Scott > wrote:
>When a steak is cook rare or medium rare isn't the pink meat in the
>middle not good for you since it appears to be not fully cook? That's
>one of the reasons I always order my steaks well-done. And if they bring
>it to me with pink in the middle I send it back.

Meat is only "not good for you" if it's got germs on it.

The germs are on the outside.

When you sear the outside, you kill the germs.

This isn't true for ground beef because the grinding
mixes the outside with the inside.

It also didn't used to be true for pork because of
trichinosis, which is a disease the pig had that spreads
trichinella all through the tissue.

But trichinosis has essentially been wiped out, at least
in the U.S.

However, pork isn't tasty when rare the way beef is.

Rare beef, by the way, is red. The pink part is cooked to
about 140F, which is enough to kill most bugs, but not E. Coli.

--Blair