During the holidays or any time of the year, everyone loves making cookies with their friends and family. While your baking you soon come in contact with a bowl full of cookie dough, an empty bowl, and spoon filled with cookie dough later on in the process. You always try and sneak that little bit of cookie dough into your mouth, but then your parent tells you that you can’t eat it because it will make you sick. You don’t eat it because you always listen to your parents, but does cookie dough really make you sick? How come you can eat cookie dough when its in ice cream?
What are some of the main ingredients that are in cookie dough? Well depending on the cookie, their can be lots of things inside of it, but what are the ingredients that almost every kind of cookie dough must contain? These ingredients are butter, margarine, water, milk, flower, baking powder, sugar, and eggs, but as said before these ingredients can always change depending on the kind of cookie. So what is the ingredient that can make you sick? That ingredient is the eggs that are inside of the cookie dough? But why? What could an egg possibly do to make one sick?
It is said if a person eats too much cookie dough they could get a sickness called Salmonella. What is Salmonella? By definition “Salmonella infection is a common bacterial disease that affects the intestinal tract.” (mayclinic). This type of bacteria usually comes from human or animal feces. A person can get this bacteria usually from water or food. So in this instance the salmonella poisoning in the cookie dough will come from the eggs.
How does the egg get the Salmonella bacteria inside of it?
The egg can get this bacteria inside of it in a few ways. The first way is by just the hen sitting on the egg. The bacteria comes from the feces and so while the hen is sitting on the egg, the bacteria can actually get through the eggs hard shell and get into the inside of the yoke. Also the hens ovaries can get this bacteria inside of it, and even before the eggs hard shell is even made the bacteria can already be inside of it, but this is a very rare instance.
The symptoms of salmonella can start 12 to 72 hours after the food or water has been consumed into the persons body. When a person as salmonella they can endure diarrhea, fevers, stomach pain, and dehydration. All of these things can last up to 4 to 7 days.
So getting back to cookie dough…. How much cookie dough does a person have to eat in order for them to get salmonella? Well some say that eating cookie dough isn’t actually really bad for you because its very unlikely for eggs to actually have Salmonella know a days.L.V Anderson from Slate.com says that she has consumed an estimated amount of 360 eggs in her lifetime from licking bowls, and eating batter, or cookie dough when baking, and she says she has never gotten Salmonella. Even though it is possible for an egg to have salmonella if the hen has it, their are protocols that help prevent this. Actually in Pennsylvania in particular,” The Pennsylvania Egg Quality Assurance Program actually tests the hens when they are pullets(immature) to see if they have Salmonella, and they also keep the eggs refrigerated to help prevent the bacteria as well.” (Slate.com). Paul Patterson, A professor at Penn State says that ” The poultry industry wants to get their hands around this because they were losing shares”. (Slate.com). He also talks about many families who farm are worried about their eggs and don’t think they are safe with this bacteria. ” Pennsylvania succeeded in reducing the portion of SE infected hen houses from 38% statewide to 8%”(Slate.com) Many states now vaccinate the hen houses to make sure the bacteria does not get around to the hens. Since there was a big Salmonella outbreak in the 1990s preventions have become a lot more strict when it comes to Salmonella. ” The Centers for Disease control say that when they took the data from the 1990s outbreak they say that today 1 and 20,000 eggs are internally contaminated with salmonella”.(Slate.com).
So how can we eat cookie dough in ice cream?
The cookie dough that we find in our beloved cookie dough ice creams, are made with processed ingredients, and most the time no eggs which makes it perfectly safe for us to eat.
