how does raw egg give you salmonella, but you can eat a whole raw egg and be fine
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The salmonella diet works great. I lost 7 pounds in 3 days from eating raw cookie dough. Do not recommend.
>how does raw egg give you salmonella, but you can eat a whole raw egg and be fine
It comes down to what Salmonella is: An infection.
You eat an egg from a chicken that had salmonella, and you have Salmonella in you
The reason many places have raw egg recipes is because it’s not very likely you’ll get salmonella from raw egg, assuming the chickens are healthy
Problem is that in the US, they don’t mandate Salmonella vaccinations… So blame the FDA I guess.
It’s the number of “colony forming units” (CFU) of salmonella that can make you sick. 20,000 is the number of CFU’s of salmonella that has been determined to make you sick if you ingest it. If there are only a couple thousand CFU’s, you should be fine. But if there are 20,000 or more CFU’s, you can get sick.
Salmonella on eggs is really a US thing. It’s not so much inside the egg as it is on the outside of the shell. The cracking and opening of the egg can contaminate the egg inside. Since it is not cooked to 155 degree Fahrenheit the salmonella survives your stomach acid due to a tough outer shell which then goes to work inside your body.
The EU for example does not wash their eggs and can even leave them outside of the refrigerator. The membrane that is washed away in the US protects the egg from bacteria.
* Not EVERY egg is contaminated with Salmonella bacteria.
* And even the ones that are may not have a sufficient quantity of them to make you sick. The reason USDA/FDA have a “danger zone” recommendation for food safety (uncured foods that can potentially harbor bacteria should be kept above 140F or below 40F) is that food poisoning becomes increasingly hazardous the more actual bacteria there are… outside that danger zone, temperature generally inhibits reproduction (which is why you refrigerate leftovers) and the longer a food that contains raw egg, for example, stays between 40-140F, the more chance any potentially harmful bacteria have to multiply. One or two salmonella bacteria aren’t going to hurt you. One or two million might.
* Or the *strain* contained in the egg may not be a kind that would make you noticeably sick. Bacteria can be (roughly) like dogs, in that there are different breeds or *strains* with slightly different traits, even within the same species. This is particularly important for the kinds of bacteria that can cause foodborne illness, like Salmonella and E. coli.
Also, eggs are mostly sealed from outside contamination, so the only salmonella they likely contain is the salmonella they already had when laid. Eggs are most likely to be contaminated with dangerous bacteria during the cracking process, when material on the outside of the shell can finally penetrate to the interior (your cracking technique can also minimize this).
In the U.S. eggs are washed to remove dirt and debris before they are packaged and sold – **this actually removes a protective layer** from the outside of the egg, which is why eggs produced in the U.S. have to be refrigerated, while outside the U.S. this is not necessarily the case.
tl;dr – if the egg has been properly stored (refrigerated if washed, or else unwashed until ready to use), and you eat it right after cracking it open, your odds of getting the ol’ salmonella card punched are pretty low. Not zero, but low.
Anecdotal story here. I discovered that eggshells have lots of absorbable calcium. I also love to use my pressure cooker. I’ve used eggs that were not refrigerated and research shows that toxins will be killed using the 15# pressure and 40″ cook time. So far, so good.
Chicken meat and eggs only have salmonella if the chicken had salmonella. Places where it is safe to eat raw eggs screen systematically for salmonella, have strict controls and hygiene.
I know that all Finnish eggs are safe to eat raw, because I know the process behind testing and tracking behind them.
You can get salmonella from anything really, any fecal-oral pathway can expose you to it. But with constant control of sources of this, it can be prevented. There is a massive industrial level systematic handling of this problem in many nations. You know if you live in one from the simple fact that raw egg is safe, because that is the hardest product to keep safe. Some places do ammonia and bleach washing of eggs to deal with this issue, however this also means that the eggs spoil quicker even in a fridge.
Not all eggs contain Salmonella.
Its also worth noting that if you live in an actual 1st world country(read not ‘murica) its impossible to get salmonella from eggs at all. The chickens are all vaccinated against salmonella.
When are you eating whole raw eggs and why?
It’s a game of odds/numbers basically— the CDC estimates one in every 20k eggs is salmonella contaminated.
It’s perfectly possible for you to have eaten several raw ones and had no negative consequences, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen or that other people haven’t gotten salmonella that way before. I’ve gotten brutally sick off improperly cooked eggs before so I would advise from experience to err on the side of caution
There’s mitigation measures such as the FDA requiring eggs to be washed off so salmonella won’t be a risk from handling the shells, but in certain cases the hens might be infected themselves and the bacteria will persist on the inside of the egg. There’s also ones you can buy that are pasteurized to even further reduce the risk of getting sick. Keeping the eggs adequately refrigerated and not subjecting it to temperature abuse also helps.
It isn’t always a guarantee though that if you get a contaminated one that consuming said infected raw egg will get you ill— sometimes one’s individual gut flora and immune system can prevent salmonella proliferating in your guts if you only consume a small amount of the pathogen. If an infected egg goes into your cookie batter and you only take a tiny taste you very well could be fine. It’s a combination of different factors that play into whether you get sick or not, pretty much.
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