uh, i'll take "food bourne illnesses" for $400, Alex

[acroyear]

Aetiology: Martha, Martha, Martha...:

The Today show had a cooking segment with Martha Stewart on BBQ'ing great hamburgers. So Martha put a burger on the grill, and the anchor asked her, "how long do you cook that for?"

Martha's reply? "For a rare burger, about 3 minutes on a side."

Ground beef. Martha Stewart, cooking icon, telling viewers that they can cook it rare. No mention of using a food thermometer to be sure that the internal temperature is up to 160 degrees F in order to kill any contaminating bacteria. No mention that eating such a burger rare increases one's risk of developing a food-borne illness. Nothing.

This is why public health officials bang their heads against the wall. Who has more influence--your local public health department, already understaffed and underfunded, trying to get the word out about safely BBQ'ing this summer, or Martha Stewart with 5 minutes on the Today show, telling everyone how to cook a rare hamburger?

yeah, its a busy day for me, can't you tell?

UPDATE to clarify MY position which is also likely Tara's:

if the average person could be told that "its ok if you're careful", they'll do it without being careful. and then they'll sue the person who says "its ok if you're careful".

if "normal" people would, like myself and most on my f-list, take personal responsibility, that would be one thing, but as long as the vast masses of Martha Stewart fans think she's a goddess who can say no wrong (rather than a convicted felon), people are going to get sick following her advice that she just preached on national tv to an audience of about 25 million.

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

So? For a rare burger it's 3 minutes on a side- for a more cooked one, you cook it longer. Yes, you CAN cook it rare. Yes, you assume a higher risk that way, but I am totally against the notion that says "Oh Noes, we must tell them all they must cook meat to this temperature because it's going to make you sick otherwise!" If that's the message, maybe we ought to have a campaign against sunny side up eggs, too? Those yolks sure aren't cooked, and you know, you'll get poisoned that way.

The worst thing you can say is she probably should have mentioned that rare burgers should only be made with very fresh, high quality meat, and that should cook a burger longer if you have any questions about what that means, or something similar.

Not for nothing, but there's a lot of us that eat ground beef rare. I won't *eat* a burger if it's been cooked past medium rare- period(though I always order it straight rare), and I won't order a burger anywhere that won't allow me to order it rare- if they're so worried about the quality of their meat then I don't want to eat it. I also think that 160 degree in the center burgers taste *disgusting*. I do understand that most meat you buy in your average supermarket probably shouldn't be trusted to do that with. But you know? Im sure Martha Stewart *does* eat her burgers rare-- she also doesn't buy her meat at c-town.

[thatwasjen]

The elf beat me to it.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, a point being you're 1) aware of the risks and 2) selective of where you get your beef to start with. (Also, its not the meat so much as the grounding equipment and how clean it is kept - you're trusting the butcher more than just the cow farmer.)

i also get the impressions that 3) you don't watch the Today Show regularly, and 4) you're hardly a fan of Martha Stewart.

comments like this all have to do with the (target) audience, and last i checked you don't fit any demographic that someone like Martha Stewart or any Today Show advertiser has any interest in.

personally, i think that's a good thing, but there you go. :)

if the average person could be told that "its ok if you're careful", they'll do it without being careful. and then they'll sue the person who says "its ok if you're careful".

if people would, like you and i, take personal responsibility, that would be one thing, but as long as the vast masses of Martha Stewart fans think she's a goddess who can say no wrong (rather than a convicted felon), people are going to get sick following her advice that she just preached on national tv to an audience of about 25 million.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

read my reply to her

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Fine, then they can sue her. She has the money.

The bottom line is I dont find anything inherently wrong with her advice. I'm not a fan, nor am I not a fan of her. I just happen to think that "For rare, cook 3 minutes per side", is a pretty standard piece of information.

[gargoylez]

Hey, if you're bored, you could always go upload your pics from our wedding to the Snapfish account. ;-P

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

How long to cook the burger SHOULD depend on the size of the burger and the temperature of the cooking apparatus.

That said, with ground beef you are dealing with the slaughter plant AND whomever does the grinding. The Jack-In-The-Box problem of ~1993 was caused by the slaughtering people not properly cleaning the pieces post slaughter (hence getting the E. Coli 0157H7 on the meat and not cleaning it off), the grinding people failing to clean the meat prior to grinding (they were able to trace it to about a 15 minute window for the grinder ... which gets sterilzed every couple of hours for a reason), and the cooks who failed to follow the restaurant's guidelines for how THEIR burgers are supposed to be cooked.

Your local grocery store (Giant, Safeway, Wegeman's, etc.) probably gets in 1/2 or 1/4 cows and cuts them into whatever pieces the need and grinds up the rest in the store. Beef (like other meats) does age and possibly go off if left out too long and with ground meat, it goes off faster because the surface area to volume gets wacky.

Martha should probably have said X minutes/side for medium (or medium well) and left it at that. However, for most people in MOST situations, cooking/eating rare beef isn't the end of the world (I do admit that I tend to go for medium on burgers and medium rare on steaks ... NO E.Coli in the interior of a steak unless something truly catastrophic has happened).

So, wanna talk Sushi?

This long comment brought to you by a semester of "Microbiology of Food" which could have been nicknamed "1001 ways to have food poisoning".

[thatwasjen]

Certain issues bring out the libertarian in me.

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

I like you anyway.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I don't actually cook hamburgers at home, all my uses for ground beef involve cooking it into crumbles (got some browning right now in fact) and putting it in something gooey. But, in this context, what would constitute being careful? I mean, no naked cooking of stuff that spatters grease, obviously, but beyond that?

[cyberkender.livejournal.com]

Duh. Rare, *by definition*, is not 160 degrees F. It's 135-140. Medium is 160...