Group Pushes For Warning Labels on Hot Dogs

Instead of grouping hot dogs with baseball and apple pie, a national medical group wants you to consider them as bad for you as cigarettes.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C. group that promotes preventive medicine and a vegan diet, unveiled a billboard last Monday near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the advisory: "Warning: Hot dogs can wreck your health." It also encourages people to visit their website.

The billboard, will be up for almost a month, and features a picture of hot dogs in a cigarette pack inscribed with skull and crossbones. They claim it is to promote the link between hot dogs and colorectal cancer.

Should we avoid hot dogs all together?

The research linking colorectal cancer and processed meat is convincing, says a 2007 report by the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research.

Just one 50-gram serving of processed meat -- about the amount in one hot dog -- a day increases the risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent, the study found.

Does this study sway your feelings about hot dogs? Or are you still going to be grilling them at your next barbeque?