Don’t Touch That Dough

One of the best things about making chocolate chip cookies has got to be taking bites of the raw cookie dough. Unfortunately, if you recently bought Nestle’s Toll House cookie or brownie dough and sampled the raw dough, you may have gotten sick, as some of the dough was found to be tainted with the E. coli bacteria. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 70 people in 29 states have fallen ill after nibbling on the dough.

Nestle voluntarily issued a nationwide recall of all its refrigerated dough products on June 19. It is believed the outbreak began in March. Though the cookies are not harmful if the dough is baked, Nestle is asking customers to return any unused dough for a refund. The investigation is ongoing, and no determination of how the bacteria entered the plant has yet been made.