A new study found out that every hotdog a person eats shortens their life. However, a person can also add minutes to their healthy life expectancy by eating better foods. A portion of nuts, for example, adds almost 26 minutes, while a peanut butter and jam sandwich gives a person more than half an hour extra life.

The findings come from experts at the University of Michigan who created a standardised way of assessing the nutritional impact of almost 6000 foods.

Their Health Nutritional Index was centred around finding a way to calculate the direct influence of various meals, snacks and drinks. It works by calculating the health burden of one gram of any food, and then scaling this up to a standard serving size.

"For example, we found that, on average, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of any processed meat that a person eats in the US," the study authors wrote.

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