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Nagging Question
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Does Raw Cookie Dough Rise in Your Stomach?Is that why I feel so sick? |
Does raw cookie dough rise in your stomach?
Baking soda and baking powder are commonly used in cookie dough. The dough rises when these leavening agents break down and release carbon dioxide, which expands. Paula Figoni, associate professor in the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University, says baking powder releases 60 to 70 percent of its carbon dioxide during mixing, while baking soda releases 30 to 40 percent (the rest is released when—or if—the dough is baked). Most cookie recipes call for a very small amount of leavening agent, so ingesting raw cookie dough isn’t much different, gas-wise, from drinking a carbonated soda.
To date, there have been no reported cases of people bursting open due to cookie dough rising in their stomachs. And though no official studies have looked into the matter, Alan L. Buchman, MD, a gastroenterologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, says the acids and enzymes produced during the digestive process would break down the cookie dough before it ever had a chance to rise.
If Buchman’s assurance is not enough to quiet fears of internal explosion, consider the expertise of William Norcross, MD, a professor of family medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “The stomach is quite distensible, and even if the expansion [of cookie dough] were considerable, I think the normal person would likely expel gas before exploding.”
Kelly O’Connor, a registered dietitian at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, does not recommend that anyone consume a whole bowl of raw cookie dough because of the risk of illness from raw eggs (salmonella).
“I definitely do eat a few spoons [or] lick the bowl myself when making cookies … and, so far, have come to no harm,” says O’Connor.
Note from editor: this story has been corrected. Please see comments section, below.
If you felt sick after eating raw cookie dough, perhaps it was a side effect of eating raw eggs. Most popular cookie recipes have eggs in them so that could be the culprit!
Most eggs are now pasteurized? That's news to me.
News to me too, and I believe an untrue statement. There's a recent thread about eggnog on the Boston board that turned to making homemade, and several posters mentioned considerable difficulty in tracking down pateurized eggs:
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/465304
You bring up a good point about pasteurized eggs, and we did further research to confirm O'Connor's statement. It is not true that "most eggs are now pasteurized."
The Food Safety and Inspection Service and the FDA warn against eating raw cookie dough because salmonella poisoning is still a risk. Since 1990, however, both agencies have enforced stricter regulations regarding egg production and storage, as well as how egg-producing chickens are raised and kept, which has significantly decreased the risk of salmonella in eggs.
Eggs used in the food service industry (for example, the eggs that go into commercial cookie dough) are required by law to be pasteurized.
yes pasturized eggs are hard to find.
even if the fda stds have improved and the risks are reduced, there is still a risk
now as an adult if you want to risk
it for your self and get the salmonella
oh well (good for you) but anyone who were to risk their kids health well.... that is another story. that story could be a story of child abuse
Fresh eggs are usually okay to consume raw. The Japanese do it all the time. You just don't want to be eating batter made with eggs that have been sitting around for awhile.
Right now, only .01% of people in the US contract salmonella from ALL food sources, according to the CDC. That's one, one hundredth of one percent. 40,000 people. I am curious to know, of those 40,000 people, how many did foolish things that caused them to get the bacteria.
drhowarddrfine is bringing a great point forward. People are too easily yanked on to the paranoid bandwagon that the press drives. If you use good sense and don't leave your eggs in an attractive basket on the counter for days at a time, and practice other good food handling methods, and your immune system is intact, you probably have very, very little to worry about from raw eggs, especially the amount in raw cookie dough. Besides, they probably use giant milk cartons of premixed, pasteurized eggs anyway, don't they? I doubt Pillsbury hires egg-crackers".
RAW DOUGH EATERS UNITE!
I have been a raw dough eater since I was a kid. I started with scraps of pie crust and moved onto cake mixes in the 70's. We'd beg my Mom to leave some behind. Over the years I've eaten almost every kind of raw dough/batter and I've never had a problem. My friend who took a cooking course with me said she would never speak to me again the night after we made yeast dough and I ate it with abandon and suffered no ill effects and she thought her stomach was going to explode at about 3AM. We are in the midst of making Christmas cookies this weekend and I always try the dough to make sure it tastes OK. I almost prefer the dough/batter to the finished product.
I eat raw eggs here (in Tokyo) all the time. And so does everyone I know. I've never heard of anyone ever getting sick from it.
I think like 1 in 10,000 eggs is contaminated based on CDC stats so you'd have to eat a lot of dough over your lifetime to get sick. I imagine having baking soda would be a lot like eating a tums...bicarb so you might burp if you ate enough but that would probably have to be the whole bowlful, and if you're sick after that well its probably just the sugar overload. In dough form the volume is typically smaller than after baked so you could eat a lot more than you normally would ---say you ate half a log of dough, that would probably be around 7 slice and bake cookies, which is probably enough to make you sick.
Are you sure you don't have the "baking powder releases 60 to 70 percent of its carbon dioxide during mixing, while baking soda releases 30 to 40 percent (the rest is released when—or if—the dough is baked)" reversed? Baking powder is "double-acting", specifically formulated to "rise again" when exposed to heat.
The dough reaction rate provided by Paula Figoni is an average based on the various baking powders used in cooking.
sbp, you are right to think that a double-acting baking powder will release less carbon dioxide when mixed, compared to how much is released when exposed to heat. Regardless of the type, all baking powders do release some carbon dioxide upon mixing.
"Eggs used in the food service industry (for example, the eggs that go into commercial cookie dough) are required by law to be pasteurized."
Does this mean that it's a-ok for me to eat the prepackaged frozen cookie dough? Because that's amazing.
frozen cookie dough... yummy. i dont eat much cookie dough but i eat a lot of cookie dough ice cream and like i get all stuffy and i feel like ill never eat again. it fills me up big time. so its prolly that baking powder stuff. this was useful in so many unexplained ways
If raw cookie dough would kill you I'd have been dead many, many years ago. 90% of my dough never sees the inside of an oven...
Could it be that the bloating or sick feeling we get after eating too much raw cookie dough is actually a reaction to too much gluten and/or sugar all at once? To identify what was causing my allergies, I went through a food elimination diet this past year which essentially eliminated any foods known to cause inflamation everything from night shades to gluten and everything in between. After two months, I began introducing each food one at a time and gauged my bodies reaction.
The two foods my body reacted to were glutens and highly processes sugars. I felt bloated, inflammation, stomach upset and sour joints - and not that long after eating.
I still eat the stuff - and love raw cookie dough! - but now that I know how it makes my body feel, I eat them in moderation.
If eating raw dough of any kind makes you feel sick it could be because of the difficulty our species has with digesting raw flour (I think wheat flour in particular, not cornstarch), rather than anything to do with eggs or baking powder.