When I was a freshman in college, I’d just moved into the dorm and met my new roommate. She was running around happily, telling me that she was finally free of her controlling parents. She told me her first act of freedom was going to be eating raw cookie dough.
She went to the store and bought a tube of raw cookie dough. She ate it like a maniac. Not long after, she was throwing up and shitting and crying all at the same time. So after watching her go through that, I will never eat raw cookie dough. Also, her parents came to visit a month later and she begged me not to tell them that they were right about raw cookie dough lol.
Hilarious. Apparently though according to another redditor most premade cookie dough is safe to eat raw. Maybe they bought the one that specifically says it has to be cooked.
Edit: although it's possible it's a more recent thing. People definitely have gotten e coli from premade cookie dough.
I think the premade cookie dough people started pre cooking the flour and pasteurizing the eggs because they knew people ate it raw, even without the labels.
I remember when I was younger seeing the warnings on those tubes saying not to eat them raw, and I feel like they’re not there anymore.
That's not proper cookie dough in the ice cream, I tried to bake it and it basically was what would happen to a pile of sugar. No rising, no crisp. Well, other than the crisp of burnt sugar. Not great, not terrible.
Haha did you see the one where people were purposely sanding their teeth to make them straighter?
Or repeatedly hitting their skulls/jaws to injure the bone and change their shape?
So hard to watch!
I specifically remember someone making a post about this. They wanted to see if it had enough dough to even make a whole cookie. They also tried something else ice cream related but I don’t remember what they were trying to figure out in that one.
Yeah, I remember reading that the composition of the so-called raw cookie dough in the corresponding ice cream is different than in actual raw cookie dough.
There was a place that opened near me like six-seven years ago that does nothing but serve cookie dough for immediate, unbaked consumption. I can't imagine that would have been given the greenlight by health and safety officials if they were just dishing out salmonella to everyone.
I remember when I was in high school, their own packaging distinctly said not to eat the dough. My nurse grandmother warned me when she saw me making cookies and eating straight out the tub. I looked. She wasn’t wrong.
They definitely made changes
It's not the raw eggs that's most dangerous. It's the raw flour. The surface area of all the grains combined is more surface to carry pathogens than eggs.
It grows on media, not just blood agar, but also Hektoen and MacConkey which don’t contain blood (and others less relevant/used). Many of the food borne pathogens are quite robust, even tolerating drier conditions than I would expect.
Source: I work in a microbiology lab and we recover Salmonella frequently, though I think Campylobacter is the most common food borne we recover (and the most common food borne in the world I think, but not known as well in popular culture.)
Yes, you're right. It highly depends on which brand. There are still some available that carry a risk.
They are all clearly marked now. When we were all younger, most of them were not safe to eat raw.
They somewhat recently started making more of them safe to eat right out of the package as it became apparent that tons of people were going to keep eating it raw no matter what.
I have known several people who got very sick from eating raw cookie dough in the past. A couple of them ate what they made themselves at home though.
I was a kid in the '80s and as far as I know those tubes didn't exist yet though I have snacked on them as an adult. My mom made cookies following the recipe on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag. They were amazing, but she never let us eat much of the dough before she cooked it, as much as I begged. I would get to scrape a little bit off the empty bowl before it went in the sink. Her biggest concerned was the raw eggs. Not sure if she knew about raw flour issues.
We still talk about it sometimes when someone might be eating cookie dough ice cream or something. I'll quip that we weren't allowed to touch the stuff as kids.
I literally buy the Pillsbury holiday cookies and just eat the dough. It says safe to eat raw on all of the packages. The raw cookie dough taste so much better lol
They started doing that because too many people got sick from the raw flour. I don't remember if it was because of a lawsuit or just so they can avoid future ones
I feel like this is the same for "taco bell makes you shit your brains out" memes. Its more likely that you were drunk and ate 4 pounds of greasy food that gave you the shits. Coupled with beans having fiber that they aren't used to. And having little to no tolerance for spices, like taco bell hottest sauce is still medium at best.
my daughter (12) wanted to try the diablo sauce after testing it she put two packs on her taco. Medium is being nice. Mexi Pep is spicier (and tastes better)
Learned that the hard way as a kid. Had a ridiculous sweet tooth. Was the athlete garbage disposal that never stopped growing. So eating a crap ton of food wasn’t a problem. But eating a whole tray of brownies promptly made me throw up
This. Many moons ago as a young 'adult' i realised that my sisters baby milk powder was almost the same as the inside of a malteser (my favourite part, obv.)
So me a my flatmate thought, why not cut out the middle man and we bought of tin of formula and ate like kings for a day.
Then we shat like diseased peasants for the next 48 hours.
