...to think that if one of your guests is pregnant, and a big feature of dinner is a huge, delicious-looking cheese plate...

[LoveInAColdClimate]

...at least one of those cheeses should be pasteurised? Had dinner with PIL (who are lovely and who I get on with really well, so this is not a general sniping thread) last night, which featured, as pudding, a big "proper cheese shop" cheese board, but no cheese I could eat. They know what I can have and what I can't, so this can't have been a mistake. I have been v spoilt at other friends' and family who have sought out yummy cheese I'm able to eat, so I know I'm v lucky. But when pregnant or no-cows'-milk friends come to ours for supper, I love sourcing cheese they can eat if I'm doing cheese as part of the meal. It just seemed a bit weird to make half the meal something I couldn't have. Am I being precious or is this odd, especially as the cheese had been specially bought and so one type I could eat could have been chucked in? Frankly a bit of cheddar would have been fine, I just felt really left out.

Not quite as bad as MIL who laid on a salmon mousse as starter at Christmas then whipped the plate out from under her own pg daughter saying 'oh no you can't eat this, it's made with raw eggs'. Didn't offer her anything else, she just had to sit there while the rest of us ate.

How rotten, JumpJockey! That is worse.

Isn't is amazing how, as a bunch of bright women on here (I may be generalising but I do think MN is in the main fairly intelligent), we all have different understandings of the NHS guidance? I'm not talking about the people who choose to disregard elements of the guidance or are in different countries with other guidence, but women who want to follow the guidance but are doing so in slightly different ways? Eg the debate on here over pasteurised soft cheese.

I don't understand why women won't eat lion-stamped raw eggs. Why have we spent millions upon millions on a vaccination programme spanning decades? And I really don't understand the no cheesecake thing.

Agreed re eggs, Alpine Pony, I don't understand why the NHS guidance hasn't been changed re Lion Marked, non-organic eggs if the vaccine works. Perhaps they don't want to confuse our poor delicate female brains by making us distinguish the safe sort of eggs? I have been happily eating soft boiled supermarket non-organic eggs (albeit with a pang of guilt).

Cheesecake is the work of the devil in any event .

It makes me weep when some poor woman pops up on the pregnancy thread hyperventilating because she ate a dab of hellmans. :(

You and my boyfriend would get on, he does not believe cheese is a dessert. In cake or the aforementioned board which for all we know (has it yet been revealed ?) Consisted of 2oz cathedral, a round of dairy lea, Kraft slices and a can of squirty!

Alpine - yes, I explained above that was all unpasturised blue or runny cheese (two sorts of each from lovely posh cheese shop). Delicious but sadly not recommended in pregnancy. Someone did suggest that I could have grilled some which I must confess I didn't think of, but MIL would have insisted on doing it and I couldn't have stood The Fuss (much wiser to come here and get flamed instead .)

Ack, you're still being a wee bit bonkers. In the history of your cheese eating experience and this posh shop have you ever been ill? Noooo, course not. The 16 glasses of port mebbe... ;)

kirsty75005, i think we have the same point of view.

I was once at a works xmas dinner , pregnant woman refused the cheese then went out for a fag and

True, Alpine - but my risk assessment (which you don't have to agree with) is that as the listeriosis stakes are so much higher in pregnancy I don't want to chance it. One thing making me ill, another losing the baby (which wasn't easy to get in there in the first place, not that it would be fine if we'd conceived first go, of course).

Haven't read whole thread but if it was from a proper cheese shop, you'd have been fine to eat it - the only issue with all these foods in pg is avoiding food poisoning. If hygiene standards are high then don't worry.

Although you wouldn't eat something if you were worried you'd get sick whether pg or not...

YANBU

If you were vegetarian would they have only served meat no?

They probably didn't think, next time perhaps remind your hjosts when invited of the things you can't eat.

There was no Dairylea?

Ah, but just look at the e.coli outbreak in the Archers, Dunder . Brook Farm makes posh products I think? FWIW, there was also a notifiable food poisoning outbreak centring around a smart restaurant near us - smart is no guarantee of safe or the NHS guidelines would say no soft cheese unless obviously from the sort of shop where all the food is set out on slate boards and you faint when given the bill .

OP - have you been out to the cheese shop yet? You're due a trip of your own.

WHat warthog said. All the 'I ate mouldy cheese and I'm fine' stories are all well and good but some people don't feel comfortable with it - I certainly wouldn't. I love cheese but if I'm pg and the advice is not to eat I wouldn't even enjoy it if I did. Why take the chance. To add to the anecdata my MIL lost a baby at 14 weeks. The night before some friends had served a v over ripe mouldy cheese that she was too polite to decline. She'll never know if that was the prob of course but at the time she knew she didn't want to eat it.

Dunder - the risk isn't just general 'food poisoning' which makes you feel a bit grot. It's listeria which can cause an unborn babies death. A tiny risk but potentialy dreadful effects, each person must make their own assessment of the risk, other people can't do it for them!

i haven't read the whole thread but tiramisu??? is this made with raw eggs??? all the time??
I ate a massive massive heart-attack inducing slice the other day. (Am pg).

It's not just the pregnant women who get the guidelines wrong. I made a cheesecake when we had a gathering once. One of my best friends was pregnant, she was fine with it (it was made with philadelphia fgs!) but cue other people (who've never been pregnant) asking her if she should be eating it.

I don't get the veggie compariosn. It was a cheese board, an optional extra. They did give her a whole meal first, they didn't starve her?

But to be fair I've just looked at the guidelines someone above posted above quoting

"To avoid this risk, pregnant women are advised not to eat soft cheeses, regardless of whether the cheese is pasteurised or unpasteurised.
Soft cheeses"

Then you look at this NHS page about cheeses that are safe to eat.

Other types of cheese are also safe to eat during pregnancy, but make sure they?re made from pasteurised milk. These include:
cottage cheese
mozzarella
feta
cream cheese
paneer
ricotta
halloumi
some types of goats? cheese

processed cheese, such as cheese spreads.

I can see that some people see soft cheese and think feta or ricotta etc. and assume from the first bit of guidance quoted that they're not safe.

When I have a vegetarian guest, Milsean, I don't serve a meat starter on the basis that they can eat the main course. Do you?

Milsean, so if you were entertaining someone who required Halal or Kosher food you would provide a suitable main course, but not a suitable dessert as you "hadn't starved them"? You would cater for a vegetarian's main meal, but serve a meat starter or have a rennet based dessert? Generally entertaining is about sociably sharing a whole meal where possible, isn't it? It's not about providing adequate nutrition!

Ow would your pils know what you can and cant eat?
Ive been pg 3 times and still havent a clue!
I pretty much ate what i wanted within reason.
Youre being too precious and if you carry on motherhood will be bloody hard work

As said about eight times now, mosschops, because they call and ask before each visit!