Many people say that they want their meat so rare that it is still moving, but recently a Filipino butcher called their bluff.
Surprised Filipino shoppers couldn't believe their eyes when they spotted a beef slab twitching in a market in the shocking video below.
Youtube user Jaime Tolentino uploaded the viral video, shot in a butcher's shop in Tagaytay, in the Cavite province in the Philippines, reported the Mirror.
More than 304,000 people have watched the video.
In the clip, spasms run all over a huge marbled beef cut that hangs from a ceiling hook in a butcher's shop. The twitches last until the video cuts off without stopping or slowing down, giving off the impression that the meat is somehow still alive. This continues for well over a minute.
While it might seem unsettling to eat meat that could come back to life, this is actually a fairly common phenomenon in freshly-butchered animals, according to the Daily Mail.
Nerve endings in the flesh continue to fire after death, which can sometimes cause the muscles to move and pulsate until the nerves fully die much later.
However, it is highly unlikely that a shopper would find something like this in an American grocery store, as the twitching only lasts for up to an hour or so after death, so consumers only find this in the very freshest cuts of meat.
The Mirror suggests that maggots lurking beneath the flesh can also cause this phenomenon, which would look very similar to nerve spasms, although they would be easy to spot after cutting the meat open and looking inside.
A woman in Shadong, China, had a similar experience earlier this year, when she saw that the steak she had just purchased from the local butcher appeared to be having spasms. She later found out that the eerie movement is an indication of freshness and that her beef was fine to eat, although the harmless lifelike movement could be enough to put some squeamish folks off of their steak dinners.
Sources: Daily Mail, Mirror, Youtube
Photo Credit: Screenshot/Youtube