A vegetarian hot dog is a hot dog

Hot dog

A hot dog is a sausage served in a sliced bun. It is very often garnished with mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, relish and/or sauerkraut.-History:...

 produced completely from non-meat products.

Vegetarian hot dogs are sometimes eaten by non-vegetarians because they are lower in fat, calories, and contain no cholesterol

Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...

, and little to no saturated fat

Saturated fat

Saturated fat is fat that consists of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain. That is, the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms...

, compared to hot dogs from animal meats. Therefore they are preferred by people following a low calorie, low fat or low cholesterol diet

Diet (nutrition)

In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...

. Unlike traditional home-made meat sausages, the casing is not made of intestine, but of plant based ingredients. Vegetarian hot dogs are usually based on some sort of soy protein. Some contain egg whites, which would make them unacceptable to vegans. There are also vegetarian hot dogs made from tofu

Tofu

is a food made by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into soft white blocks. It is part of East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and others. There are many different varieties of tofu, including fresh tofu and tofu...

. Like ordinary hot dogs, vegetarian hot dogs contain little fiber,

The history of the vegetarian hot dog is not clear, but Worthington Foods' Veja-Link meatless wieners claim to have been the world's first vegetarian hot dogs in 1949. On June 19, 2000, the Chicago White Sox

Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox are a Major League Baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois.The White Sox play in the American League's Central Division. Since , the White Sox have played in U.S. Cellular Field, which was originally called New Comiskey Park and nicknamed The Cell by local fans...

 made baseball history when they began selling vegetarian hot dogs during games at Comiskey Park

Comiskey Park

Comiskey Park was the ballpark in which the Chicago White Sox played from 1910 to 1990. It was built by Charles Comiskey after a design by Zachary Taylor Davis, and was the site of four World Series and more than 6,000 major league games...

. In recent years, a number of other manufacturers have entered the vegetarian hot dog market. Cedar Lake Foods, which makes Deli Franks, Jumbo Franks, and Breakfast Sausage, is just one of many players who now offer vegetarian hot dogs. The vegetarian sausage without a bun is much more common from the early 20th century, for example the 1913 Indianapolis (Indiana) Star 15 June 8/1 mentions someone who "says he has lived on his vegetarian sausage almost exclusively". This is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 December 2007 draft additions entry for the adjective vegetarian, but no vegetarian hot dog

Hot dog

A hot dog is a sausage served in a sliced bun. It is very often garnished with mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, relish and/or sauerkraut.-History:...

, wiener or frankfurter is noted.