Eating raw eggs usually won’t make you sick, but it does carry a real risk of Salmonella infection and gives your body significantly less protein than cooked eggs would. Most healthy adults who swallow a raw egg in a smoothie or taste cookie dough will be fine. The problems come when you’re unlucky enough to get a contaminated egg, or when raw egg consumption becomes a regular habit.
The Salmonella Risk
Salmonella bacteria can live both on the shell and inside the egg itself. Contamination rates vary by region and farming practices, but even in countries with strict food safety standards, some eggs carry the bacteria. The risk per individual egg is low, yet across millions of eggs consumed each year, outbreaks happen regularly. The CDC tracked a Salmonella outbreak linked to eggs as recently as September 2024.
You can’t tell whether an egg is contaminated by looking at it, smelling it, or cracking it open. The bacteria don’t change the egg’s appearance or taste. Cooking eggs to at least 160°F (71°C) kills Salmonella reliably, which is why scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, and fully cooked fried eggs are considered safe.
What Salmonella Infection Feels Like
If you do eat a contaminated raw egg, symptoms typically show up 6 hours to 6 days later. That delay can make it hard to trace the cause. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days and includes watery diarrhea (sometimes with blood or mucus), severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. Most healthy adults recover without treatment, though the experience is miserable.
For certain groups, the stakes are higher. Children younger than 5, adults 65 and older, and people with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop serious complications, including infections that spread beyond the gut into the bloodstream. These groups should avoid raw and undercooked eggs entirely.
You Absorb Far Less Protein
One of the most common reasons people eat raw eggs is for the protein, especially in shakes or smoothies. But raw eggs are a surprisingly inefficient protein source. Protein digestion from raw eggs is around 40% lower than from cooked eggs. That means if you crack two raw eggs into a glass and drink them, your body extracts roughly the same amount of usable protein as eating just one cooked egg.
Cooking changes the structure of egg proteins in a way that makes them easier for your digestive enzymes to break down. The “Rocky Balboa” approach of drinking raw eggs is one of the least effective ways to get protein from them.
Biotin Depletion From Raw Egg Whites
Raw egg whites contain a protein called avidin that binds to biotin (vitamin B7) with extraordinary strength. The bond is essentially irreversible. When avidin latches onto biotin in your digestive tract, your body can’t absorb the biotin at all. The whole complex passes through and is lost.
This doesn’t matter much if you eat a raw egg occasionally. Biotin deficiency from raw egg whites only becomes a concern when consumption is excessive, likely a dozen or more raw eggs per day over a sustained period. Cooking denatures avidin completely, eliminating this effect. So if you eat cooked eggs regularly, biotin absorption isn’t a concern at all.
Safer Alternatives for Raw Egg Recipes
Plenty of recipes call for raw or barely cooked eggs: Caesar salad dressing, homemade mayonnaise, mousse, certain cocktails, and ice cream bases. The FDA recommends using pasteurized eggs for these dishes. Pasteurized shell eggs have been heat-treated at temperatures high enough to kill Salmonella without actually cooking the egg. They look and behave like regular raw eggs but carry virtually no bacterial risk. You can find them labeled as pasteurized in most grocery stores.
Pasteurized liquid egg products (sold in cartons) are another option. These are already treated and safe to use without cooking. If a recipe depends on raw egg and you’re serving it to young children, elderly family members, or anyone with a compromised immune system, pasteurized eggs are worth the small extra cost.
The Bottom Line on Occasional Exposure
Licking cake batter or eating a runny yolk at brunch isn’t likely to land you in the hospital. The per-egg risk of Salmonella is small, and healthy adults typically fight off mild infections without lasting problems. But the risk isn’t zero, and it compounds with frequency. If you’re regularly consuming raw eggs for fitness or dietary reasons, you’re rolling the dice more often while getting less protein per egg than you would from simply cooking them. Pasteurized eggs give you everything you want from a raw egg without the bacterial gamble.