This is important, but unhappy, news for those of us who love raw cookie dough, especially in ice cream. In fact, it’s a bummer! FDA warns that raw cookie dough is bad for us. The warning stems from a recent E. coli outbreak that was traced to contaminated flour. The FDA also warns that it’s not just cookie dough that could be dangerous, but all raw dough, such as pizza and bread dough.
This is important, but unhappy, news for those of us who love raw cookie dough, especially in ice cream. In fact, it’s a bummer! FDA warns that raw cookie dough is bad for us. The warning stems from a recent E. coli outbreak that was traced to contaminated flour. The FDA also warns that it’s not just cookie dough that could be dangerous, but all raw dough, such as pizza and bread dough.
The contaminated flour was found to originate at a General Mills plant located in Kansas City, Missouri, after a joint investigation conducted by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC issued a report, updated July 1, that 42 people from 21 states have been infected with an uncommon strain of E. coli, the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O121. This strain can cause cramping, diarrhea and dehydration, as well as hemolytic uremic syndrome (a type of kidney failure). To date, 11 people have been hospitalized and no one has died.
General Mills originally issued a recall on May 31 of over 10M pounds of flour. The brands affected were Gold Medal Wondra, Signature Kitchen’s and the top-seller in the U.S., Gold Medal brand. The recall included several varieties like all-purpose, self-rising and unbleached. The company expanded the recall on July 1, adding other lots of the originally recalled flours.
Here is a list of the recalled flours and how to tell if you have them, courtesy of the CDC.
The New York Times quoted Jenny Scott, one of the FDA’s senior advisors for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition as saying, “For the most part, the risk from flour is pretty low, and most use of flour involves a ‘kill step’ — people bake with it.”
This “kill step” is crucial as flour isn’t usually treated to kill bacteria.
In addition to not eating the delicacy that is raw cookie dough, the FDA also wants people to thoroughly wash utensils, pans and hands after cooking.
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