Should You Eat Raw Cookie Dough?

Whether it’s homemade or store-bought, raw cookie dough should go into your oven, not into your mouth.

An outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 was found in raw cookie dough manufactured by Nestle Toll House in 2009.

During the outbreak, 77 people in 30 states became ill after eating the raw cookie dough before baking it. Of these, 35 people were hospitalized. The outbreak prompted a recall of 3.6 million packages of raw cookie dough and some changes in the way that Nestle and other companies manufacture their raw cookie dough.

That was the first time an E. coli outbreak was traced to ready-to-bake commercial prepackaged cookie dough. The details of the outbreak and the steps taken to control it appear in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The issue is much larger than one brand, says the CDC’s Karen Neil, MD, MSPH. “You shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough, regardless of who makes it,” she says.

The same goes for any product that is supposed to be cooked or baked, including cake and biscuit batter. “Raw cookie dough is not ready to eat, it is ready to bake,” Neil says.