.....most of europe eats various foods that contain raw eggs. Ever heard of steak tartare? Ever eaten cookie dough? I've never had food posioning.

Fuck yea, I have eaten Steak Tartare.

Anacdodatal evidence no longer applies in this century. If you don't pay attention to gross statistics, you are cheating yourself.

Maybe this is a sticking point for me. I am a Search software engineer based in statistial methods. The numbers don't lie. My personal experience is humbled by the statistcs gathered by my software.

so you wouldn't eat it any more? In my experience good restaurants and good cooks don't poison their customers, shitty fast food places and questionable kitchen practices do. Such information is very hard to gather statistically. I'm sure you're familiar with the complex problems involved in adding circumstantial and background contextual information to statistical information. So far this theory has me eating raw eggs and not getting sick. The EU has outlawed a number of traditional smallgoods because it thinks the manufacturing processes are unsafe. Yet people have been making and eating these things for hundreds of years, sometimes things don't fit the model.

I used to eat raw eggs all the time. I've had steak tartare, ostrich tartare and every kind of sushi known to man. But I only eat stuff like that at establishments that would stand to lose a lot should something go wrong.

Did anyone notice in Napoleon Dynamite where the farmers drank a whole glass of raw eggs for lunch?

I agree with jag - there's nothing wrong with this stuff if its prepared with care. Hence, I don't eat sushi from that place in the mall where all the angst-filled teenagers work.

the best way I ever detoxed was taking a couple of gingerbaths and eating nothing but fruit and raw veggies, with a shot of cider vinegar every day and drinking nothing but green tea (all of course bought from either the farmers market or the local heathfood store)for 10 days. felt great afterwards.. then it was back to the re-toxifying. (oh! and you might want to get the liquid forms of both vitamians and amino acids. the second time I added those and I didn't feel too bad in the energy department)

The salmonella, if present, is on the outside of the egg. Perhaps there's a way to safely wash the egg.

Not that I think home-remedy DETOX is anything but a weird fad of some sort.

oooh, theeeeere's a convincing argument that no harm comes from raw eggs. "look honey the europeans do it - it must be ok." :D

My brother works for a large restaurant chain as a product developer. He says that restaurants now buy unshelled homogenized eggs for use in cesear salad and things like that.

It was in Rocky. It must be okay, right?

I liked Orange Juliuses a lot more before I found out what was in them. (Pineapple and Strawberry were my absolute favorite flavors)

Historical precedence for eating raw eggs doesn't count much. The farming practices are completely different today. With Tyson in Arkansas cramming the birds into tiny spaces mass producing eggs in unhealthy conditions. Sure you can eggs from find organicly-fed free-roaming chickens. But, to me this is not a risk worth taking. Sushi is a delicious risk worth taking, but as said above, only in the right places.

Check http://www.tysonfoodsinc.com/freshme.../caseready.asp The case ready meat walmart and others sell are good to go for 16 days. Right!

Kind of hit on the key of it there Gwennie, by decent food, not shit (whether it be ingredients or meals) and you don't have a problem. You get what you pay for. Organic stuff is interesting, I did a few double-blind tests to see if it really did taste better, yup. The interesting bit is that because it is organic is causes the time it can remain on shelves and storage as well as transport time to be dropped dramatically which is probably as responsible for the better taste and cost as anything else.

Sometimes I come to a thread and realise jaguar has already written what I want to say - only better. So I don't write anything. Except I just wrote this. But that doesn't count.

You two should get together for a coffee drink.

not being sarcastic here for once

What is a coffee drink?

I've heard of drinks, and coffee. But the two together? A bit unecessary.

avoiding comment