Cookery programmes and hygiene

This is going back a bit but I read George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London- his novel about working in restaurants. He said the more expensive your steak is, the more people have touched it before it lands on your plate. He never ordered steak for that reason.

Rare pork or poultrey can only be presented when you know how that particular animal has been reared.
I still would not eat it.

Its all the dipping and tasting that gets me. I was taught to take a clean spoon taste and then discard into the washing up certainly not use again one you have licked it. I never see anyone wash their hands which is the single most important thing.

I've always thought that if you didn't cook beef or pork all the way through you ran the risk of getting beef or pork tapeworm.

I certainly heard that in relation to pork, narrowboatnan but have never heard it related to beef. Not sure whether it is still relevant.

Pork yes, beef no. I have never heard of beef tapeworm.

Not likely to get tapeworms of any flavour in British meat these days.

But you could certainly get other nasties, especially from uncooked poultry.

Beef tapeworm exists.

Taenia saginata, commonly known as the beef tapeworm, is a zoonotic tapeworm belonging to the order Cyclophyllidea and genus Taenia. It is an intestinal parasite in humans causing taeniasis and cysticercosis in cattle. Wikipedia

People used to swallow tapeworm eggs to help in dieting

I can't believe that an animal raised for eating these days would have tapeworm. I like my beef blue; tuna, lamb and liver are nice and tender if still a bit pink, but pork and poultry, as everyone else has said, please cook them right through.

Don't watch TV so I can't comment on the TV cooks.

I did once see a few minutes of Mary Berry and she commented that people had mentioned her nail varnish and she said it was gel and would not chip off into the pastry or anything needing bare hands.

Personally, I use those thin latex gloves a lot when cooking, mainly so my hands don't smell of onion or garlic afterwards, or when I am touching raw meat.

Some years ago I had severe food poisoning after eating a delicious medium done steak and DH was very unwell a few years ago after eating an equally delicious piece of seared tuna, so neither of us is a fan of par-cooked meat or fish

I like all meat properly cooked. I find all par-cooked meat tastes the same, whereas proper cooking, not overcooking, brings out the individual flavours.

I think much of the preparing and eating of barely cooked animal protein is machismo like the competitions to see which restaurant could prepare the hottest curries (and who could eat them)that were common when Indian restaurants first opened. Now Indian cuisine is much more nuanced and sophisticated so the 'hottest curries ever' have gone on the scrap heap with the flocked wallpaper.

I actually do not watch cookery programmes so cannot comment on the hygiene

I said to DH - 'why is chicken supposed to be thoroughly cooked but duck is served pink on these programmes?' Pink being a euphemism for barely cooked.

There are wild boar not far from us that they are considering culling - does wild boar have worms?

I use the gloves, too, JackyB, when handling onions, garlic and meat or fish.

Well I am a vegetarian and I haven't eaten meet for 30odd years, but I could never have coped with eating meat as bloody as it is served now. Yuk

Vegetarians can get food poisoning too.

Leafy green veg is a major cause of food poisoning I was shocked to read.

Jalima it's not intestinal worms that are the problem (unless you intend eating raw intestines!) the pork tape worm is found in the muscle meat of the animal. So that's why the meat had to be cooked thoroughly.

With most (all?) tape worms there has to be a secondary host, in the case of the pig it is usually man, and that is the intestinal stage. I could go into more details but I'd rather not ???

There used to be a saying that you shouldn't eat pork if there was an R in the month.
Was that proved correct?

Oysters unless there's an 'R' in the month?

I thought it was the other way round Tricia and that was because the hot months did not have an R in them, in the days before refrigeration it was harder to keep meat.

Yes you're right, Christine - I mis-read the link on Google.
I suppose bacon is OK because it has been cured.

I've been eating rare steak since I was about nineteen and I have never suffered any ill effects from it. I still maintain that overcooking beef ruins the flavour, but I do acknowledge that to many people rare beef is not acceptable, my DH being one of them. I only ever had food poisoning once in my life. That was from eating a chicken dish in a posh Chinese restaurant in London.

That could have been from the rice Greyduster

You could well be right, jalima although back in the sixties you didn't hear much about the dangers of reheating rice. My friend, whose birthday it was, was also severely affected. Our medical officer seemed convinced that it was more than likely the chicken. He also said that if we could afford to eat there the Army was paying us too much and it served us right that we had thrown it all back up again!

Nice to see so many people shudder at the poor hygiene on tv. It applies to drama too. You very rarely see anyone wash their hands before preparing a meal. Anyone remember Fannie Craddock? She was always lecturing about the bacteria in raw meat and fish, and the importance of separate chopping boards, hair tied back etc. We may be a few years down the line but standards have slipped. Is it any wonder there is an increase in food poisoning?