Eating raw meat is not good for health

Did you know that eating raw meat can be dangerous for your health? Well, no health professional or nutritionist has openly said this but a recent report placed a warning sign over eating raw oysters, the consumption of which they linked to an increase in stomach issues.

Why wouldn’t there be stomach related ailments from eating raw meat and seafood?

Unfortunately fashionable foods include sushi, sashimi and meats that are cooked rare and, in extreme cases, eaten raw. Ever wondered what steak tartare was? Well remember that episode of Mr Bean where he was at a restaurant alone celebrating his birthday and ordered steak tartare? From the look of consternation on his face when the dish arrived, it is obvious he didn’t know what steak tartare meant. He clearly focussed on steak and probably thought it would be baked or grilled. If he had known what tartare meant in the food lingo, I am sure he would not have ordered it.

As stupid and fumbling as Mr Bean appears to be most of the time, I now realise that some of us are actually Mr Bean too, when it comes to food. I for one do not understand the merits of eating meat and seafood raw. I once tried sashimi at the request of a friend and just didn’t get it. I didn’t like the texture of the raw fish, even though it was my favourite, tuna, and I certainly didn’t like its taste even with soy sauce. I can understand the popularity of smoked salmon because there is a distinct pleasant taste to it that is not fishy and when you eat it you get the impression that it’s been cooked.

But despite what chefs’ claim, I am still not convinced that eating raw meat or seafood is safe for you. Animals, even fish, contain so many bacteria and worms that are killed by the cooking process. I must be old school because I was always taught by our teachers to make sure that we cook meat thoroughly because of the risk of the animal’s guts and stomach being infected by tapeworms or their eggs. They told us clearly that cooking at low temperatures does not kill these worms and eggs and some animals were more prone to them than others. They also told us that eating raw meat was likely to cause you to ingest the tapeworm, or their eggs, which then plant themselves in the intestines and stomach of the person who ate that raw meat. Is it worth the risk?

Yes animals eat their prey raw but we are not animals. We are people whose digestive systems are not designed the same way as that of animals any more than their external features are.

That is why God gave us fire and the ability to cook meat over it. If you watched one billion years BC, the illiterate natives killed a dinosaur and roasted the meat over an open fire before eating it. That is the natural thing to do. It is unnatural to offer up a plate of meat straight from the butcher’s cutting table. In fact, I read somewhere that in one country people are now in the habit of eating raw chicken. Because of the risk of contracting salmonella, of all the meats in the world, one universal agreement is that chicken should be cooked until the meat turns white, that is, except for in this one country. They reassure us that their chicken is so pure that it can be eaten raw. Despite this claim, the fact that salmonella is always a risk, I would never eat it that way.

In my view meat needs to be cooked until it turns grey, or at least until it’s coming off the bone, fish until its meat is flaky and chicken until the meat turns white. But I think that the way meat is cooked is also a cultural thing. In certain parts of the world meat is cooked in exactly the way I’ve described the way I think it should be cooked, and that, in chef language, is called ‘well done’. But in other parts of the world, although the outside is seared dark, the inside is still so raw that a blood red juice pours out when you cut it.

That is raw, plain and simple. It cannot have had enough heat to kill any bacteria the animal could have been harbouring.

But it’s fashionable and trendy and called ‘rare’. In my view anything below ‘well done’ is raw and questionable in terms of its safety, regardless of what the chef or restaurant is telling me.

But most people, who insist on eating meat that is ‘well done’ are willing to try sushi or sashimi. I reckon they forget that fish can also suffer from bacterial infections or maggots in their guts and gills. Think about this, if there’s a restaurant prone to discreetly serving dodgy fish as sushi and sashimi, what might you be ingesting? They’ve cut away all the dodgy bits and presented you with what you think came from a fresh fish! How dangerous is raw fish when it is unsafe to eat dodgy fish even when it’s been cooked…