For now, you won't be handcuffed for getting a medium-rare burger

It was nice to be on vacation in a place where I didn't have to worry about my eggs, but as long as I'm in North America, I still have to worry about my meat.

I ended up eating a few hamburgers in Toronto, trying gourmet places. The results were a bit mixed.

I tried one place and tried to get a gourmet burger medium-rare. This seemed like a simple request: the meat was better grown and handled. Certainly medium-rare wasn't a huge issue.

In one fancy burger place, the waitress told me that Ontario had a bylaw that prohibited anything short of medium. I'm fairly familiar with food law, even in Canada, and that didn't register quite right. I imagined a OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) officer arresting the cook if a burger came out with some color in it.

I researched to try this bylaw that she spoke of, but couldn't find it.

This was also a place that served buffalo; imagining that cooked medium was enough to not order that. Reluctantly, I stayed and order a beef burger.

In a burger place, the fries shouldn't be the best thing. In this place, they were. And having fries in Toronto is great because all the ketchup is HFCS-free and they serve vinegar, both white and malt.

Later in the visit, I tried a different place. I didn't figure to mention any particular law, but asked the guy if I could get the burger medium-rare. He gave me a "of course" look.

That burger, cooked medium-rare, was so good that I wanted to order a second burger. Then eat that second burger and order a third burger to take to the other place and show them how a burger should be cooked.

Some places freak out over the prospects of cooking a burger medium-rare, so it's no surprise that an employee would tell me something that wasn't true. Yes, there are standards that places are supposed to cook a burger. And those standards seem to prohibit color in a hamburger.

But the food police — or any other police — aren't going to handcuff you and the cook for running a conspiracy to have a medium-rare hamburger.

That day may come soon in Canada and the United States — and it may apply to eggs, too. Wish the enthusiasm for such a law would have the same level of enthusiasm that would go into protecting our food.

Businesses have the right to not cook food at a certain level. Some fancy restaurants won't cook steaks past a certain level — no medium-well or well. U.S. and Canada both believe in free enterprise, etc., which leaves things in your hands, the ones of the consumers.

With our hands, we pay for the food, we can cook the food to our preferred levels. The government's role should only be to make sure the food we buy is safe. The government's opinion on how well that food should be cooked should be just that: an opinion.