do not eat the uncooked dough out of your Christmas cookies, FDA warns

The U.S. meals and Drug Administration issued a brand new warning in opposition t drinking raw cookie dough as Christmas cookie season gets underway.

while the potential dangers of ingesting raw eggs have are broadly normal, the FDA's new warning highlights the advantage hazards of drinking flour raw.

"Flour is derived from a grain that comes directly from the container and frequently isn't handled to kill micro organism," Dr. Leslie Smoot a senior adviser within the FDA's office of food safety, noted in a statement.

raw cookie dough is pictured in an undated inventory photograph.

The warning comes after an FDA and U.S. facilities for disorder control and Prevention investigation that linked an E. coli outbreak to contaminated flour and resulted in the don't forget of 10 million kilos of flour, including unbleached, all-aim and self-rising varieties, in accordance with the FDA.

"The difficulty is that the specific flour got here from a grain that become contaminated with the micro organism E. coli and that flour has the competencies to cause human disorder," Dr. Michael Levine, an associate professor at the university of Southern California's Keck faculty of drugs, told ABC information.

Levine brought that one of the vital easiest how to provide yourself with protection is to discard of any flour for your home that could be contaminated.

"the first aspect is to analyze any flour you have got within the condo and see if or not it's on the FDA's record of recalled flour," Levin observed. "If it changed into, i might throw that flour away. you probably have flour that you just in consequence transferred out of that bag right into a container for example and you do not know, doubtless the most secure component is to throw it away."

A bowl of flour sits on a counter in an undated stock image.

The FDA advises on its site to not consume any raw cookie dough, cake combine, batter or different items that are supposed to be baked or cooked and to observe equipment instructions for cooking items containing flour at the temperature and time precise.

For these looking for an choice capacity of consuming raw dough, some specialists recommend the use of recipes that do not encompass any eggs and baking the flour within the oven ahead of including it to the mixture.