YouTube is awesome. Not just for watching music videos of Norwegians dancing in fox suits or trucks smashing into bridges. It’s just about the best place to see folks modeling risky burger cooking practices.

Ben Raymond, MS student, is in the middle of what may end up being an excruciating project of collecting and coding online how-to-cook burger videos.

He sent me the below message today about an eHow video staring school executive chef Brad Newman (below, exactly as shown):

Here’s a great example of the stuff we see in these videos. He’s a chef, he “he helps public schools improve their food programs by training staffs and speaking with students about responsible eating” and is a food safety failure.

He grabs the raw ground and within seconds is literally holding it against the bun he uses for the burger.

The best line “learn your meat, once you learn it youll have it forever” in reference to checking doneness by firmness of the meat.

And at 4:01 you can see him cut into what he describes as the perfect (non-temped) medium rare burger.
USDA NIFA has funded this project (the mining and coding of burger-related YouTube videos) as part of the STEC CAP grant. We will also be creating our own evidence-based videos based on the findings.