So back to the question. Can cookie dough really make you sick? I would say yes and no. I am saying this because many people have eaten cookie dough or some kind of batter with uncooked egg, and has not gotten sick or has gotten sick. So there are two sides to this question. This really all depends on whether or not the egg is contaminated with the Salmonella bacteria. So if one wanted to conduct an experiment basically the main factor would be the salmonella contaminated egg. For me personally, during the Holidays I’m always taking a few bites and licks from the cookie dough batter or even cake batter, and I have been perfectly fine. This might be different for other people. I will say if a person eats too much cookie dough in general they will get a stomach ache for awhile, but that’s too much of anything.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/salmonella/basics/definition/con-20029017
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/tc/salmonellosis-topic-overview
http://www.scienceiq.com/facts/salmonellachickeneggs.cfm
http://www.scienceiq.com/facts/salmonellachickeneggs.cfm
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/03/salmonella_and_raw_eggs_how_i_ve_eaten_tons_of_cookie_dough_and_never_gotten.1.html
When I bake with my mom she always tells me not to eat the cookie dough, but when I bake with my friends we always do! My friend’s dad had Salmonella poisoning one time and he said it was the worst thing ever. He pretty much was in bed for a week straight and couldn’t keep any food down. He didn’t get Salmonella poisoning from eating cookie dough, but after that my friends and I became very paranoid about eating the cookie dough. But after reading your post, I don’t feel as scared as I did about eating raw cookie dough. The chances of the eggs actually containing the bacteria are very low, especially because you said that PA has the Egg Quality Assurance Program.
I was actually trying to find online if someone actually did an experiment for this. In order to do this a person would have to search for an egg or hen that has the salmonella bacteria inside of it, and then put it in the cookie dough itself, and I agree that would not be a good idea at all as said in the comment earlier. From doing research I think getting salmonella if very rare nowadays because of all the preventions that are around today, but its almost likely for anything to happen. This was a very interesting thing for me to research.
I love this topic and have considered buying straight up cookie dough from the Grab and Go in Findlay since we don’t have ovens to bake the dough anyway. However, it would be interesting if someone could do a double-blind placebo test and have some people eat raw cookie dough and others eat the cookie dough in ice cream that does not have eggs in order to see what happens. This may not be ethical because the risk of inflicting salmonella on someone seems wrong. This article comes from 2011 during the time that salmonella’ was actually on the news and not a wife’s tale: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/researchers-warn-against-eating-raw-cookie-dough/. It suggests that one brand in particular had traces of the bacteria. Have we only been telling people to not eat cookie dough even though there is no hard evidence behind it? I have been eating it for years and don’t plan on stopping any time soon.
I personally relate to this blog because I love cookie dough and am guilty myself of sneaking in spoonfuls of it during the holidays. I used to do it all the time as a kid and nothing ever happened to me. The most I have gotten was a stomach ache, but that could be due to multiple factors. It was interesting to see the facts you posted about Salmonella because I have always wondered what you should do if you were to acquire it. I am stuck in between if this is a myth or not, but I am leaning towards maybe. I have never seen someone get Salmonella by eating raw cookie dough, but I’m sure it has happened to someone before. There may be some cases on it, but I have not seen anything. I don’t think there is a direct causality between cookie dough and Salmonella, but there could be a potential correlation. Below, the link talks about studies that have directly linked cookie dough to hospital visits due to stomach aches and vomiting. However, none of these cases related back to Salmonella, so I would say eat it in moderation, but we are all fine! 🙂
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/raw-cookie-dough-dangerous-to-eat-study-warns/
As soon as I saw the words “cookie dough” I knew I was interested in this topic. I am guilty of sneaking a few tastes of the cookie dough before sticking the tray in the oven. Heck, I’m guilty of buying a tube of slice and bake cookie dough and eating it with a spoon. I’m fully aware of the risk of salmonella but that doesn’t seem to stop me. I think this has a lot to do with our “oh it won’t happen to me” mentality that causes humans, especially teenagers, to think they are indestructible. This reminds me of the doctors we learned about in class who were accidentally harming patients with their treatments, but the failed case results were so spread out and difficult to notice that it went on undetected. Until a significant amount of people start getting sick from Salmonella directly received from cookie dough and it is widely publicized, I don’t see my habits changing anytime soon.
I’ve always wondered if this was a myth or not! I guess we are always taking a risk when eating cookie dough since the egg could contain feces. Although, since there have been prevention methods being done and the number of people who actually have gotten salmonella from cookie dough is extremely low the risk does not seem all that high. The likelihood of getting salmonella seems extremely small and the small bite of cookie dough taken is a risk I’d be willing to take.