. |
| Being in the newspaper business I arrive home from work
well after bedtime a couple of days a week, so I have come
to prepare for the effortless meal by stocking up on easy-to-make
dinners. |
| I'm a leftover fanatic, so anything hanging around from
the weekend is usually devoured whole by my late-night, mid-week
munching. But I always keep the fixings for burritos, chips
and salsa and other quick meals handy. |
| Hot dogs are a favorite of mine. They have been since I
was a kid. Over the years I think I have tried just about
every brand of hot dog you can buy in a grocery store, from
the cheese-filled ones to the smoked turkey ones and on and
on. |
| But being healthy is a bigger concern for me now than it
used to be, so recently I decided to buy some fat-free, meatless
hot dogs instead of the real thing. After all, eating late
at night is not all that healthy, and then who knows what's
in a real hot dog anyway? |
| A few days later, I ate a bite or two of the meatless dogs
while feeding them to my daughter for her dinner. She didn't
like them, and they seemed kind of artificial to me. They
had this smokey flavor added to them that kind of threw me
off, but I ate a few bites anyway. |
| A couple of days after that, my wife, Katie, was folding
laundry when she found something lodged in the folds of one
of my daughter's outfits. And there it was, a quarter-shaped
section of a meatless hot dog that had survived the aquatic
violence of the washing machine, and the toasty temperatures
of the dryer, to emerge exactly as it had gone in. |
| The piece of food, if you could call it that, was completely
unmarked. It had retained its same smell, shape, and texture.
It was still squishy to the touch. Okay, if this hot dog-like
material can survive a bout in the wash, what does it do inside
your body? |
| But food is food, so Tuesday night I grabbed a couple of
the meatless hot dogs out of the bag for their first real
trial at a late-night, easy-to-make meal. I got the buns ready,
toasting them lightly with a line of ketchup on one side and
a line of mustard on the other. |
| The directions on the package recommended several ways of
preparing this particular product, including boiling them,
sautéing them in a pan, grilling them (which would be unbelievable
pointless for a meatless hot dog), and the option I chose
for convenience, microwaving them. |
| Now, not every food can be microwaved and still taste good.
Left-over pizza is not at its best reheated in the microwave,
for example. Microwaving pasta instead of boiling it is generally
a waste of time. And don't even think about trying to cook
a whole chicken in the microwave. |
| But hot dogs, in general, were made to be made in the microwave
in a pinch. At least in my experience. Grilling is probably
best, but the microwave is good to the hot dog. |
| And since the instructions on the side of this package of
meatless hot dogs did not note, as many products do, that
microwaving might not be the best way of heating these dogs
up, I wrapped two of them in a paper towel, cut a couple of
slits in the skin, and popped them in for about 40 seconds
each. I actually read the instructions and followed them here. |
| But when the dogs came out of the microwave, their artificial
smokey taste had been replaced, quite literally, by the light
smell of burnt plastic. I actually checked them to see if
some of the wrapper had been stuck to them or something. |
| Still, feeling exceptionally adventurous and more lazy,
I tried them out. Holy cow they were awful. It was like eating
a sponge sandwich, with the plastic wrapper left on. Having
enjoyed many tofu dogs over the years, I wondered what made
these dogs so tragically unfit for consumption. |
| As I read the ingredients list, they seemed harmless enough.
But when I read over them again, I realized there was hardly
anything in the ingredient list to add any flavor at all to
these things. Water, soy protein isolate (doesn't sound like
a mouthful of flavor to me), wheat gluten, yeast extract,
etc. |
| The manufacturers tried to add flavor with "spice extract"
and "granulated garlic," but that attempt seems to have failed
in this case. I think what these hot dogs needed was more
hot dog and less buoyancy in the washing machine. |
| Eating healthy is important, but there is a limit. |
| Tonight, I think I will stick with a salad. That won't take
long to make. |
