Can you eat raw meat

Can raw meat be harmful to health?

Yes, easily. The fact is that in raw meat and poultry contained many harmful microorganisms. Here are the main ones.

1. campylobacter. Most of the poultry infected different types of these bacteria. Once in the human body, they can cause stomach cramps, fever and diarrhea, often with blood. This condition lasts from 2 to 5 days, and everything can end with complications: irritable bowel syndrome, temporary paralysis, arthritis.
2. Salmonella. These bacteria can call diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Symptoms can appear both after 6 hours after eating, and after six days. Usually, poisoning does not require treatment and disappears in 4-7 days. But in some cases, it is so acute that hospitalization may be necessary.
3. Clostridium perfringens. These bacteria cause diarrhea and stomach cramps, without nausea. Symptoms appear 6-24 hours after ingestion, occur suddenly and last no more than a day.
4. E. coli. Shiga toxin-producing strains may
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   call bloody diarrhea, nausea and stomach cramps. Symptoms occur on the 3rd-4th day after bacteria enter the body and torment a person for 5-7 days. About 5-10% of patients suffer from a life-threatening complication, hemolytic uremic syndrome.
5. Yersinia. Basically these bacteria fall in the body after eating pork and can cause diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever. Symptoms may persist for 1 to 3 weeks, and complications include skin rash, joint pain, or spread of bacteria into the bloodstream.

Of course, you can try raw meat - you may be lucky and there will be no bacteria in it. But at the same time, there is a high probability of still catching an intestinal infection and spending not the most pleasant week of your life.

How to cook meat so as not to get poisoned

In order not to suffer from intestinal infections, observe the following cooking rules.

1. Do not wash the meat and use a separate board for cutting. Bacteria can get on the sink or cutting surface and contaminate food that will not be cooked.
2. Cook meat at the correct temperature. To kill bacteria inside a piece of beef or pork, as well as in sausages from this meat should be 63 °C. For minced meat, a temperature of 71 ° C is suitable, for meat casseroles, as well as poultry - 74 ° C. Use a food thermometer to check if the food has warmed up enough.
3. Do not leave the meat dish at room temperature for more than 2 hours. Cool, arrange in containers and put away in fridge. The temperature in the chamber should not exceed 4 °C. It is better to cut large pieces of meat: this way they will cool faster, and bacteria will not have time to multiply in them.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the steaks with blood loved by many: they considered unsafe. Since bacteria die at 60–70°C, and blue, rare, and medium rare meats are cooked at 40–50°C, there is a high risk of food poisoning.

What's more, since symptoms can only appear after a week, you won't even know what bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps are. So it's better not to risk it and fry a piece of meat well before serving it on the table.