New study suggests eating a hot dog may shorten your lifespan by 36 minutes

Researchers at the University of Michigan look at life expectancy by analysing around 6,000 foods

Hot dogs are one of the worst foods when it comes to maintaining a 'healthy life', say researchers in a study published in 'Nature Food'. Ball Park Brand / Unsplash

Eating a hot dog may shorten your “healthy life” by up to 36 minutes say researchers from the University of Michigan.

The findings were part of a new study that calculated the health burden of a number of different foods by looking at their carbon footprint and nutritional impact.

The study was published in the journal, Nature Food, and is based around healthy life (the increase in good-quality and disease-free life expectancy).

Some findings from the study show that in addition to nuts and seeds, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich adds more than 30 extra minutes to your life, followed by baked salmon (13.5 minutes) and bananas (13.5 minutes). French fries also surprisingly made the cut, but only with 1.5 minutes.

Scroll through the gallery below to see which foods add or take away from "healthy life".

Conversely, foods such as soft drinks, double cheeseburgers, pizza and bacon fell into the “minutes lost” from healthy life expectancy category, although hot dogs remained the biggest culprit.

The authors of the study explained how they reached their conclusion by factoring in other things when it came to the popular hot dog found across America.

“We found that, on average, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of any processed meat that a person eats in the US,” wrote the authors of the study.

“The 61 grams of processed meat in a hot dog sandwich results in 27 minutes of healthy life lost due to this amount of processed meat alone.

“Then, when considering the other risk factors, like the sodium and trans fatty acids inside the hot dog – counterbalanced by the benefit of its polyunsaturated fat and fibers – we arrived at the final value of 36 minutes of healthy life lost per hot dog.”

The researchers behind the findings calculated the direct influence of various meals, snacks and drinks in almost 6,000 cases.