Bacon is the oxygen of the food world. It's amazing, you can't get enough of it and anyone too stupid to love it deserves to die anyway. You love bacon, and all of its delicious, porky cousins. But you'd better make sure that pork is well done, right? You've got to fire up the grill and get that pig cooking. Anything less than well done and you'll get worms all up in your colon and stomach, and eventually your brain and your thoughts (probably).

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Ahh, the appetizing taste of burned, dead worms.

That's why restaurants prepare pork chops the way they want, without even giving you any options. You can tell a waiter how rare you want a cheeseburger, but if you order pork chops, they're not going to let you decide if you want them rare or medium, because any choice that isn't "well done" just means "full of worms."

The Reality:

Full of bullshit, is more like it. Due to a fear of trichinosis (a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork), people have, for years, made sure that they don't eat pork unless it's been cooked to a well-done state. By the way, that fear was completely legit, because trichinosis is a worm that slithers menacingly around in an animal's (or some lucky human's) digestive system. After that, it burrows its way into the flesh and the muscles. In other words, it's a terrifying hellbeast.

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Meet your tapeworm's new roommate.

The thing is, that fear was legit many, many years ago. Today, due to modern pork processing standards, cases of trichinosis in the U.S. have been reduced to about 11 each year, and most of those cases weren't even from pork -- they were from the consumption of wild game. You could go to a restaurant and order pork chops medium rare and eat them and totally not die. You wouldn't just be safe from worms, you'd be entering some brand new pork territory, as most people have only ever had pork after it's been thoroughly cooked, thus robbing it of all its flavor. Imagine it. Juicy, warm, moist pork chops sitting on your plate, melting in your mouth, and no worms to be found for miles and miles.