Can you eat raw eggs?
The Real Answer
Yes, but there is a food-safety risk. Raw and undercooked eggs can sometimes carry Salmonella, a bacteria that can cause diarrhea, fever, stomach cramps, and other symptoms of food poisoning. The bacteria can occasionally be inside an egg even when the shell looks perfectly normal.
Cooking eggs thoroughly kills Salmonella. If you're making something that intentionally uses raw or lightly cooked eggs—like homemade Caesar dressing, eggnog, or certain desserts—pasteurized eggs are the safer option. The risk from any individual egg is relatively low, but it matters more for young children, older adults, pregnant people, and people with weakened immune systems.
I love how our collective defense against salmonella is just pure optimism. We’re out here consuming liquid bird-potions that could actively take us out, and our entire safety plan is: “Well, my friend Kevin ate cookie dough once and he didn’t die.”
The Dunce Dynamics Institute Examines Why People Ask This
This question usually comes up right after someone eats raw cookie dough or a runny egg yolk and suddenly realizes what they just put in their mouth. People also wonder because certain cuisines use raw eggs regularly (Japanese, Italian), which creates cognitive dissonance — if other countries do it safely, why is it a big deal here?