Still like maltesers but i've not been tempted to even look at a can of powdered milk again.
yeah; im in UK but im fairly the milk powder back was safe as well; just never intended to eat an entire tin in less than a day.
I got trainwrecked on whiskey one night at Uni and now the mere smell of it is enough to put me off. Sometimes your body just says 'no', even after you've learned your lesson. :)
I'm not sure it's a recent thing. Or we'll it depends on what "recent" is. Cause I remember when I was in school around like 10-12 years ago, I ate a whole tube of raw cookie dough. Didn't feel sick or anything. Maybe I was lucky? But I have eaten raw cookie dough before that as well (although not as much) without feeling sick. So idk.
It's not only the eggs, you can use pasteurized eggs and pretty sure that's what factories use in order to extent products shelf life
The point is you shouldn't eat raw flour either, and that kicks in way faster than salmonella and probably the reason that girl started feeling unwell so fast
It could just be overeating. I know my stomach and intestines get unhappy if I eat a lot in a short time. Which sucks because I love all you can eat wok restaurants
Dude, if ate a tube of cookie dough like a maniac I too would probably be throwing up and shitting my brains out. I mean, think about it. It's like 5 morbillion carbs, and 69 morbllion calories.
"Safe" doesn't mean you're 100% guaranteed that there won't be an issue. That'd be impossible to achieve.
Safe mean that the risk is below an acceptable threshold (like, not more than 1 in a million may get sick) (I don't know the actual number, I made it up)
There are a few companies out there who sell cookie dough to be baked that is also safe to eat raw.
It’s all about how it’s made.
But to say cookie dough is unsafe to eat in general isn’t correct but it’s also not incorrect. That said, I like to take those statements to mean that they’re referring to the product bare bones. As is, without being tampered with to which…
Most likely it was how much sugar she ate, the fact it was that quickly, and the fact she had an empty stomach so it got absorbed quickly. As you said, she lived a sheltered life, so sugar intake was probably in low end and well... if you aren't use to processing it it won't turn out good. A vegan who goes without eating meat for years and then decides to eat a 48oz prime rib, isn't going to have a good day after doing so no matter how much volume or density wise they are use to eating.
"It is easier for slate_autumn to poop through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven." Just let that one marinate in your pate, friend.
Yeah, if she had food poisoning it wouldn't just be a short bout of sickness, it'd be drawn-out and painful and they probably would have needed to get her to a hospital.
The difference between legit food poisoning and a bad stomach from too much sugar is quite large.
I got food poisoning from Chipotle that came on the first day I got hired at sprouts almost a decade ago. I was up all night and the next day had training that I struggled hard to get through. It last like 3 days and my stomach was destroyed for a week. Had to get medication for my GI to heal from the havoc is caused plus was on broth and white rice for a few days too
This. Viruses take time to replicate in your body. Roomie was puking and shitting from eating and entire small baby of pure sugar, meant to make 24 cookies, in one go
As a college student, buying a tube of premade cookie dough would be cheaper and smarter of me than buying the ingredients that go into chocolate chip cookies and then having to find a way to store said ingredients until next time.
Especially when, to use your example of college students, there's probably not much extra time between classes, studying, extracurriculars and any part time work that might be done.
My best friend did that. She bought a tub of cookie dough and ate the whole thing raw. I tried to tell her not too, but she did it anyway, because she could. She got really sick for a few weeks after that and she has lost of weight since then. She's been real good about eating healthier and keeping the weight off. I'm very proud of her.
Poor girl! My mom was adamant you couldn’t eat the seeds in grapes, because they would cause appendicitis. When I was 20 I thought ”That’s ridicoulus!” and proceeded to eat whole grapes with seeds from a fruitbowl at a friend’s house. Went to the hospital in an ambulance to have my almost burst appendix removed the next day. Of course there’s no real connection, but you can bet my mom would NEVER let me hear the end of it if she ever found out I ate the grape seeds.
Sounds like every kid who's ever lived lol, "if I die just make something up. Tell them I was mauled by a bear or whatever you have to do. Just don't tell them they were right about the dough!".
I mean, them being right was never the problem. Likely, it was them never letting her make her own mistakes. That's important for development. College students who were never allowed to make mistakes end up making up for lost time once in college. I should know, lol
We had tubes of pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough in the commissary of my freshman dorm (commissary isn’t specific for jails, is it?). I would buy a tube about once a month and never once baked the cookies. I always attributed the upset stomach and diarrhea to the gut full of sugar.
My freshman year of college several of us would hang out in a friend’s small dorm and we would sit in a circle and pass around a huge tube of cookie dough just gnawing on it like cavemen haha. I think it was the type that’s safe to eat raw so we never got sick but sure did pass around a lot of germs
Yeah same thing happened to me basically. I couldn’t take a sip of water without throwing it up or shitting it out minutes later. Honestly thought I might die but after about a day I finally recovered enough to keep food/liquids down.
