Fun-Hating FDA Says We Can Never, Ever Eat Raw Cookie Dough Again

Everyone knows you're not supposed to eat raw cookie dough. Every time you succumb to the urge to pinch a bit from the bowl, you run the risk of picking up a case of salmonella—but it never seems to stop us.

Now, the US Food and Drug Administration wants you to wipe that cookie-batter-smeared grin off your face. In a new announcement, the agency warns that raw dough of all kinds can give you a big-league intestinal baddie. What's some salmonella when you can get whacked with a case of E. coli?

While raw eggs are the primary concern when it comes salmonella—which will give you a lovely case of diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps, and possibly land you in the hospital in worse caes—it's the raw flour that poses the risk for E. coli infection. Out in the fields, wheat can come in contact with manure and waste from other animals, along with whatever other nasty bacteria might be out there. These types of bacteria are killed when flour is cooked, but raw, they can put you in a world of hurt. Symptoms of E. coli include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea that's often bloody, vomiting, and even death.

And it's an infection most people don't think about when handling flour or dough. "Flour is not the type of thing that we commonly associate with pathogens," Jenny Scott, a senior adviser at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told The New York Times.

The announcement comes after an E. coli outbreak that has infected 38 people in 20 states so far, with ten cases requiring hospitalization. The infection was traced to flour produced at a General Mills plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Ten million pounds of flour sold under the brand names Gold Medal, Signature Kitchens, and Gold Medal Wondra have been recalled.

All types of dough—pizza, bread, tortilla, pie crust—are a risk. But few forms of dough are as enticing as cookie dough. Last year, a woman died from an E. coli infection that she picked up after eating just "a couple bites" of cookie dough. In 2009, Nestle recalled 3.6 million packages of Toll House cookies that sickened 69-plus people in 25 states over E. coli fears.

So how real is this danger, and how realistic is it for people to stop looking their chocolate-chip-covered spoons?

Scott tells MUNCHIES, "We issued the Consumer Update as a way to remind consumers about a practice many people may already have stopped. Many people have stopped eating raw dough containing eggs, and now we're adding this note of caution about flour. Usually, when flour is baked, if a pathogen was present it would be killed by the heat. We have noted two outbreaks, one in 2009 and one in 2016, so it can be said that the risk is relatively low, but it is present. Because the illnesses caused by the E. coli strains in these outbreaks can be very severe, we want to make consumers aware of the steps they can take to further reduce their risk."

An expert recommends cleaning countertops and utensils that come in contact with raw flour and, of course, washing hands thoroughly.

If you still want to go for the cookie dough, that's on you. Life is but one long experiment in risk versus reward. And hey, you can always split the difference and make cookie dough cookies.