My mother used to make and lot of cakes and brownies with her groovy 1960s hand mixer and I always got to lick the beaters.
No more.
And it’s not just the raw eggs, it’s the raw flour.
In June, 2009, an outbreak of shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC, primarily O157:H7) in Nestle Toll House cookie dough sickened at least 77 people in 30 American states. Thirty-five people were hospitalized – from cookie dough.
The researchers could not conclusively implicate flour as the E. coli source, but it remains the prime suspect. They pointed out that a single purchase of contaminated flour might have been used to manufacture multiple lots and varieties of dough over a period of time as suggested by the use-by dates on the contaminated product.
The study authors concluded that “foods containing raw flour should be considered as possible vehicles of infection of future outbreaks of STEC.”
So it wasn’t much of a surprise when 63 people fell sick from the outbreak strain of E. coli O121 from Dec. 2015 to Sept. 2016 linked to raw General Mills flour.
There have been about a dozen other flour-related outbreaks. STEC means people – and kids – get quite sick.
Flour is a raw commodity, crops the flour is derived from could be exposed to anything, and testing is so much better than it used to be.
There are some brands of pasteurized flour out there, but people seem to have gotten used to flour as a cheap source of play-dough-like stuff for kids and something to throw at people.
The U.S. Centres for Disease Control says, nope.
This is not a Christmas conspiracy (although I prefer Solstice Season): it’s CDC providing information, like they are supposed to.
People can, and will, do what they want.
As Maggie Fox of NBC reports, “Do not taste or eat any raw dough or batter, whether for cookies, tortillas, pizza, biscuits, pancakes, or crafts made with raw flour, such as homemade play dough or holiday ornaments,” the CDC advises.
“Do not let children play with or eat raw dough, including dough for crafts.”
Handling food, including flour, requires care and hygiene.
“Keep raw foods such as flour or eggs separate from ready-to eat-foods. Because flour is a powder, it can spread easily,” the CDC notes. “Follow label directions to refrigerate products containing raw dough or eggs until they are cooked. Clean up thoroughly after handling flour, eggs, or raw dough.”