Licking the spoon for a couple tastes of raw cookie dough is an added bonus to the baking process, especially at holiday time, but the risk of falling ill from the batter might be greater than once thought.

New research published in the journal Clinical Infectious Disease found that the culprit of a 2009 multi-state E. coli outbreak was none other than the ready-to-bake prepackaged cookie dough found in most grocery stores. At the time of the outbreak, 77 people from 30 states became ill from the bad batter. About half of those people got so sick they had to be hospitalized.