The FDA ruins everything. In a new report titled “Raw Dough’s A Raw Deal And Could Make You Sick,” the Food And Drug Administration says that under no circumstances should anyone eat raw cookie dough, citing not only the danger of raw eggs—a threat everyone knows about and mostly chooses to ignore, because, duh, raw cookie dough—but also the threat of raw flour, which it says could give you E. coli.
According to the report, most flour is “derived from a grain that comes directly from the field and typically is not treated to kill bacteria.” Dozens of people have gotten sick in recent months due to a strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, and all of their illnesses have been linked to tainted flour. In fact, earlier this month, General Mills recalled 10 million pounds of flour from three of its brands, saying there was a threat that the bacteria could be present.
As The Daily Beast notes, without the application of extreme heat from something like boiling, roasting, or frying, flour could contain harmful bacteria, especially if an animal pooped anywhere on the grain, even while it’s growing in the field.
In other words, you probably shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough (or bread dough, pizza dough, uncooked flour tortillas, or random batter) unless you’re willing to risk coming down with a stomach-churning case of e. Coli. If, given all this information, you still say, “FDA, you can pry this cookie dough from my cold dead hands,” hey, go crazy, man. It’s your diarrhea.
[via The Daily Beast]