A group of American pediatricians think the hot dog needs a makeover.

In a study released Monday, the team singled out the long tubular shape as the single highest choking hazard for small children and called out to the industry to redesign the Franken-meat.

Now I get we need to me mindful of the food we eat, and over the years there have been many studies, categorically damning virtually every food item one can imagine. I even agree that it’s probably time to reexamine the hotdog.

But it’s shape? I mean, come on.

Perhaps what needs to be taken a look at is the full 13 grams of fat per 45g serving size (five of that being from the saturated variety), or maybe 24mg of cholesterol, or the 513 mg of sodium. Then there is the issue of nitrates, but one of the many carcinogenic additives in a hotdog. Finally, the utter lack of nutritional content should also be considered. This is the real danger, not choking. Parent Central gives us the lowdown on this heinous threat.

In Canada, about 44 children age 14 and under die every year from choking and another 380 are hospitalized, according to SafeKids Canada. Almost half of those cases are from choking on food.

So just to get this straight, out of the 5.5 million children in Canada, 22 die from choking on food.  That is 0.004 percent, you are more likely to be murdered this year than choke on a hotdog weiner. In fact, that percentage is on par with getting struck by lightening.

There are many reasons to hate the hotdog, but let’s stay focused on the real threat it poses. Child obesity and poor eating habits have become serious issues in North America, a 2004 study estimates that 26 percent of Canadian children are either overweight or obese. The convenience and low cost of the hotdog has made it a staple in many households, making it a significant factor in determining nutrition in children. This is the issue that needs to be examined, not its shape.

It’s very easy to make media friendly statements like “even one death is too many,” but the reality is that number will never reach zero. As it is, it’s pretty darn close though. Even if hotdogs caused half of all food related choking deaths in children (they don’t), that still only amounts to 11 deaths a year. That is a low number. You could almost say you’re more likely to develop cancer from all the harmful carcinogens pumped into them, but that would just sound foolish.

Regardless of other circumstances, a helmet helps protect the only head you've got. Photo courtesy Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Intrawest, the resort company that runs the ski runs at Whistler Blackcomb and 10 other ski hills, announced yesterday that it is strongly encouraging skiers and snowboarders to wear helmets on its courses, and instituting mandatory helmet rules for all children and young-adult participants in its skiing and boarding classes. The move comes six months after British actress Natasha Richardson died of head injuries sustained at Mont Tremblant in Quebec. This is a good idea, and people should heed the advice.

Helmet-wearing (for all kinds of activities) is inexplicably controversial for some people, and I don’t get it. When I was a kid, we had a family friend die of a head injury sustained on a bike; it was around the time that I got my first two-wheeler, and my parents told me I had to wear a helmet. This was before anyone else around my school was wearing one, and I felt like a total dork. But I also felt, even as a kid, that it was better than the alternative. I still feel that way.

You only get one head. It’s worth protecting. Plus, the helmets don’t all look as dorky as they used to.

(And here’s “Protect ya neck” by those advocates of head safety everywhere, the Wu-Tang Clan. Sensitive people: beware explicit lyrics!)

Police investigating yesterday's bombing of a Rome gay bar.

Several people were injured in Rome yesterday when two letter bombs were thrown into a gay neighbourhood bar. The attack wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of escalating violence against gay people in Italy which some speculate has been fuelled by the election of Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, a member of the post-fascist National Alliance party.

It is hard to see these attacks as anything short of terrorism. Something pre-meditated like a letter bomb attack is in a different category from spontaneous acts of street violence. The intention behind it is to make gay people in the region feel under siege.

And it works. My partner spent 10 days in Rome this summer, and while her straight friends endured the whistles and jeers expected in Italy, she got a lot of cold stares, and angry taunts from cars. It was a level of harassment she hasn’t experienced in Toronto for many years. She avoided the gay neighbourhood, along Via San Giovanni, because of a sense that being queer in Italy was a much more dangerous, underground experience than she was used to.

The threat of violence can shape the character of a community. In Toronto, safety is not a constant concern for me, but it was a consistent issue in parts of Edinburgh after dark. I still instinctively let go of my partner’s hand at night when I see men walking towards us. At concerts and baseball games, the first thing I do is take the measure of the people sitting around us. When considering travel destinations, before checking out the beaches I look into how safe we’d be there.

I grew up in a place where people get drunk and start fights more often than they do in Canada, but it’s not somewhere where, statistically, gay people are actually all that unsafe. So I can only imagine what it’s like to go to a bar that might get bombed, and the kind of self-preserving reflexes you pick up as an identifiably gay person in those places.

It’s easy to get stuck in definitions of terrorism that involve training camps in the mountains and plots against government buildings. But it is no less significant when a faction of people set out to terrorize a community or class of people within their own country. This week, my thoughts are with the queer community in Rome.