To ask for help in substituting a cheaper pregnancy craving before I bankrupt us?

All I wanted to eat when i was pregnant was KFC spicy chicken wings and whole jars of pink pickled ginger. I could easily have gone through 3 jars of that a day, and did a few times until I just simply ran out of money for it.

If it's the smokiness you could try smoked cheese, it's soft hard cheese, so has a similar bite to smoked salmon, but it's like £1 for a small roll of it.

Regarding caffeine in pregnancy - I think I read somewhere that the link is actually because older mothers generally drank more caffeinated drinks and were more at risk because of their age. I’ll see if I can find it.

Regarding OP’s conundrum - sorry, no suggestions but I do understand the intense craving, I wanted to eat soap in my pregnancy!

I think the answer will be something that only makes sense to you.

I'll chip in cool original flavour Doritos, salted cucumber or celery, bacon fried to very crispy, large mild kalamata olives, sour cream and chive dip with a squeeze of lemon, sushi rice (make your own so it's safe, it's just rice with salt, sugar, vinegar and perhaps some soy sauce).

This probably sounds nonsensical and your "similar foods" may be entirely different but I'm thinking about trying to match the salt, sour, sweet, umami combination rather than reproduce the flavour as such IYSWIM.

You can't really do trials on pregnant women so they're going on what they know.

Which is caffeine is possibly linked to miscarriage and low birth weight among other pregnancy complications.

And it might be suggested there is no safe limit of caffeine in pregnancy so the NHS does it's best to give advice, erring on the side of caution.

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/26/3/114

Buttered toast, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon trimmings. It's still very, errr, salmon-y, and is a fraction of the cost. Bloody tasty too.

A cup of black tea contains 50mg caffeine. Every additional 100mg caffeine a day increases the pregnancy loss risk. NHS recommends limiting caffeine to 200mg for this reason-you’d only need 3-4 cups a day to increase the risk of pregnancy loss to a statistically significant level, albeit low to a bit less low.

Lots linking caffeine to pregnancy loss but this is a recent metanalysis of other studies linking the data from those studies together: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9396037/

I also craved it! It helps to ration it out- eg bread roll with salmon, pasta with smoked salmon, salad with warm smoked salmon, so the pack can last a few days. I tend to crave salty things- burgers, crisps and salmon- so maybe keep exploring salty foods.

@pleasehelpagirlout62

Thing is, if you read the actual science you have r to drink buckets of tea to get close to causing a problem,

Same with alcohol, consumption has to be significant, not just wine with dinner. Because our body dilutes toxins,

But they don't tend to share the science,

Would they if men got pregnant?

I’d like to know whether there is any convincing research demonstrating that more than 3 teas is a risk in pregnancy. Or whether this is just because of the mantra “caffeine baaaad” and they’ve picked 3 teas as a limit arbitrarily.

Make a pasta carbonara without bacon, add chopped up smoked salmon with the egg mixture, it cooks in no time at all, tastes delicious and you can use the cheapest, raggiest bits of salmon

Skippers? Smoked and high in omega 3
https://www.john-west.co.uk/products/skippers-in-sunflower-oil/

Or check out your local Polish shop for sensibly priced yummy fish stuff.

My DSis and I both had these cravings during pregnancy, unlike her I never ate a spoon of cat food 😆probably only because I didn't have a cat.

Salmon farming is an extremely unpleasant industry which is very bad for the fish and the environment. The smoked salmon you are eating will almost certainly have come from farmed salmon.
op, Google it and I’ll surprised if you ever eat salmon again.
Needless to say the appalling RSPCA condone it - presumably thanks to hefty backhanders from salmon farmers.

The NHS doesn't ban anything - it's advice based on clinical evidence and people make their own decisions.

Current advice does include avoiding smoked salmon (without additional cooking) due to the risk of listeria

I would have a look at the list as some of the things are probably more important than no alcohol. For example, not eating pate is really crucial, and I also wouldn’t go near uncooked soft or blue cheeses.

Cooked smoked salmon is fine and I agree with others saying get smoked salmon”bits” or off ends to cook. Or just cook actual salmon? You could get a whole salmon and make it last?

Sorry to break this to you but cold smoked fish is not recommended in pregnancy because of listeria.

I haven't followed that list from.the NHS to the letter but surely eating lots of raw fish is actually a bit risky.

Buy fresh salmon and hot-smoke it yourself at home? Easy enough if you have a wok (and a good extractor fan).

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/dec/20/faux-lox-a-smoked-salmon-lovers-hunt-for-a-more-sustainable-alternative

The thing is if they didn’t say a limit on caffeine woman may potentially end up having complications with their pregnancy, and moan that the NHS did not say anything about a caffeine limit

Nope, in fact it was only added to the list in 2022-I ate a fair bit in pregnancy 1 but had to avoid in pregnancy 2. There was a large ongoing Listeria outbreak prompting the addition. As others mention, cooking would kill Listeria but OP mentions she eats it as-is and texture is part of it, which is altered on cooking.

Gosh the NHS are still saying no more than 3 teas!

They really need to stop treating women as idiots and share the actual science.

Emily oster's amazing non condescending book is what you all need!

So glad I craved bread and sponges for all of my pregnancies!

Mix a bag of smoky bacon and prawn cocktail crisps together, fish and smoky!

You used to be able to get smoked salmon trimmings. Perfectly acceptable in a bagel or scrambled eggs imo.

I’m sure the OP is perfectly capable of reading the NHS website and deciding what level of risk she is comfortable with.

What? Surely that's out of date advice. I thought the NHS had got a lot more sensible with not banning everything in recent years!