Safe to eat ground beef at restaurants that's not well done?

Factual Questions
21

Just what is the range of probability of getting terminal cancer from overcooked meat?

Compare that with some of these figures,

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no5/mead.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/17/us/study-puts-us-food-poisoning-toll-at-76-million-yearly.html

Which agree that around 5000 Americans die of food poisoning with around 75 million food poisoning episodes - some people get hit more than once in a year.

Now I believe that this is up to 25% of the US population, and I would be rather surprised if anything like 100k Americans suffer terminal cancer from polyaromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines in overcooked meat, unless you can cite better.

Of course you then have to cite that this these substances cause cancer in the amounts they are ingested, and that this does not amount to statistical noise among all the other possible causes of death.

There is a syndrome of ignoring real risks and real dangers in favour of worrying about far less important dangers, simply through a lack of understanding of numbers.

The reality is this, a significant number of Americans will suffer from food poisoning in their lives, probably almost all, but very few will suffer from polywotsit hydrodoodas cancers, and the scale of the differance between them is in orders of magnitude and cannot be meaningfully compared even in a lighthearted manner.

Its like worrying about being hit by lightening whilst walking across a busy interstate.

22

or do what a number of us do, buy slabs of meat, wash them and then grind them. I wash any meat, vegetable or fruit I cook before I cook it [especially poultry, frequently I need to get the needlenose pliers and pull feather stubs.] Meats in general I also may soak in salt water briefly before using [especially poultry] to pull more blood out of the surface capillaries.

23

E. coli and salmonella are killed at 140 F. It does take some time for the bacteria to die at that temperature, so some margin of safety may be necessary, but 20 degrees is quite a bit. I believe the USDA is being extra-cautious in their recommendation.

That being said, 160 F is well-done, not medium. Here is a chart of meat cooking temperatures. It lists 140 - 145 as medium, and 160 as well-done.

24

If the restaurant is willing to serve the burger medium or medium rare, I’ll eat it.

25

But isn’t that [attitude] a bit careless? I mean, Jack in the Box was “willing” to serve their burgers rare which ended up killing some people and sickening hundreds more.

26

Of course only a small fraction of those 5000 that die of food poisoning get it from undercooked beef. I notice that they list the Norwalk virus as food poisoning, but that virus is actually quite contagious. It may be initiated by undercooked shellfish, but that virus will spread through the house faster than anything I’ve seen. Also, when someone gets colon cancer, there is no way to connect it to a particular cause. But statistical studies have been done.

Even though the study was small it is pretty basic chemistry to come to this conclusion. Everyone knows that benzene is carcinogenic. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons are really just several chunks of benzene put together. Depending on how they are joined, they can be more or less carcinogenic. Pyrene is very carcinogenic. What these compounds have in common is that they are aromatic. Aromatic compounds are more stable than other compounds so when you burn organic in a low oxygen environment, you tend to get polyaromatic hydrocarbons since they are the thermodynamic sink. Add a little nitrogen and you get heterocyclic amines. That char and soot coming off the grill is largely PAH and HA. These are highly carcinogenic compounds.

Of course, I’m not telling anyone what to do. Food poisoning sucks. It’s almost always survivable, but it really sucks. My analysis of the cancer risk is mostly a guess based on my knowledge of the chemistry behind it.

27

That article is terrifying. I had no idea that prepackaged ground beef was made like that. It sounds worse than sausage!

28

Jack In the Box wasn’t willing. It was a mistake. He means that if it’s intentional, then they ought to know what they are doing.

29

Everybody should read this article. I will never buy hamburger meat again unless it’s from Whole Foods. If I have to shop somewhere else, I will buy meat and grind it myself.

30

Its a very small study indeed, pity you have not found anything more convincing, such as actuarial figures by cause of death. I also note that the article states that these substances may cause cancer.

I further note that it states the liklehood of getting cancer may be up to three times greater than those who have their beef cooked at lower temperatures, big deal.

What is does not do is state the actual risk of getting cancer, in percentage or probability terms per 100k population.

Three or four times the risk of a very small number is highly likely to lead to a larger, but still small number. This still small number has not been determined in this article, and since this is not more widely reported, I am going with the probability that against other forms of risk, it is still less than something I need to be concerned about.

I further note that the article does not give any safe, or non-safe exposure levels - seems they do not know much about it.

The differance is that we have an immense number of people who get food poisoning, and there is a very very much higher risk of getting it. The greatest risk of food poisoning comes not from E.Coli 0157 but instead from Campylobactor

This is regularly found in meat and meat products.

Uncooked or improperly cooked meat is a major cause of food poisoning, I would be incredibly surprised to see a genuine cite that proved the risk of cancer from overcooker meat was higher. I have never ever seen any report that suggests this might be the case.

The way you used the data from a tiny report is highly misleading and is in no way in a format where meaningful comparisons can be made.

As I state in my post, worrying about the risk of cancer from overcooked meat is like worrying about the risk of being hit by lightening, whilst walking across a major freeway, only in this case the lightening is cancer, and the freeway is food poisoning pathogens.

31

Nope, I want to eat my burgers the way I like them. I had a medium rare burger Monday evening, it was good. Of course it wasn’t a frozen patty, it was fresh ground beef that the place was serving.

