Disclaimer: I haven’t eaten raw chicken. Not looking for Reddit quips telling me to go to an emergency room.
Was just wondering if salmonella is pretty much guaranteed when eating raw chicken or if it’s something like 50/50 and an easy preventative measure like throwing out expired/damaged cans of food or washing fruits and vegetables before you eat them. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people in TV shows and movies eating raw eggs.
Most of the risk comes from the processing and handling of the meat. If the chicken isn’t perfectly healthy, and the butcher isn’t very careful about keeping the intestinal tract from spreading, bacteria from the intestinal tract could spread to the meat.
This is the same reason that you need to cook ground beef to a much higher temperature than you need to cook a steak, more surface area, more points of possible contamination.
Is it possible to process and eat raw chicken safely? The Japanese certainly think so, it’s a dish that’s available widely in Japan.
It’s up to you, and your risk tolerances. But if you’re going to do it, you have to make sure you source the meat cleanly, it’s processed very cleanly, it’s stored very cleanly. It’s a high bar
We went to Japan and on the advice of the locals, tried the raw chicken dish. Everyone got crippling explosive diarrhea. They’re more confident about it than they probably should be.
Their government is telling them to stop eating it, that should tell you how confident the experts are…
Couple years ago there were locals all over America saying the masks are a hoax, and to inject bleach.
…locals aren’t always right, or even smart…
Might just be used to it, and you weren’t. Your tolerance can get pretty high if you’ve been eating it your whole life.
I tried it in Osaka and had no issues. Tbh it’s nothing to write home about, it doesn’t really taste like anything. I feel like it’s one of those foods that’s more about the prestige associated with it than the taste. As mentioned above, it has to be a very high standard of product to be safe to eat, so it’s kind of showing off how high quality your meat is, rather than actually being delicious.
“Just” explosive diarrhea? Likely wasn’t salmonella. So it could have been any number of causes. Which is why even when salmonella isn’t a risk, you gotta be careful with raw meat.
It lasted three days if that’s any indication…
Ouch. Literally and figuratively. If it wasn’t salmonella, it sure as hell wasn’t just unfamiliar food, not lasting that long.
In the US chicken is believed to be 75% with salmonella- hence why you should wash your hands and surfaces along with utensils thoroughly.
I didn’t know this.
If I raised my own chickens and treated them well would it be an issue to eat them raw? It kind of sounds a bit like a mad cow disease situation where it’s more a byproduct of the industrialized nature of the industry
In your scenario, you would know the health of your chicken, so you could make your own risk calculation.
You would still have to be incredibly careful, and be very clean, when processing the chicken, and when preparing the meal.
I think as with all other raw foods, such as sashimi, it’s something to try only if your immune system is working really well.
The FDA actually requires that raw fish be frozen prior to consumption to kill parasites. Food Code 3-402.11-12.