Sunny Side up?

[heydani]

So, I just had a sunny side up egg and turkey bacon. I have always been afraid to eat sunnyside up eggs, because the yolk is runny which means salmonella? However everyone in my family was eating it, and they said that it is cooked enough to kill the salmonella, I just dont see how that is possible if it is still liquidy. Am I going to be okay, and if I werent how soon would it hit???

[person54321]

Technically no, a sunny side up egg would not be heated enough to kill salmonella throughout. But the odds of any given egg having salmonella in it are 1 in 25,000. To put that in perspective you have a 1 in 2,500 chance of falling fatally in a shower/tub in your lifetime and how many people do you who have had that happen to them?

I LOVE runny yolk eggs and have been eating them my whole life, so has most of my family. It hasn't been an issue and it won't be for you either. Enjoy your breakfast!

[cloughie]

I love sunny side up eggs, i have them at least once a week i call them dippy eggs so i can dip bread or chips in the yolk.

[lizzo]

I love dippy eggs!

[stopthissong]

No, you will be fine. These little things are often the worst when it comes to fear, so I know how scared you must be. I watch a lot of cooking programs and love to cook myself. I often see chefs making custards and mayonaise etc with completely raw eggs! My parents used to have milkshakes as kids with a raw egg in it. (yuck, i know but they really did that! ha!) I don't think you should be worried, just breathe and relax and enjoy the meal with your family. All the best. x

[alisha27]

I always get sunny side up and over easy eggs confused? I like my eggs to have a white coating over the yolk but not cooked so much that the yolk becomes cooked if that makes sense? I also have that fear but like the others mentioned it's rare to get sick from it.

[person54321]

I once lived near a market that sold pasteurized eggs, they were only $.50 more than the regular eggs so I'd buy them and cook them just enough that they would hold together then eat them nearly raw. I LOVE RUNNY YOLKS!

[lizzo]

I always get sunny side up and over easy eggs confused? I like my eggs to have a white coating over the yolk but not cooked so much that the yolk becomes cooked if that makes sense? I also have that fear but like the others mentioned it's rare to get sick from it.

That's called over easy

[gumdropper1]

Person, you don't understand the statistics behind what you're saying.

According to the egg industry (incredibleegg.com), 1 in 20,000 eggs is infected with salmonella. The way you and they interpret that is that you would have to use 20,000 eggs before you should expect to get one with salmonella, and most people won't use that many in a lifetime.

But there are 75 billion eggs produced in the US every year (incredibleegg.com). That means according to the egg industry's own figures, 3.75 million eggs contaminated with salmonella are sold in the US every year. That's over 10,000 a day.

That means that each and EVERY DAY, 10,000 people could come down with salmonella unless they cook their eggs properly.

If you eat your eggs sunny side up, eventually you will get salmonella. Wouldn't you rather eat your eggs fully cooked and have peace of mind instead of worrying about puking your eggs up?

Doug

[froschic03]

I once lived near a market that sold pasteurized eggs, they were only $.50 more than the regular eggs so I'd buy them and cook them just enough that they would hold together then eat them nearly raw. I LOVE RUNNY YOLKS!

Pasteurized eggs are becoming more and more popular now a days but the price has gone up now (at least in the health care food facilities). But I think they are totally worth it! All liquid eggs in the carton are pasteurized already but they do sell whole eggs too. That would be the way to go if u love sunny side up eggs and dont want the risk of salmonella!

[heydani]

My family basically talked me into believing it was fine because they know it is so rare for me to eat good foods. But thanks for all the responses, and they were just yellow dipping eggs, like they didnt have the cooked white part on top ( I knew what you meant).

[ann32]

I have eaten runny eggs for 34 yrs and have never gotten sick. My grandfather for 84 yrs and never gotten sick

[person54321]

Doug that still doesn't change the fact that any given egg has a 1 in 25,000 chance of containing salmonella. However, once you start including other factors the "chances" decrease or increase.

Eggs contaminated with salmonella are usually contaminated in batches. So in any given sampling of eggs, it's unlikely any will have salmonella unless there's an outbreak in which case it's much more likely than 1 in 25,000 that the eggs will contain salmonella.

"If you eat your eggs sunny side up, eventually you will get salmonella. Wouldn't you rather eat your eggs fully cooked and have peace of mind instead of worrying about puking your eggs up?"

That's not true at all. Even if you ate 25,000 raw eggs the chances of you encountering salmonella are incredibly low unless there's an outbreak. You have a 2 in 100 chance of dying in a car accident and you get into a car far more than 100 times in your lifetime. By your logic anyone who drives as much as most commuters will die.

[sage]

Doug, you don't understand the statistics behind what you're saying. (lol)

10,000 eggs/day may have salmonella, but there are 310,000,000 people in the USA. So that means your chances of getting an egg with salmonella on any given day is 1 in 31,000 - closer to what Person54321 was saying.

[Edit: sorry - I didn't see Person's reply when I wrote this!]

[gumdropper1]

Why are all these people posting here who don't understand the statistics? Just think about it. Every day, 10,000 contaminated eggs are placed in stores.

This isn't about the number of contaminated eggs. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is cooking them thoroughly to kill the salmonella.

