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You might say hot dogs are as American as apple pie.

Except we eat 10 times as many hot dogs a year as slices of pie, according to the market research group NPD.

We down most of our dogs - roughly 7 billion - between Memorial Day and Labor Day, according to the Washington-based National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. That's 818 hot dogs consumed every second during that time frame.

And on Independence Day alone, we'll eat 150 million hot dogs.

Philadelphia ranked fourth in the top hot-dog-consuming cities of 2007, with $46 million worth of franks eaten. New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore/Washington beat us out.

In the United States, the first Coney Island hot dog stand opened in 1871, and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was the first to feature hot dog vendors. It was also around this time that the hot dog first made its appearance at a ballpark, when they were served at a St. Louis Browns major league game.

Those dates explain, in part, why the number of dogs per package didn't match the number of rolls.

Initially, hot dogs were sold in butcher shops by weight, not number. Bun-makers, left to do as they pleased, packaged their rolls in eights. In 1940, when manufacturers began packaging hot dogs, they chose the 10-to-a-pack formula, presumably to give us arithmetic anxiety.

By the hot dog council's computations, you need to buy five bags of eight-to-the-pack buns and four 10-to-the-pack hot dogs to break even.

Meanwhile, the variety of dogs available has become dizzying. Do you want organic, all-natural or grass-fed meat? Cocktail length, bun size or foot-long? Chicken, turkey, tofu? The choice is yours.

The meat can be all beef or a blend, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that if the meat is other than from the muscle of the animal, the dogs must be labeled as byproduct or "variety meats."

Skinless means the manufacturer has already peeled off the casing in which the dogs were precooked. The casing may have been cellulose or "natural," which means it was made from animal intestine. When the casing is left on, the dog has more snap, more bite.

Curious about cured vs. uncured?

Curing salts made from sodium nitrite preserve the meat and add that special hot-doggy flavor you may recall from your childhood. But sodium nitrite (nitrate is a close relative) is linked to cancer. The uncured varieties are made with a combination of celery juice, which contains natural nitrates, plus lactic acid and salt.

(Kosher hot dogs, by the way, are all beef, made under rabbinical supervision.)

Oscar Mayer is the best-selling dog on the market, according to the national council.

But what's the best-tasting hot dog?

That's a matter of personal preference, of course.

We asked adults and children to participate in a taste test, using eight popular supermarket brands of hot dogs.

Three were all beef (Nathan's Famous, Hebrew National, Dietz & Watson); three were a mixture of beef, pork, chicken and/or turkey (Oscar Mayer, Ball Park, Hatfield Phillies); and two were organic, uncured brands from Whole Foods (Applegate Beef and Wellshire Turkey). The hot dogs were simply boiled.

For the kids, we offered just four options and kept it to the big dogs: Oscar Mayer, Hebrew National, Nathan's and Applegate Farms.

Although the kids were enthusiastic, their comments weren't entirely helpful. "I like the one I can bite with my teeth," said one 4-year-old of his favorite, the Applegate Farms Uncured Beef franks. Another child gave all the dogs a high score of 9, even though she described them disparately.

Once tallied, the kids' ratings showed a slight preference for Oscar Mayer and Nathan's, though, to be honest, all the kids finished all the franks.

The adults were a bit more discerning.

Hot dogs that were soft or mushy were dismissed out of hand, as were those that had a gray or off-putting color that was deemed "unnatural."

Our tasters liked smoky meat flavors but rejected dogs that had dominating spices.

Nathan's was the clear victor on the adult side, finishing a full 2 points ahead of runner-up Hebrew National.

Ball Park was a distant third, with the remaining dogs falling further behind. Wellshire All Natural Uncured Turkey dogs were rated dead last by almost all of the tasters.