Ok To Eat Dry Cake Mix?

Most of us know that raw eggs in cookie dough and cake batter can carry salmonella, merely a new warning from the FDA and surge of product recalls is a grim reminder that raw flour could be making u.s. sick, too.

Two General Mills boxed cake mixes are the latest baking products recalled due to possible E. coli contagion ― which, at best, gives consumers a bad case of diarrhea and cramps for a week and, at worst, can cause kidney failure. In total, the company has recalled more than than 10 one thousand thousand pounds of flour in contempo months.

Widespread flour contagion is a relatively new phenomenon, nutrient safety experts told The Huffington Post. Here'southward what you need to know:

Raw flour tin bear contaminants just similar whatsoever other field ingather

It'south easy to forget when yous're looking at flour in its white, powdery course, but the baking staple is derived from uncooked grains growing in an open field just like whatever other ingather susceptible to bacterial contaminations.

"We were looking to bring sensation to the consumers who might non exist enlightened that … grain is a raw agronomical production," FDA senior nutrient safety counselor Les Smoot told The Huffington Post.

But flour is non typically treated to kill bacteria like E. coli, the FDA explained. Instead it'due south expected that consumers will take their own so-called "impale steps" confronting whatever possible bacteria by boiling, baking, roasting, microwaving or frying the flour during the cooking process.

What makes raw flour less prophylactic to eat than raw produce?

Considering E. coli outbreaks in flour are a relatively new phenomenon, food producers and suppliers have a lot of feel preventing the bacteria in raw fruits and vegetables.

"In that location is much more information currently bachelor on the risk of contamination in fresh produce, as well as information on how to forbid contamination in fresh produce," Londa Nwadike, an banana professor of food safety and an extension food condom specialist at the Academy of Missouri and Kansas State Academy, told HuffPost in en e-mail. "There are currently more educational activity and outreach efforts all along the produce chain ... from farmers to transporters to processors, retailers, consumers" to forbid contamination in produce, she explained.

That could soon alter, though.

"At that place will probable be many more research, didactics and outreach efforts to reduce the risk of contagion in flour in the futurity afterward this outbreak," Nwadike said. "In the by, we didn't think as much about flour beingness a raw product that carried a chance of contamination, simply it is being more recognized at present, which is why FDA is trying to provide consumers with information to reduce their risk of contamination from raw flour."

We're still trying to figure out how flour is getting contaminated.

"We really oasis't found why and how the flour has been contaminated," Smoot said. "We are presuming one of the probable sources could be animal activity in the field where these types of products are harvested and treated."

Animal activity may be animals dropping feces in the fields, or current of air blowing contamination downward from mountainous pastures, food safety practiced Jeff Nelken told HuffPost. Across animal activeness, contamination could come from "the processing facilities, information technology could exist the water supply, it could be the workers," he said.

Will cake concoction and cookie dough ever exist safe to eat?

Raw eggs in the dough nonetheless comport a risk of salmonella, simply we may be able to lower the risk of E. Coli in flour by heat-treating it.

Nestlé started estrus-treating all the flour in its cookie dough when the FDA linked raw cookie dough to an E. coli outbreak in 2009, though information technology'south unlikely the whole industry will be able to update to the infrastructure and technology needed for heat-treating any time soon, LiveScience reported.

"The bottom line for you and your kids," the FDA urges for at present, "is don't eat raw dough."

Before Yous Go

Cookie Dough Recipes

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cake-batter-flour-e-coli_n_57850d27e4b07c356cfe852f

Posted by: pickensromek1952.blogspot.com

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