People always freak out about eating raw cookie dough for fear of salmonella due to the raw eggs.
Yet raw egg whites have been a common ingredient in fancy cocktails for ages and its never been questioned or regarded as dangerous.
What gives?
In: Biology
Food microbiologist here.
A lot of people have already commented on the cookie dough part, so I’ll leave that alone. I’ll try and give some insight into the egg vs. egg white part that u/trashpersonalert asked about as well.
In chickens, if it is infected with *Salmonella* species such as Enteriditis, Typhimurium, Heidelberg, the bacteria can colonize the ovaries of the chicken. The ovary is where the **yolk** is stored before being released down the oviduct, where the rest of the egg forms. So the bacteria will colonize within the yolk, making the yolk from an infected chicken unsafe*. (See below)
Even if there is bacteria in the egg white, the egg white itself contains very little nutrition for bacteria and so growth is unlikely. The yolk, on the other hand, is plenty nutritious for the bacteria.
So egg whites are generally safer to consume, but unless you are severely immunocompromised, or consume a massive quantities of eggs, or a rotten egg, chances are you’ll be ok.
Another thing to note about the cookie dough, all the sugar and other components make it ripe for bacterial growth. So even if the eggs used to make cookie dough have a very low number of bacteria, over time that number will exponentially increased until it hits or exceeds the infective dose. Especially since *Salmonella* **can** grow at temperatures as low as 5 degrees C.
Edit: Formatting
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