What is better than having sliced meat crispy meat with salt and sweet flavors on a pleasant evening? Yes, there is nothing better than eating perfectly cooked bacon. Let us discuss – Can you eat bacon raw?
For people who don’t know what bacon is – It is a pork belly sliced into thin strips and cured with salt. Mostly, bacon is made from pork belly, but sometimes, bacon is made from beef, lamb, and even turkey. Turkey bacon is also a famous kind of beacon.
Many people believe that it is safe to eat bacon without cooking, and they think so because people eat cured deli ham without cooking. But can you eat bacon raw? We will answer this question in this article.
Contents
How Is Bacon Made?
The first thing you should know is that raw bacon is cured meat. They prepare the cured meat by keeping them in a mixture of water and salt. Salt has antibacterial properties, which will kill most of the parasites and bacteria in the meat. You should note that it kills most bacteria and parasites, not the whole.
The salt also absorbs moisture from the meat, making the meat a harsh environment for the bacteria and parasites to live in. This will also kill some bacteria and parasites.
After that, they will undergo a process called smoking. In this process, the meat will be smoked for 12 to 24 hours. To be more precise, they are exposed to the smoke coming from burning hardwood or fruitwood chips. The important thing is they are not directly subjected to the heat by fire.
They are only exposed to the smoke caused by the burning. The optimal temperature to preserve the meat by smoking them is 85 – 145 degrees Fahrenheit. It is quite a low temperature, but they will be heated for more than 12 hours and sometimes up to 24 hours.
So, the relatively low temperature will preserve the meat while not burning them. It also adds a flavor to the bacon, which is another selling point.
Some companies who produce bacon skip this step (smoking); instead, they spray smoke flavor on top of them. This leads to two other problems. The first thing is that it is artificial, which might not be healthy. The second thing is that the remaining parasites and bacteria will not die because they have skipped this process.
Now, we will move on to whether it is okay to eat raw bacon.
Can you eat bacon raw?
We have mentioned above that most of the bacteria and parasites will be eliminated by curing and smoking. But we also added that it couldn’t kill all of the bacteria and parasites on the piece of meat.
So, this leads us to the unfortunate conclusion that it is not safe to eat raw bacon. It’s not that you can’t eat uncooked bacon. It is not advised to eat any kind of uncooked, undercooked, or raw meat.
Humankind has evolved very much in the recent thousands of years. Our body has adapted to properly cooked food. If you introduce an undercooked piece of meat, it will identify that as a threat and will try to eject it from your body.
This will result in food poisoning and other illnesses. Excluding that, eating raw bacon has some other negative effects on the body. Now you know the answer for – can you eat bacon raw?
What Happens When You Eat Raw Bacon
Apart from food poisoning, there are several other problems that come to you uninvited. The first thing that should pop out in your mind when you think about having raw meat is the parasites.
Tapeworms and roundworms are the two major parasites that can be commonly found in undercooked meat products. They might not be visible to the naked eye, but they carry much higher risks.
When ingested, tapeworms can live and reproduce in your intestine for a long period. In that period, the people who have become the host of these parasites will experience frequent severe abdominal pain. Other effects include intestinal blockage and weight loss.
Roundworms can cause an infection that affects your muscles’ movements. This also includes heavy diarrhea, abdominal cramps, eye swelling, and pain. Without proper medical attention, this can extend for months and can prove to be life-threatening.
If you accidentally ingest a whipworm, which can be commonly found on uncooked meats, you will experience anemia, loss of blood while excreting, weight loss, frequent stomach aches, etc.
These are the common types of parasites that can cause harm to you if you eat uncooked bacon. Apart from these parasites, you have to know that there are also some harmful bacteria that exist in the meat when it’s uncooked. Bacterial infection can be more serious than parasitical infection.
So, it will be a wise decision to eat your bacon after cooking them properly. Here is all about Can you eat bacon raw.
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