Spoiler alert.

If you are already elbow-deep in holiday cake and cookie batter, you may just want to take your chances and stop reading here.

But to become wiser and safer, though indisputably annoyed, step away from that bowl and read on.

Tasting uncooked foods made with flour can make you dangerously ill, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The report, which recounts the detective work that led to a recall of more than 10 million pounds of flour in the summer of 2016, confirms that a type of E. coli bacteria previously discovered lurking in wet environments like hamburger meat and leafy vegetables can also thrive in arid hosts.

“We’re not trying to ruin people’s holidays but we want them to be aware of the risks,” said Samuel J. Crowe, the lead author of the study and an epidemiologist with the division of food-borne, waterborne and environmental diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The bacteria is not uniformly distributed in a two-and-a-half pound bag of flour,” he said. “A small amount could get you really sick. I’ve had E. coli and salmonella and it’s pretty darn unpleasant.”