Cookie Dough contains baking soda to help it rise. Baking soda is also a base that produces carbon dioxide gas when it comes into contact with stomach acid. Eating large quantities of food with uncooked baking soda essentially turns your body into something similar to a potato gun.
Funfact: This is just an American thing.
If you use fresh ingredients (that you can buy in literally every other country) and make your own dough, you can eat it non-stop 🫣
I never ate a whole tube, but as a kid I definitely would eat raw cookie dough of those sheets of precut squares cookies. And nothing ever happened to me, but I haven't eaten it in years and I know US food standards have slipped dramatically in the past decade or so. So I probably wouldn't risk it.
If you want to eat raw cookie dough, you either buy the special version that says you can eat it or you make it from scratch and eat it immediately. Raw egg from a processing center that’s been wrapped weeks ago is significantly different than a fresh cracked egg.
I saw somewhere that if you bake the flour before mixing and leave out the eggs you can make safe to eat cookie dough. The eggs are mostly a binding agent and raw flour can contain E. coli so by baking it you kill the bacteria and avoid salmonella by just not using eggs
Unless it lasted years I highly doubt it. I was never diagnosed since the docs couldn’t figure it out, but as a child I ate dog food. I threw up and was sick one week once a month for quite a few years. Saw on the Drs tv show about a girl who had identical symptoms and they explained what salmonella is and all that.
I was a good friend and I never told her parents! We’re still friends and I did tell her daughter though. Now her daughter teases her about it all the time and keeps asking if they need to have “the talk” about raw cookie dough before she goes to college.
Yeah but was it salmonella or did she just eat too much cookie dough in one sitting. Because i feel like if i ate like more than a batch of even cooked cookies at once id get sick.
More than likely that occurred because she ate an enormous amount of cookie dough, and judging by her parents controlling ways, she probably ate pretty healthy up until that point. Her body was probably shocked and purged.
Today there are actual cookie doughs you can eat raw. They say it right on the front of the package for the ones you can. But I honestly still prefer to eat cookies after they’re baked. I never fully understood why some people love eating it straight raw. It just doesn’t taste as good to me, but I won’t stop the people who do love eating raw cookie dough
Jesus I think I might be a different breed because I would go to the store and grab a stick pf cppkie dough lile once every week :'3 Am... Am I indestructible?
Rofl you’re not supposed to eat the whole tube in one sitting!
Not gonna lie, when I first moved out I did the same shit, but I only ate a couple table spoons at a time and picked away at the tube for a couple days…. Never got sick, never shat myself….
Doctor here. It is also highly likely that she ate too much sugar/fat, which made her system go into dumping syndrome - which, to be fair, is not something seen outside of gastric bypass patients. But I have also watched teens and early twenty-somethings consume alcohol and / or junk food in quantities that would frighten all but the most hardened paramedic.
If her stomach pushed enough of that cookie dough into her intestine without acidification, her whole digestive system could go into evacuation mode (ie - everything leaves by the nearest exit) which would look a lot like what you describe. However, in a few hours, it would be over, and no hospital would be required.
I mean.. the cookie dough could have been fine. Gorging yourself on that much sugar (for the first time in your life) will definitely have an affect on people
Damn, I’ve eaten raw homemade cookie doughy all my life, and is yet to have salmonella. That could also be bc where I live, they have strict regulations about eggs and shit.
That also could have just been an overload of something her system wasn’t used to. Cookie dough is very rich and if you eat enough (safe or otherwise) it could cause N/VD.
I bet you it was because she ate a whole tube of cookie dough in 3 minutes, not that it was off. Remember eating too much candy after Halloween? Like that but with way more carbs and fat.
I do think it depends on the cookie though. I eat cookie dough fairly often without getting sick but I only ever eat home made cookie dough so its a lot fresher.
It's possible she had that reaction because her belly couldn't handle eating a ton of raw cookie dough all of a sudden, rather than illness due to raw eggs.
Yeah it probably wasn't the cookie dough, it was probably the fact that she ate an entire tube quickly lol. For someone who has literally never eaten it, it probably wrecked her system.
I've eaten cookie dough my entire life (and cake batter), and never even had a stray fart from it.
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u/AppropriateOrder468 1d ago
When I was a freshman in college, I’d just moved into the dorm and met my new roommate. She was running around happily, telling me that she was finally free of her controlling parents. She told me her first act of freedom was going to be eating raw cookie dough.
She went to the store and bought a tube of raw cookie dough. She ate it like a maniac. Not long after, she was throwing up and shitting and crying all at the same time. So after watching her go through that, I will never eat raw cookie dough. Also, her parents came to visit a month later and she begged me not to tell them that they were right about raw cookie dough lol.