Hot Dog Buns

A conversation with a friend at work made be start thinking about hot dog buns. He asked me why hot dogs are packaged in dogs of ten and hot dog buns are packaged in buns of eight. I didn’t have a good answer. He even googled for an answer and come up with nothing concrete. Here are a couple of the Internet reasons. Standard hot dogs are packaged by the pound, and a pound of hot dogs makes ten regular sized dogs. Ok, that sounds reasonable. Bakers like even numbers, so the buns are packaged in pieces of six, eight, or twelve to make a dozen. I don’t buy that one as well because the standard bakers dozen is thirteen.


I began thinking about this dilemma and here’s what I came up with. There is a kabala afoot regarding hot dogs and buns that reflects the business practices of many or most of the large corporate monsters of America. Even numbers backed up by odd numbers that force us, the regular folk to spend more of our hard earned cash. Oscar Mayer has determined that the average fellow needs ten dogs to fill eight buns. So, we go out and buy more buns for the dogs and extra dogs for the buns and so on and so forth… In order for us to even out this mathematical dilemma we need to buy four packages of dogs to make forty dogs and five packages of buns to make forty buns. That means we need spend extra cash for a nice even number of the Great American Hot Dog. Hey, I think I’ve uncovered something here… Now where’s my apple pie, and who’s playing in the World Series?

Peace and Balance,
John