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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here, everyone has that one friend,

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Speaker 1: you know, the kill joy who can't help attaint a

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Speaker 1: perfectly pleasant conversation with an unsolicited, soul crushing truth bomb.

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Speaker 1: Apologies are in order. This episode is about to be

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Speaker 1: the kill joy of your podcast stream today. That's because

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Speaker 1: amidst the cheer and anticipation of the holiday season, something

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Speaker 1: truly disturbing has come to our attention, and it involves

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Speaker 1: a wintertime staple, raw cookie dough. According to a new

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Speaker 1: study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, eating

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Speaker 1: raw foods made with flour a k A delicious unbaked

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Speaker 1: goods like cookies could make you dangerously sick. While health

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Speaker 1: experts have long known that a type of E. Coli

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Speaker 1: bacteria commonly reside in wet environments like leafy vegetables and

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Speaker 1: raw meat, the study confirms that the same type of

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Speaker 1: bacteria can lurk in dry habitats like flower too. The

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Speaker 1: study covers the details that lead to a recall of

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Speaker 1: more than ten million pounds of flow hour that's about

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Speaker 1: four thousand, five hundred metric tons, and of two and

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Speaker 1: fifty potentially contaminated raw flower based products in A United

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Speaker 1: States Food and Drug Administration investigation determined that raw dough

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Speaker 1: made using General Mills flour produced on some dates between

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Speaker 1: November and February was tainted. A statement from the FDA

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Speaker 1: said flower has a long shelf life, and bags of

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Speaker 1: flower may be kept in people's homes for a long time.

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Speaker 1: Consumers unaware of the recall could continue to eat these

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Speaker 1: recalled flowers and potentially get sick. If consumers have any

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Speaker 1: of these recalled flowers in their homes, they should throw

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Speaker 1: such flower products away. The studies authors say they're not

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Speaker 1: trying to ruin people's holidays. They just don't want anyone

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Speaker 1: to get sick, and consuming even a small amount of

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Speaker 1: raw flower from these tainted batches could lead to a

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Speaker 1: pretty unpleasant bout of illness. More than a quarter of

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Speaker 1: the fifty six patients affected across twenty four states were hospitalized,

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Speaker 1: and some of their symptoms included mild fever, abdominal pain,

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Speaker 1: vom ng and so sorry bloody diarrhea, though all the

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Speaker 1: patients raging in age from one years eventually recovered. If

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Speaker 1: cautionary tales around raw cookie does sound familiar, it's probably

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Speaker 1: because the consumption of raw eggs and another key ingredient

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Speaker 1: has long been known to carry risks. A General Mills

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Speaker 1: spokesperson encouraged consumers to continue avoiding raw batter in the

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Speaker 1: future because flour can't be heat treated to prevent contamination

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Speaker 1: and potential outbreaks, not without impacting its performance. The takeaway

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Speaker 1: here you can still have your cookies, just spake them too.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovsky and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other

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Speaker 1: scientific kill joys, visit our home planet, how stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com.