New study confirms eating cookie dough is bad for you, ruins the holidays for everyone

It’s probably a given that raw cookie dough consumption will only increase as the holidays draw near, despite maternal warnings that the delicious paste is potentially poisonous. Now there’s new evidence that mom was right all along—however, it’s not salmonella that’s to blame, it’s Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli. A Centers for Disease Control study published Friday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases examined an outbreak in 2009 that missed Canada but hospitalized 35 in the United States. The report found store-bought cookie dough to be the most likely suspect, with 33 of the patients (that’s 94 per cent) admitting to a prior raw indulgence. Specifically, the flour in one brand wasn’t put through heat treatment (a bacteria “kill step”) like other ingredients were. One other interesting factoid: 71 per cent were under age 19. Sometimes the stereotypes ring true. Read the entire story [CBC] »

(Images: bacteria, Mattosaurus; dough, Rae du Soleil)