Eating chocolate chip cookie dough is one of the great pleasures of life. Making up a big, fresh bowl of dough preparatory to making little balls and popping them into the oven is a temptation that no one can resist — you simply must nibble on some portion of it, raw.
So it’s an obvious next step for the lazy of us (I raise my hand here) to simply visit the supermarket and pick up a tube of Nestlé’s pre-made cookie dough, take it home, unwrap it like it’s a banana, and gnaw away happily. Sure, there were third-hand reports of E. coli illness making the rounds, but if you’re like me, you dismissed such rumblings as mere urban legend.
Not so, as it turns out. Nestlé has begun a recall of all cookie dough products, due to extensive reports of ingestion-related sickness in 28 states over the past four months. 25 people have been hospitalized, out of 66 reports of illness, but thankfully no deaths have been reported.
The FDA is investigating, and recommends that citizens with cookie dough products in their homes throw them away immediately. E. coli infection can cause abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea, fatigue, bloody stools, nausea, and vomiting. There haven’t been any warnings against homemade batches of cookie dough as yet, but following the dictates of common sense is always wise.
