Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo Illustration

Joey Chestnut, left, of San Jose, Calif., defending champion of the Nathan’s Famous July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest, celebrates his victory, logging his third consecutive win with a world-record 68 franks over former champion Takeru Kobayashi of Nagano, Japan, July 4, 2009, in New York. A frank. A wiener. A hot dog. Call it what you will, but our nation can’t get enough of them.

A frank. A wiener. A hot dog. Call it what you will, but our nation can’t get enough of them.

Songs, poems, books and websites commemorate our nation’s love affair with the hot dog.

To suit every hot dog enthusiast’s taste, hot-dog makers have created all-beef, organic, veggie, turkey, chicken, tofu and kosher hot dogs. They’re stuffed in fried dough. They can be grilled, steamed, microwaved, fried, boiled, “George Foremanned” — or eaten raw.

With or without a bun. Plain, or slathered with relish, mustard and onion.

We hold contests to determine who can stuff the most hot dogs down their throats.

There are hot-dog historians, as well as a National Hot Dog and Sausage Council — headed by the self-described “Queen of Wien.”

And on the Fourth of July, the biggest of days for the American favorite, we eat more than 150 million hot dogs.

Local stores, reflecting the national trend, see huge spikes in sales of hot dogs, buns and toppings, as well as charcoal and propane tanks for the grills.

“It’s exponential,” said Andrew Yochum, store manager at Hy-Vee, 3504 Clinton Parkway, of the holiday surge.

In the middle of the day last Monday, it was a little lonely in the hot-dog area at the store, and everything was fully stocked. But that’ll change by today.

“Most customers are last-minute shoppers,” he said.

Why does a simple food, sometimes filled with unsavory pieces of “meat,” draw our affection so? And why so much on Independence Day?

They’re unhealthy, mostly inexpensive slabs stuffed into bland white buns. They also can be dangerous. Aside from their nutritional issues, hot dogs cause more choking deaths than any other food.

And truth be told, the common perception that the hot dog is “uniquely American” is debated by hot-dog historians.

Dr. Bruce Kraig, one such hot-dog historian and author of the book “The Hot Dog: A Global History,” says the shape of meat on hot dogs can be traced deep into history.

“It goes back to the first encased meats, Paleolithic even,” said Kraig, who has a doctorate in history and is the founder of the Culinary Historians of Chicago.

But from there, Americans can claim hot-dog ownership.

“The word ‘hot dog’ is uniquely American,” he explains. Americans, in the late 1800s, are credited with the terminology, and with adding the bun to the equation. It gets a little tricky there as well, Kraig said. Germans used sandwich breads with sausages before Americans.

“What makes it American is the kind of bun used,” he said.

Perhaps a more important question, though, is how someone becomes a “hot-dog historian.”

“It was an accident, really,” Kraig said.

He was on a speaking tour giving talks about humans eating actual dogs, which eventually evolved into research about the hot dogs. The rest is history.

But why do we eat so many on the Fourth of July?

Because we always have, said Marty Gillespie, accompanied by his son Tate, 14, shopping in downtown Lawrence on a recent weekday.

“It’s just a tradition,” Gillespie said. Both father and son favor mustard and ketchup on their dogs, the two most popular hot-dog toppings.

Gillespie speculates that the popularity of hot-dog eating contests, which are now televised on ESPN, may help reinforce hot-dog traditions in America. Marty and Tate have attended several events themselves, and Tate, inspired by the work of hot-dog eating masters, has managed to scarf down four in one setting.

As for the tradition of eating hot dogs on Independence Day, Kraig said it has to do with more practical reasons.

“They’re portable,” he said. The holiday is a “public festival and you have to have portable foods.”