Raw pork... it's what's for lunch.
You can imagine my incredulity when this showed up for lunch. It really is just raw ground pork served with raw onions on a roll with a pickle on the side. It's called Mett.
As an American I found this meal a bit shocking, and I would say that many of us are actually a bit fearful of cooking pork, given the draconian warnings about the need to cook it thoroughly. The primary worry seems to be trichinosis, a nasty parasite, but it seems that in actual fact it has been all but exterminated in domestic animals. One 1996 study in the U.S. sampled a quarter million pigs and found an infection rate of zero. Furthermore, here in the European Union, all slaughtered pigs must be checked for trichinosis. It seems there is no such requirement in the United States.
As benign as it may be, I was nonetheless unable to muster the courage to eat it. Yet.
I posted this to Reddit, too, in both /r/germany and /r/food. So far the Germans are going bonkers for it while in /r/food it's getting a more typical American reaction.
Apologies to vegetarian readers.
