What Can I Eat? (panicking about listeriosis)

[rosalux]

I know it may seem hysterical but I've been reading about food safety and am now in something if a panic about the risk of listeriosis, principally from lunchtime foods such as salads and sandwiches at coffee shops and sandwich bars etc. Some (non UK) food standards agencies seem to advocate compoets avoidance. Is this really necessary? What are the risks? I am 12+5 btw.

Listeria monocytogenes can be in all sorts of foods but generally isn't. Cook-chill foods are one of the worst offenders, or used to be - the chill cabinet needs to be kept in the range of 2-4 deg C to prevent growth. If the cabinet isn't cool enough, Listeria can grow quite happily.

Lettuce is actually a carrier - and a PITA because you can't cook it. If you feel the need to, you can wash lettuce in a weak chlorine (bleach) solution, or buy ready-to-eat lettuce in bags (which has probably been washed in a chlorine solution already).

Unpasteurised cheeses have been implicated in cases of listeriosis, although it is unclear as to whether the Listeria was there prior to the cheese manufacture or as a post-manufacture contaminant, from water dripping into the area where the cheeses were stored.

It's probably better to avoid completely if you are nervous already - not worth putting yourself through the stress of worrying about it. Don't buy any cook-chill foods (i.e. those that have already been cooked, then chilled and are ready to eat) such as pasta salads; give the sandwiches a miss (make your own!) and wash your salad veg.

erm pretty much anything you want, life is too short to stress about this. As far as I know the only thing that is a definite rather than a risk is too much vitamin A in liver

The risk really is tiny- there's only around 100 cases per year in the whole of the UK, that's 1-2/million people. And for a young healthy pregnant person, it's unlikely to cause any serious issues even if you did get it.

horseymum is right, don't stress about it