Places like McDonald’s don’t serve burgers medium or medium rare, places that do take better care of what they’re serving.

32

I never stated that the risk of getting cancer from overcooked meat was higher than the risk of getting food poisoning. Its just that the outcome for cancer is much worse than a sore tummy and the shits. Five thousand people dying from very broadly defined food poisoning is hardly a large number in a nation of 250 million.

Like I said, the choice is yours. I have enough information to make my own decision.

33

Most of the time a steak, for example, is cooked rare or medium-rare, it is still charred on the outside.

I don’t know if you guys participated in the other thread, but it seems most of the harm from PAH and other products of frying comes from breathing them while cooking.

The lowest levels of PAHs will be in boiled beef (which can actually taste very, very good with its own kind of meaty man flavor), but raw meat has other benefits in terms of un-decomposed vitamins and nutrients

34

There will certainly be PAH’s on the outside of a rare steak. PAH’s are pretty much unavoidable in any situation where organic compounds are heated. The longer you cook it, the more PAH’s and HA’s there will be. The worst offender is slow cooked barbeque that essentially sits there absorbing smoke for hours.

I think it is rather elementary that the same compounds that cause lung cancer when smoked, will cause cancer when eaten. I don’t think that this is a minor contributor to cancer rates, but unlike with food poisoning, a diagnosis for stomach cancer will not likely cause you to think about the well done steak you ate in 1998. It will not be as easy to study.

35

Meh, everything gives you cancer nowadays. And a little cancer certainly isn’t enough to keep me away from barbecue…

36

I’ve been watching my fiance, a classically trained and skilled French Chef, cooking for years and I have yet to see him wash a steak, chop, etc. I would think that washing them in a salt solution (as mentioned above) to remove blood, etc. would drastically effect the flavor. IANA professional chef, but that just doesn’t seem like standard operating procedure.

37

Me neither. I eat my burgers medium rare because that’s the way I like them.

38

For those of you who, like me, consider a medium-rare burger food and a medium-well burger leather, here’s a nice rule of thumb if your primary concern is food safety with a secondary concern that it’s food and not shoe leather:

Only eat medium rare burgers from reputable establishments who fresh-grind their beef on the premises.

If you don’t have that luxury, then you have to decide between a good meal and avoiding food poisoning, and of course which of those is the greatest good for you is not for others to decide. I personally consider the risk of food poisoning pretty small, the severity of a typical case grossly over-exaggerated by the media, and the better choice to be to take the risk of eating contaminated food. But that’s me. When I travel overseas it sort of resets my perspective on exactly how (non-) “dangerous” it is to eat in the US.

For most bacterial-related food-born illnesses the quantity of ingested pathogens makes a significant difference. Therefore, freshly ground high-quality beef just doesn’t have time to get a high-enough load of bacteria to make you sick, even though the machinery or hands through which it was processed created a source of contamination. As a practical example, if I’m getting a burger from Fuddruckers or buying fresh-ground raw patties from Costco and they are grinding the beef that day, I never give it a second thought. OTOH a hole in the wall somewhere might tip me over to going with shoe leather. And of course, as has been pointed out, meat is not the only source of food-born illness.

Hyperbole such as “shit in the meat” is simply ignorance about bacteria and food. Under such literary license there is shit on every surface you touch. And perhaps a little more Discovery-channel surfing where those Amazon primitives kill a monkey and eat it when they get back to camp after a few days of walking around in a steamy jungle would do such nervous nellie alarmists some good, in my opinion.

Sure, food poisoning exists. So do many other dangers. Which prudent behaviours to rank into your personal existence is…well, personal. But I always think it’s comical to (for instance) see a smoker worry about food poisoning.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/poison.html

*"More than 90 percent of the cases of food poisoning each year are caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Bacillus cereus, and Entero-pathogenic Escherichia coli. These bacteria are commonly found on many raw foods. Normally a large number of food-poisoning bacteria must be present to cause illness. Therefore, illness can be prevented by (1) controlling the initial number of bacteria present, (2) preventing the small number from growing, (3) destroying the bacteria by proper cooking and (4) avoiding re-contamination.

Poor personal hygiene, improper cleaning of storage and preparation areas and unclean utensils cause contamination of raw and cooked foods. Mishandling of raw and cooked foods allows bacteria to grow. The temperature range in which most bacteria grow is between 40 degrees F (5 degrees C) and 140 degrees F (60 degrees C). Raw and cooked foods should not be kept in this danger zone any longer than absolutely necessary. Undercooking or improper processing of home-canned foods can cause very serious food poisoning."*

39

Not necessarily. You can eat asbestos all day. (It causes cancer when crystals get lodged in the lungs and are never absorbed or excreted back out). Lungs are sensitive, exposed tissue while the gut is used to being covered in shit.

40

I don’t know much about the chemistry of asbestos and the mechanism that causes cancer, but the mechanism for cancer from PAH’s is well understood and broad. PAH’s are known to cause skin cancer as well as lung cancer. They cause cancer by the same epoxidation metabolite mechanism as benzene. They are readily absorbed through the skin and are fat soluble.

It’s true that your digestive system is different from your respiratory system. Maybe there is no reason to worry.