You can contract salmonella at any time by eating or processing raw eggs. Therefore, when eating raw eggs, caution is everything.
Raw eggs in food: risk of salmonella
Many perishable foods that come from livestock can be contaminated with Salmonella – including chicken eggs. Most people eat raw eggs more often than they think: they are in desserts such as tiramisu, pudding or mousse au chocolat, in fresh mayonnaise, in drinks with protein foam and in raw batter. Ice cream can also contain raw eggs.
Who should be careful with raw eggs?
Salmonella is ingested through the mouth. You can pick them up in two ways: Either they are stuck inside the egg because the chicken’s ovaries are affected. If you process such raw eggs in food, the salmonella can get into your body. Or the pathogens are on the eggshell – if you touch them and then put your fingers to your mouth, you can become infected.
As a rule, healthy adults do not develop salmonellosis that quickly – a diarrheal disease with headaches and abdominal pains, vomiting or fever. They only become infected when they ingest 10,000 to a million germs. However, significantly fewer germs are sufficient for infants, children, old and weak people.
Particularly severe disease progressions such as sepsis are rare. However, if you lose a lot of fluids, you may need to go to the hospital. At body temperature, salmonella multiply at breakneck speed. Therefore, the only way to prevent infection is by handling raw eggs properly.
Hygiene rules for raw eggs
If you want to prepare a meal with raw eggs, you should know: Salmonella is something like the cockroach among the microbes. They survive almost everything – freezing, drying out, subsequent cooling and heat. It only kills the bacteria if you heat them to at least 70 degrees for a longer period of time. With these tips you can protect yourself from salmonella infection from raw eggs:
Use only fresh, undamaged eggs for your meal and chill them in the fridge. They should not be older than ten days. You can calculate the age of the egg using the best before date, which is set at 28 days after laying.
Don’t put raw eggs on your countertop and then put any rags or kitchen towels that come into contact with them in the laundry.
Store the finished food in the refrigerator and only interrupt the cooling chain for a short time.
You should fry scrambled eggs well, fried eggs on both sides. Soft eggs should remain in boiling water for at least five minutes.
Wash your hands! If you clean your fingers thoroughly, you can greatly reduce the number of bacteria on them.