You don't have to worry about a contaminated egg as long as you cook them thoroughly. Anything else is playing Russian roulette. Would any of these people defending runny eggs eat pink chicken? Or rare beef?

The biggest food poisoning epidemic in history was caused by raw eggs that got into the Schwan's ice cream factory. 224,000 people became ill from Schwan's ice cream contaminated by Salmonella in eggs. You can read about the Schwan's outbreak and what caused it in the New England Journal of Medicine: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...99605163342001

Doug

[orton99]

Sorry Doug, but I agree with everyone else on here – if the chances of eating an egg infected with salmonella are 1 in 25,000 or whatever then your individual chance is 1 in 25,000 and that’s that. I do agree with you that in itself it “isn’t about the number of contaminated eggs” however but draw a completely different conclusion from that statement.

What this seems to be about is phobic avoidance, which is the worst thing anyone on here can do as it will just maintain everyone’s anxieties. Yes, theoretically you could get ill from an egg but it’s such a small chance that it’s not worth bothering with. For example, my chances here in the UK of being involved in a fatal car crash are apparently 1 in 8,000 (three times more likely than getting salmonella from an egg) yet I’ve no plans to abandon driving. Life is full of risk and you can’t avoid everything. Accepting that is much healthier for you in the long-term than taking excessive precautions as that’s how phobias start and we all know how much misery that causes, don’t we?

In fact, I’m actually quite impressed and heartened by most of the responses to this thread. Here you’ve got a forum for emetophobics who by inclination might be expected to avoid eggs like the plague and yet the majority who’ve replied seem to love their runny eggs! That’s really good and should be encouraged, not responded to with dire warnings about what is actually a very small risk.

For the record I love runny eggs as well (and get disappointed if they’re overcooked!) and that will continue. I’ve never eaten pink chicken, but then again no one does whether they’re phobic or not. But rare beef…? Love it! I’ve also eaten rare lamb and duck as well with no problems and they’re pretty good too!

I’ve put a lot of effort into CBT over the past few months and have made genuine progress, so have no intention of slipping back into phobic avoidance which is what I would be doing if I started obsessively cooking eggs until the yolks are hard. Yes, there are “risks” here but given the choice between a tiny one of salmonella and the guaranteed one of reinforcing my phobia every time I deliberately avoid something like this which would just keep me anxious and unhappy, I know which risk I’m far happier taking. Yes, I might get ill at some point but it’s very unlikely and even if it does happen, so what? I’ll do my best to cope with it. The world will keep turning. It won’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. After all, it’s only a bit of throwing up and feeling ill for a few days. Spread across and compared to a whole lifetime, a few days are irrelevant.

When I said I’ve made progress with the CBT, I wasn’t joking.

[canadianreject]

I think eating runny eggs is pretty safe, never been sick from it, my step dad eats it almost everyday, so does his dad. They're never sick. I think I'll take my chances

PS .. just because there's statistics that say there's an X amount of chance I'll get hit by a car by crossing the street, doesn't mean I ever will, and I'm not going to stop crossing the street because of it haha

[crd08]

I've never in my life cooked my egg till the yolk was firm and I've never had salmonella. Buy pasteurized eggs

[kasey]

Down here in the south we call those fried eggs you're fine. Don't even give it another thought or worry.

[geckohouse]

My interest was peaked and so i did a quick bit of research and I found this at salmonela.org
"A: When present, Salmonella is initially in the "whites" of fresh eggs. However, this environment is restricted for some nutrients that Salmonella needs so the bacteria are usually present in low numbers. As eggs age the membrane around the yolk sac begins to break down and releases nutrients that Salmonella needs to grow, so the bacteria can move toward the yolk (by a process called chemotaxis) and reproduce."

So it is the white of the egg that would contain most of the bacteria and so as this is cooked it explains why eggs are so very low risk. In fact my guess is the outside of the egg is probably more riskier to come in contact with.

Runny eggs are just too good not to eat. Life is for living otherwise you may just as well eat salty freeze dried food and be safe.

[KaydeeJayde]

PS .. just because there's statistics that say there's an X amount of chance I'll get hit by a car by crossing the street, doesn't mean I ever will, and I'm not going to stop crossing the street because of it haha

This, exactly! People do so many much more dangerous things each day, and they don't suffer any consequences, there's such a small chance of salmonella in eggs that it's hardly worth worrying about, but if the OP is so concerned, perhaps pasteurised eggs, and if you're worried about it at the restaurant, ask if they use pasteurised eggs. If not, you can make your decision from there.

Were you okay, OP?

[person54321]

So I was having a conversation with a foodie/biologist about this and she said it's incredibly rare for salmonella to get into the yolk. It's almost always on the shell and occasionally in the whites. While it's possible for salmonella to leak into the yolk in an old egg, under normal circumstances apparently it's really only necessary to fully cook the whites. The membrane around the yolk normally keeps any and all bacteria out, which makes sense. It has to break down in order for salmonella to get in there. Again, makes perfect sense, since it would be a pretty terrible evolutionary trait for bacteria to get to a developing embryo!

[katherines6]

if i were you i wouldnt worry about the eggs. my sister (though i beg her not to) eats cookie dough before its cooked (raw egg!) and has never gotten sick or had salmonella or anything.