Is it true that people have died from eating cookie dough?

You would be hard-pressed to find a person in the Western world who doesn't like the idea of getting sick from eating raw cookie dough or cake batter.We know that there is raw egg in it, but the risk of actually becoming ill seems so low and so remote that it is rarely thought of as more than an old wives tale.

Linda Rivera's death may breathe new life into our cookie dough fears.

The recall of 3.6 million packages of Toll House cookie dough was issued in the spring of 2009, and it was linked to 69 cases of E. coli in 25 states.The outbreak was swept under the rug fairly quickly, and forgotten by most amongst the frequent, fleeting food-poisoning outbreaks that come and go in the media several times each year.It was an event that changed everything for Linda Rivera.

Rivera took what her son described as a couple bites of a store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough at his prom in May of that year.She was rushed to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and found to be suffering from a ravaged colon, septic shock, and later on organ failure and cardiac arrest.She was in a coma for more than a week.

She had contracted a strain of E. coli.The effects of coli O157:H7 on Rivera extended far beyond an unpleasant evening spent in the bathroom.

Her health problems continued for more than four years after doctors were able to eradicate the bacteria.She spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals.

Simpson testified before an FDA panel this past Thursday, detailing how his mother fought for her life after he negligently ate raw cookie dough.Rivera settled with the company for an undisclosed amount before she died.

The victims of the E. coli outbreak were mostly girls and children.The CDC's Karen Neil told NPR that the most likely cause of the outbreak was contaminated flour.The risk of contracting salmonella from raw egg is the reason to avoid eating raw cookie dough and cake batter.Pasteurized eggs mean the risk of contracting salmonella from them is even lower.That was a wild card.

I asked if eating raw cookie dough was dangerous.I was not surprised by the response that I got."We take a very conservative approach to food handling and do not recommend consuming any raw product that is intended to be cooked," she said."Just as the dough that is made and baked in your home could potentially have pathogens, so is the case with our refrigerated cookie dough."The egg that is used in our cookie dough is Pasteurized and should not contain any pathogens.I asked if there had been any recent customer complaints about eating raw cookie dough.She said that they don't recommend consuming raw dough.

I was curious as to whether food poisoning from cookie dough continues to be a problem.According to the CDC, one in six Americans get sick with food poisoning every year.More than 19,000 people were hospitalized with salmonella poisoning in 2011.E. coli was not in the top five culprits for death by food poisoning.

I asked the doctor at One Medical Group how worried I should be about the occasional spoon licking.There are tens of thousands of cases of salmonella poisoning in the US each year, with most occurring in children under the age of 15, but only about 1 out of every 20,000 eggs is contaminated.The risk is low and the infections are not very severe.She warned that you are more likely to get food poisoning from unpasteurized dairy products.She said she has never experienced food poisoning from eating raw batter.I have never had a patient with a case of salmonella from this type of ingestion.