Why can't you eat raw cookie dough?

Other than it starting to taste yucky after a few licks I think it don’t digest well and that is why it is avoided.

I’ve eaten raw cookie dough… I survived… but I prefer almost cooked cookies… that are still moist and tender.

It’s just the eggs—there is no other reason no to eat it. Every ingredient is fine to eat uncooked other than the egg.

Salmonella poisoning from raw eggs poses a risk. The heat from baking cookies kills off the bacteria making them safe to eat.

At any rate, baked cookies last longer than cookie dough.

I had a friend who ate raw cookie dough. As fas as I know she is still alive. There are people who put it in their ice cream. Yes, egg is probably the biggest problem but I’m not sure if raw egg is used in prepackage cookie dough.

Yeah, it’s the eggs, but being a wild risk taker by nature I will continue to play Russian Roulette with raw cookie dough… I also tear the tags off mattresses. This is why I keep my identity secret on the internet…

Yup it’s the eggs, but I do it all the time to no ill effect.

They have cookie dough ice cream. I love the stuff and have not died

I eat more raw cookie dough any man’s ever seen.

I really love it. Yes, the eggs might have salmonella, but I have never had trouble with it.

<——Still alive after years of eating cookie dough.

I do! They say the eggs, but I don’t care.

Just for the record, if the cookie dough is freshly made, the risk from the raw eggs is equal to that of having eggs sunny side up or soft boiled; in both of these, the runny yolk is by definition uncooked. Raw egg is also an ingredient of classic Caesar salad dressing.

I eat raw eggs all the time, in Caesar salad dressing as @GeorgeGee mentions and in steak tatare and in health slurpees, and raw quails eggs at the sushi bar. I eat raw lean ground beef right out of the package as I am shaping hamburgers. I just don’t eat raw cookie dough because I don’t like it.

Probably not as risky as sushi—and I love BOTH !!!

@Austinlad Tuna cookie dough rolls?

Eggs from chickens raised in factory farms have the greatest risk of carrying salmonella. If you get fresh eggs from a local source or from an organic producer, it is more likely that they have a clean facility that makes it hard for salmonella to survive.

Even with factory farm eggs, the risk is probably fairly low (1 in 20,000 eggs back in 1999). The risk was even lower in 2002, and it seems that healthy adults who get it very rarely have problems worse than loose stools.

How many raw eggs will you eat? How much raw cookie dough will you eat? The chances of getting one of those contaminated eggs is very small, and can be smaller if you don’t use factory-farmed eggs. And even if you do eat a contaminated egg, it is likely that the worst that will happen is that you have spend extra time on the toilet. That happens all the time with regular food poisoning, so what’s the diff?

If you want to be extra careful, or if you have family members with “compromised immune systems,” you can make your cookie dough with pasteurized eggs (which includes products such as “Egg Beaters”) then you won’t have to worry about the Salmonella risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurized_eggs

@genkan has it right. BUT there are some areas where you can still eat a soft boiled egg and not worry about it. Thank GOODNESS eggs from where I live are ok. But I would never eat a half raw egg in England or in France, sadly.

just the eggs. but i eat it all the time. the chance of it actually making you sick is so slim that i’m willing to risk it. i’ve never gotten sick, and don’t know anyone that has. usually i make cookies but only use half the dough to bake and leave the rest raw in the fridge to nibble on. mmm.

@wundayatta I’ve had salmonella before and it’s horrible – you REALLY just want to die, please please

But yes, the risk of salmonella is generally low.