Nina In New York: Raw Cookie Dough Or How I Learned To Love E. Coli

E. coli ruins practically everything.

Remember when you were little and you used to bake with your mom or your dad or your grandmother or whomever, and the greatest part about it was sneaking a piece or two of raw dough? Or maybe, hypothetically, you and your mother would each take a little demure taste of the raw batter and then the next thing you knew one of you had her tongue stuck in an electric beater and the other had her entire head in the empty mixing bowl, attempting to lick the entire thing clean? I mean, it could have happened. And then remember how even now, as an adult, when you bake cookies you still allow yourself that one spoonful of dough which becomes another spoonful and progresses until you've consumed a third to half of a batch pre-oven because the fact is that raw cookies taste way better than baked cookies? Yeah? Any of this ringing a bell? You're lying if you said no.

Sure, everyone knows there are some risks involved in eating anything with raw eggs. But I think most of us thought it through, read the literature, did some in-depth research into the likelihood, interviewed a number of specialists on the topic, ran through some case studies and ultimately came to the well-informed and thoughtful conclusion that meh, whatever. People have been eating raw eggs in various forms for a long time and usually they wind up fine.

However, a new study has been published in the journal, "Clinical Infectious Diseases" (my favorite gossip rag), which shows that a 2009 outbreak of E. coli can be traced back to store-bought, "ready-t0-bake" cookie dough. So okay, just don't buy pre-packaged cookie dough, right? Wrong.

According to The New York Times, Dr. Karen Neil, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and leader of the study, determined that the guilty party was none other than . . . [dun dun dunnnn] . . .

FLOUR.

I quote her quote: "'Out of all the ingredients, raw flour is the only raw agricultural product that was in the cookie dough,' Dr. Neil said. 'It didn't undergo any specific processing to kill pathogens, so we feel that's the most likely suspect for what may have introduced contamination into the cookie dough. We couldn't prove it conclusively, but that's what we suspect.'"

In other words, it doesn't sound like the E. coli had anything to do with a commercial facility or processing chemicals or high fructose corn syrup or preservatives or blah blah blah. So I imagine that flour contaminated with E. coli could still be a concern for home cooks. And we've still got to worry about Salmonella. Don't think that one suddenly disappeared just because another ingredient may contain the fecal matter disease.

It all adds up to this, as Dr. Partypooperdestroyeverythingilove concludes: "'It's difficult to do a direct comparison of the risks,' she said, 'but the bottom line is consumers should not eat raw cookie dough, or really any other raw product that's intended to be baked or cooked before consumption.'"

Bummer.

I, for one, think I will continue to live on the edge. What's life about if not taking chances, playing the odds, being a little risky? I'm doing it. I'm not going to change my ways for some scientist or some vicious food-borne illness. At least, not when raw cookie dough is involved. There are some lines a girl must draw. I've already given up so much more. I'll be a raw dough-ist 4 life. Or until I become uncontrollably and repulsively sick, at which point I'll consider a revision to my philosophy.