Posted: March 30th, 2010 - 3:37am by Doug Powell

I’m told everyone experiments in university.

My experiments consisted of getting married, having kids, and reading The Atlantic and Harper’s magazine. There were other experiments, like with that girl from Kitchener I met on the train from Toronto one time, the girl from Brazil who stalked me, Alison the model, Jo the squash player and Jo the vet, but they’re not fit to discuss in this family publication.

At some point, both magazines wrote about something I had studied, and I thought the articles were terrible. I don’t read those magazines anymore.

This is why: The Atlantic offers the Weston Price school of home dentistry up as an expert on whether to experiment with bi-curious raw eggs, stating that if you’re going to eat raw eggs, Rocky Balboa style,

“the egg MUST be organic and fresh, and you MUST know its origin. Ideally, it comes from your backyard hen house. Alternately, you procure it from a farmer you trust. Salmonella is a serious illness, but it is rarely found in the organic eggs of well-fed, free-range happy hens. Final warning: do not eat commercially-produced, grocery store eggs raw. Ever.”

The author, Carol Ann Sayle, has no microbiological basis for any of these statements. She also says chickens are in a Zen-state when they lay eggs, which may be like living in a Red State. And she writes with all-caps to emphasize points because her writing alone sucks.

In this piece of microbiological fantasy, Sayle states

“Glistening with antiseptic moisture, the egg pops out and falls a couple of inches to the straw. … As the moisture changed to chalk-dry "bloom" (the bloom protects the insides of the egg from bacteria), Jean Luc cracked open the egg, opened his mouth, and tossed in the yolk and white."

Salmonella can enter directly into the egg, long before it pops out. And will soon be coming out your other end, Jean Luc.