Is it safe to eat raw eggs?

Question

I have a friend that is training for a marathon and he drinks 6 raw eggs before running (Yes, like Rocky) - is this safe?

Answer 1

Food safety experts and government organizations target their recommendations to what's safest for everyone, and would recommend against this. However, "safe" is a subjective term. It's all about managing risk levels. The odds of a given egg containing salmonella or other food-borne illness are pretty low. A healthy adult with a normal immune system can probably fend off any nasties, or at least recover from illness.

The source of the eggs has an effect on the risk levels as well, I believe. Organic free-range eggs are probably less risky than supermarket brands.

Answer 2

Bearing in mind the salmonella statistics given above., yes it is safe to eat raw eggs so long as you are not very young, very old, or immunocompromised in some way--e.g. HIV, chemotherapy, leukemia, etc.

Answer 3

If you're worried, you can dip the eggs into boiling water for, say, 10 seconds to sterilise the outside of the shell. As Robert Cartaino points out above, though, there might still be bacteria inside.

FWIW I've made mayonnaise many times without any ill effects.

Answer 4

I'd say it's as safe as eating any other food generally consumed rare or raw (beef, fish, oysters). It's certainly edible. I use raw egg whites in many things, but I buy them in bulk, ultra-pasteurized. I also prefer my eggs very runny. Yes there's an increased probability of food-borne illnesses but so does a rare steak or a medium hamburger.

Answer 5

It is relativly safe as long as you pay attention to some points:

Eggs should be as fresh as possible, so a possible salmonella contamination has no time to spread. Also organic or free range eggs should be preferred. In some egg-producing farms using battery cages up to 30% of the chickens are contaminated with salmonella and so the eggs.

Although other people here mention the improbability to get salmonella from eggs it is still possible. I myself got them from scrambled eggs hat I had not cooked properly (I think the eggs were about a week old, stored in the fridge and free range). I had the worst diarrhea in my life, fever up to 41°C/106°F and was in hospital for a week (read: not fun).

Answer 6

In the UK it is safe from a salmonella standpoint (assuming the eggs are lion branded).

The lion branch mark (applied to each individual egg) means that the chickens they come from are salmonella free (I assume they have been fed the antibiotic or anti viral or whatever it is)

I agree with the others that other things will have a bearing - age of egg in particular

Answer 7

There are pasteurized raw eggs that are safe to eat. One brand is http://www.safeeggs.com/

Or egg beaters I think

Answer 8

No egg is safer when it’s raw. It will give you SALMONELLA POISONING AND THE INFECTION which is in the ENTEROBACTERIACEAE family and in the GAMMAPROTEOBACTERIA class Your friend may have gotten it but he just did not know because it does not affect you right away after you consume it. Please be safe: he runs the risk of contracting it while drinking it raw. Please be aware not to eat RAW MEAT/POULTRY, AND **RAW EGGS** DO NOT HESITATE AT ALL TO SEND YOUR FOOD BACK TO THE CHEF WHEN YOU FIND THAT YOUR MEAT IS PINK ON THE INSIDE. That is dangerous food that you don't want to be eating. Cut into it to make sure it is not pink before hungrily devouring it.

I have seen patients that have this and families who have all been affected by this. Despite what my username may say, I am a family doctor. I have seen too many cases too count where children and their families were effected. It has become ridiculously paining to watch and it needs to end. Please do not encourage this because it affects 1.2 million Americans each year and it continues to encourage the number of people affected in American. This number alone of people in America affected by salmonella will quickly increase. Your kids can be affected by this. They will miss going to school for weeks and continue to not get educated. Also you will have to take off of work for sick days if your children fall ill or if you do so, too.

Please protect your friends and family and everybody else around the world by not doing this and finding different ways to get the maximum protein you need for running and training for that marathon.

All I wish for is that you and everybody stay safe. You cannot be safe when you are consuming six raw eggs every time you run, which runs the risk of containing this horrendous bacterium that could give you severe diarrhea, vomiting, and eventually kill you. Look up above at the person who has experienced this, and had an absolute miserable time after contracting this from eggs that were not worth the one week in the hospital. I have seen patients that have this and families who have all been affected by this. Despite what my username may say, I am a family doctor. I have seen too many cases too count where children and their families were effected. It has become ridiculously paining to watch and it needs to end. This is dangerous and threatening to people’s lives. If you were to contract this bacterium and infection, it would be at least a week less of training time for your marathon. Think about how others will be affected by this if they get into the habit that you are in and how you will be effected. This can be spread to other people and you for sure do not want to harm anybody that you may have seen, may have touched, or may talked too. Please think about what’s at risk here.