Runny eggs are the ultimate Instagrammable photo opp. Scroll social media, and you’ll see tons of people popping open yolks and dipping in pieces of toast to sop up all that liquid gold.
But is this breakfast staple actually safe to eat?
The question arises due to the very thing that makes over-easy, poached, sunny-side up, or soft-boiled eggs so delectable: that river of yolk. For these dishes, the proper culinary technique is to partially cook them so that the rich center remains runny. This puts those eggs at odds with the most common food safety guidelines, which require you to fully prepare ingredients like meat, poultry, and seafood to an internal temperature high enough to kill off bacteria and other germs.
To reduce the risk of a gnarly foodborne illness, many of us follow these “cook thoroughly” recs to a T when roasting a chicken or grilling pork. But for some reason, we don’t always bring that same energy to some other foods, like raw oysters or, yep, those yolky delights.
Heck, I still slurp down raw oysters even though I know it can be risky. But eggs give me a little more pause, mainly because I eat them so frequently: I scarf down bagel sandwiches with a jammy eggy center at least a couple of times a week.
So I connected with a food safety expert to get the intel on whether or not I should continue to sop up my runny egg yolks with crunchy bacon strips. Here’s what I found out.
Is it safe to eat runny eggs?
Here’s what to know: Birds can carry salmonella bacteria, and those icky germs can spread from the chickens to the inside and outer shells of their eggs. So when you eat a runny yolk that also happens to be contaminated with salmonella, you can get sick, Wade Syers, MS, a food safety specialist at Michigan State University Extension, tells SELF.
The main thing to know about a salmonella infection is that it’s not fun—and it could be serious, says Syers. Symptoms usually begin within six hours to six days after ingesting the bug, and can include diarrhea, fever, vomiting, and stomach cramps. In severe cases, illness can require hospitalization, he says. This risk is higher for young children, adults 65 years and older, and people with compromised immune systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
You may be surprised by how many people salmonella affects each year. The bacteria causes about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the US annually, the CDC says. While we can’t link all salmonella infections to eggs, the CDC does list food in general as the source of most of those illnesses.
So is buying pasteurized eggs the solution?
Not exactly. Pasteurization is a process that involves heating eggs to a high enough temperature to kill salmonella, according to the CDC. This destroys the bacteria that live on the inside and outside of the shell. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires this for all egg products (which are defined as whole eggs, whites, yolks, and other products removed from their shells for processing) sold in grocery stores, but it’s up to the manufacturers when it comes to whole eggs. If your eggs haven’t been pasteurized, they have to include a “safe handling” statement on the carton.
