Talk about news to ruin your meal.
Experts now reckon eating medium rare gourmet burgers could kill you.
That’s because they could contain dangerous bacteria such as salmonella, listeria, campylobacter or e-coli, experts have said.
Normally these bacteria live on the outside of meat so cooking steaks rare, medium rare or even blue is usually okay.
But because the meat is minced inside burgers, the outside does not get seared and therefore these bacteria may not be killed off.
This means potentially the bacteria will remain if the burger is not thoroughly cooked through – increasing your risk of food poisoning or even death.
The revelations are included in a Channel 4 documentary called Tricks of the Restaurant Trade.
Hugh Pennington, professor of bacteriology and a leading expert in food poisoning, told the programme: ‘The problem with rare burgers is that you might fall ill from eating a bug that’s contained in the rare burger.
‘You only have to eat one bacterium to get a potentailly lethal infection.’
The programme, which airs tonight, tests burgers purchased from several top restaurant chains – with some shocking results.
One burger from Byron was found to contain listeria innocua, while burgers from GBK and Honest Burger were also looked at.