Is it possible to eat raw dough

Can raw dough be harmful to health?

Uncooked dough can harbor bacteria that are harmful to health. For example, flour can be contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. coli).

Most strains of this bacterium are harmless, but some can cause severe food poisoning . For example, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC).

These microorganisms multiply at temperatures from 7 to 50 ° C and can infect cereals before harvest or enter products during the production process. And neither grinding grains nor bleaching destroys them: bacteria die only during heat treatment.

The dough may also contain raw eggs contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria that causes food poisoning. The risk especially increases if you purchase from private sellers rather than in a store and do not process the shell before breaking the egg .

What happens if you eat raw dough?

If there are no harmful bacteria in the raw dough, there will be no consequences. Because of this, many people consider this tasting safe.

If the flour or eggs are contaminated, even a small piece of dough can lead to illness. True, a person does not find out about this right away: the incubation period for an infection caused by E. coli lasts from 3 to 8 days, and for salmonellosis – from 6 hours to 6 days.

The signs of these diseases are similar. These include :

• abdominal cramps;
• diarrhea;
• blood in the stool (hemorrhagic colitis);
• fever;
• vomiting

Most people recover from an intestinal infection within 10 days. However, when infected with E. coli (STEC), approximately 10% of patients—most often the elderly and young children— develop hemolytic uremic syndrome. This is a condition in which there is a low level of platelets in the blood, hemolytic anemia and acute kidney damage.

This syndrome can result in neurological complications including stroke and coma, in adults it can cause mild chronic kidney disease, and in young children it can cause acute renal failure.

Such consequences are clearly worse than an insufficiently salted pie or tasteless pancakes, so if you have a habit of tasting the dough before baking, it’s time to get rid of it. And also, be careful that small children do not taste it before it goes into the oven or onto the frying pan.