What happens if you eat raw dough

Can raw dough be harmful to health?

Bacteria dangerous to health can grow in uncooked dough. For example, flour is infected Escherichia coli (E. coli).

Most strains of this bacterium are harmless, but some can cause severe eating disorders. poisoning. For example E. coli producing the toxic substance Shigatoxin (STEC).

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

The dough may also contain raw eggs that are contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria that causes food poisoning. The risk is especially increased if you do not buy from a store, but from private traders and do not process the shell before breaking 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 such tasting to be safe.

If flour or eggs are contaminated, even a small piece of dough can lead to illness. True, a person does not know about it immediately: the incubation period of an infection caused by E. coli lasts from 3 to 8 days, and salmonellosis - from 6 hours to 6 days.

The symptoms of these diseases are similar. They include:

• cramps in the abdomen;
• 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) in about 10% of patients - most often in the elderly and young children - develops hemolytic uremic syndrome. This is a condition in which there is a low level platelets in the blood, hemolytic anemia and acute kidney injury.

This syndrome can result in neurological complications up to stroke and coma, in adults - cause mild chronic kidney disease and, in young children, acute kidney injury. failure.

Such consequences are clearly worse than an insufficiently salty cake or pancakes that are not tasty, 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 gets into the oven or into the pan.