The CDC Keeps Warning People Not To Eat Raw Cookie Dough

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The CDC is warning people not to eat cookie dough, a temptation at holiday time. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Goran Kosanovic for The Washington Post.
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The cookies are in the oven; the mixing bowl, which is still coated with the sugary sweet dough, is calling your name.

Don’t listen to it, health experts warn.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is once again urging people not to eat unbaked cookie dough – not even a tiny taste – because “unbaked products that are intended to be cooked, such as dough or batter, can make you sick.”

“Say No to Raw Dough!” the CDC warns.

The potential problem is with two primary ingredients.

Raw flour can be contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. coli), and raw eggs have been a known carrier of salmonella bacteria.

Both bacteria are killed in the cooking process, but contaminated food that is not cooked or is undercooked has been known to make people ill, according to the CDC.

“When you’re making cookies, often the recipe calls for raw eggs,” Lindsay Malone, a registered dietitian with the Cleveland Clinic, said in 2016. “Whenever you consume raw eggs, you increase your risk of salmonella poisoning.” Malone added that “when there’s a risk for salmonella, you really want to be cautious and take steps to avoid it as much as possible.”

In recent years, public health experts have become vocal about raw flour, too.

The CDC reported that in 2016, more than 60 people across the United States were sickened with E. coli from raw flour.

According to an alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

That means no taste-testing batter or dough – not for cookies, cakes, pies or even bread and pizza crust.

In addition, the CDC said, children should not be permitted to play with dough because they can get sick simply from handling it.

The health agency sounds the alarm about eating raw cookie dough every year around this time, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection typically echoes the CDC.

However, not all public health experts agree that raw cookie dough is dangerous.

Brian Zikmund-Fisher, associate professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at University of Michigan, wrote in the Conversation in 2016 that his family eats raw cookie dough “regularly.”

“To start, when most people think about health risks and cookie dough, they think about raw egg. Eggs can be contaminated with salmonella bacteria, and food safety recommendations encourage people to cook eggs until the white and yolk are firm in order to kill any bacteria,” Zikmund-Fisher wrote. “Because of this concern, when my kids and I make cookie dough, we never use regular eggs. Instead, we use eggs that have been pasteurized to kill any harmful bacteria without actually cooking the egg itself. (A great public health innovation, if you ask me!) So, I wasn’t worried about the eggs in the cookie dough.”

On raw flour, he said that contamination is “rare.”

Symptoms from E. coli infection typically appear within several days and may include severe stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting; symptoms of a salmonella infection are similar but may also include a fever, according to the CDC. With both illnesses, patients usually recover within less than a week, according to the agency.

To avoid potential infection, the CDC suggests not eating raw cookie dough or cake batter, of course, but also not making homemade ice cream or milkshakes with the uncooked ingredients. (However, according to the FDA, commercial cookie dough ice cream is typically safe because it is made with treated flour and pasteurized eggs.) The CDC also urges people to thoroughly wash their hands with warm, soapy water and to clean all work surfaces, dishes and utensils when working with raw eggs and flour.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post · Lindsey Bever 

{Matzav.com}


13 COMMENTS

    • Everybody knows that eating raw dough causes worms and stomach aches. You don’t need the CDC to tell us this. Matzav just wants us to gain the confidence back of the CDC and Big Pharma after all their vaccination lies.

      • Dear 5:29am(late night surfing tinfoil hat websites?), your brain may “cause worms”, raw flower causes E Coli infections. Typical antivaxxer: uninformed yet opinionated.

        • Dear 7:54 am, straight from bed to the internet, hmmm….. Shachris will just have to wait for all the news to be digested to have what to think about during the long 18-blessings shemona esre.

          Hashem, please put the brains back into the vaxxers and give them to understand the concept of time zones.

          • ….and give the anti-vaxxers contemporary understanding of infectious diseases not concepts from the dark ages.

          • Dear 8:48, projecting, aren’t you? Some of us wake-up at 6:00, and have davened by 7:54. So dear antivaxxer, do you want to teach me about time zones?! 5:29am eastern time is 2:29am in California, while referencing to CDC shows that the commenter is likely to be in the US, hence the previous assumption stands: antivaxxers are ignorant loosers who stay up at night surfing tinfoil hat websites.

  1. How can we believe this? It’s from the cdc! They are the reshaim who only have their own agendas in mind!!! Just like they have an agenda by telling people to vaccinate, so too here maybe they have an agenda by telling people not to eat raw cookie dough! Maybe they have a deal with big oven companies!!! We should all listen to Brian zikmund-fisher on this topic and not be sheeple!!!!!

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