How risky are soft-boiled eggs?
The CDC estimates that one out of every 20,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella. The egg industry, figuring that the typical consumer eats 250 eggs a year, predicts they’d run into one contaminated egg every 80 years. “So your risk is very small because that one egg you eat has to be undercooked,” said Donald McNamara, executive director of the Egg Nutrition Center, an egg industry group. But if you do the math, the risk is much bigger than it first appears, argues Tauxe.
