Oh, the joys of cookie dough. After making that yummy batter, the cookie dough covered spoon seems to be calling your name, and you just have to lick it off. Cookie dough eating is a part of almost everyone’s life, especially as a kid.

We are in the middle of some of the biggest holidays of the year, so everyone is baking yummy goods. With this comes the eating of raw cookie dough. Most people can say how much they love to eat cookie dough, but just because this food is delicious, does not mean it is healthy. We all know that of course the calories in cookie dough are very high. Just one ounce of cookie dough contains 120 calories, but this is not exactly what I mean.

A new study published by The New England Journal of Medicine says that eating uncooked foods made with flour can make you dangerously ill. Back in 2016, there was a recall of more than ten million pounds of flour. Lab tests, doctors, health workers and investigators from the Food and Drug Administration confirmed an E. coli pathogen was found in some company’s flour. This type of E. coli bacteria was previously discovered in wet environments such as hamburger meat and leafy vegetables, but can also thrive in arid hosts. E. coli in hiding in flour has been around for many years. The illness from the flour spread throughout 24 countries and there was even a patient who went into kidney failure, but luckily recovered.

Junior, Madison Korte, loves raw cookie dough, I mean who doesn’t? When told about the baking dough causing people to be dangerously ill, she was a little taken back, but then replied with, “I love eating cookie dough and it is just so good, so I think I will just take the risk.”

Eating raw dough is very dangerous and we seem to be finding more and more reasons why. So next time you think about tasting that raw cookie dough off the spoon, take a step back and wait for the oven to go off.