I’m a dumb dumb I know. I accidentally ate undercooked pork mince (actually it was labelled as 70% beef and 30% pork which I failed to notice until after the eating was done). It was a small homemade burger done on the BBQ so I’m not sure if it even managed to make it to the safe temperature (70°C) before I took it off the grill and gobbled it down. I saw the meat was a little pink on my last bite but I thought it was fine since it was beef (wrong). In hindsight, bad decision since ground meat should be cooked thoroughly anyway.
Question is, where do I need to go if symptoms start presenting? Is a normal 内科 clinic good enough?
I’m not familiar with food processes in Japan and how common food-borne illnesses are.
19 comments
Was it cold? You’re probably fine. Go to a doctor if you feel sick.
If you start feeling symptoms you should go straight away to a hospital, don’t even bother with small clinics. They will only give you a 30 second look and send you back home.
Don’t worry about it. Most pork these days are pretty safe to eat if undercooked a bit. I don’t suggest eating undercooked pork, just that it is pretty rare these days to make you sick.
But if you are super unlucky, go to a hospital if you notice [symptoms.](https://www.hokeniryo.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/shokuhin/eng/faq/category06/55.html)
Start writing your will
I would be a lot more worried if I were in the US than in Japan. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Interestingly, the most dangerous thing in the US is Romaine lettuce especially grown in Yuma Arizona. The farm is right next to a gigantic cattle farm and the shit from the cows often gets onto the Romaine lettuce which obviously most people don’t heat up before they eat
How to know someone is from a first world country without…
Regardless of whether it was pork or beef, you should always cook supermarket ground meat to a safe temperature, especially when you don’t know the circumstances in which it was grounded 🙂
Probably nothing but generally raw ground beef would be E. Coli and raw pork would be trichinosis parasite so you could look up those symptoms.
Just shit it out.
Source had my fair share of accidental uncooked food and those 50% discounted foods left in the fridge for a few days.
You’ll be fine.
German Mettbrochen has entered the chat.
PS. In Germany pork meat labelled for raw consumption has been certified, but of course I won’t recommend eating such thing outside Germany.
As someone who’s eaten basashi and torizashi a number of times, I would not be worried about undercooked meat in Japan.
If you eat bad pork, biggest symptom is usually emptying your bowels. Possibly stomache pain.
but really, pork in Japan is surprisingly clean. It’ll dry out before it’ll spoil it feels like.
Honestly, most food in this country is safe to eat raw, even the food which doesn’t explicitly state it is.
That said, a hospital visit won’t break the bank if you do get sick, so, go to the hospital if you notice symptoms of trichinosis, otherwise, take it as a lesson learned.
You’re probably fine, just don’t make a habit of it.
Don’t even sweat it, young cat! You would be carrying on with your day no problem had you not noticed. Now that you did, trust your immune system will take care of you. Seek medical attention of course if something feels off and you are prone to food poisoning and stuff like that. If you are quite a healthy lad or laddie normally, carry on!
Would you eat a nice bowl of beef tartare or a beef burger with a nice pink center?
The risks of eating modern farmed pork and modern farmed beef are almost exactly the same. Cows can also carry the tapeworm parasite, just like pigs, and you don’t see people worrying because their beef burger or steak is pink in the middle.
Now obviously any wild meat should treated with caution. Wild boar, deer meat, etc. should be cooked all the way through, although this is as much about killing off parasites as it is about the less sterile conditions in the slaughter and handling of game meat that tend to increase the chance of e-coli and similar problems.
However meat from your local grocery store is, on the whole, safe.
Again, would you panic about a nice rare steak? No. Then don’t panic about pork that was a little pink in the middle. Would I recommend making it a regular thing? Not really, but that’s mostly because old habits die hard, not because of any actual risk.
Most mixed pork like this is imported from Canada, which means it was frozen for transport, you should be okay. Freezing food is a way to kill off pathogens.
Bro your fine.
Sounds like BBQs when we were kids. Undercooked frozen burgers. They tasted lovely at the time but we’d have the shits within hours. Never needed a hospital though.