So... is there anything we can eat?

[durness]

Hello, I'm here at my wife's behest as she's about to go out of her mind (and I'm close behind). She's been trawling the internet for advice and tips regarding pregnancy (we're into the thirteenth week & just had the scan today - amazing!) and what she's found has left her fearful of eating any of the foods that she's spent her life consuming.

This is the website page that concerns her:
www.cancertutor.com/pregnant/#.UtWuQjGDQTE

Now, we both recognise that this guy is making quite a few controversial claims in the website that we don't intend to pay any heed to (concerning e.g. vaccines) so maybe this page should be taken with a gigantic snort of salt... but... we can't find anything conclusive in response.

Sticking with the MSG section as this is what is keeping my wife from her favourite foods, there are two issues here for us: one is whether or not MSG is indeed harmful to a foetus's brain development, the other is whether 'free glutamates' are just as 'bad'. We're not asking people to comment so much on MSG itself or we'll never get anywhere. Instead, our concerns are with the foodstuffs that the website claims have the same effect via free glutamates.

I've included the list of 'danger' foods below (with my exasperated annotations in {}). Worth noting that yeast extract does for a lot of stuff, ditto 'natural flavourings' (bye-bye Worcestershire sauce)... and 'Spices' (!) even rules out tomato ketchup. So not just a problem for consumers of oriental foods... if there is indeed a problem.

We'd both be enormously grateful if anyone could set our minds at rest. Or maybe you can back up the claims and my wife is going to have to put up with unseasoned tomato juice if we don't want a kid with mushy brains. But: science is good, we'd like to see lots of it.

Cheers.

PS: there's a whole 'nother issue surrounding scaremongering and such but let's save that debate for another day...!

That list:

^Food Additives That ALWAYS Contain MSG
Monosodium Glutamate [MSG]
Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein [HVP]
Hydrolyzed Protein; Hydrolyzed Plant Protein
Plant Protein Extract
Sodium Caseinate
Calcium Caseinate
Yeast Extract
Textured Protein (Including TVP)
Autolyzed Yeast
Hydrolyzed Oat Flour
Corn Oil {REALLY...?}

Food Additives That FREQUENTLY Contain MSG
Malt Extract
Malt Flavoring
Bouillon {ARGH}
Broth {ARGH}
Stock {ARGH}
Flavoring {ARGH}
Natural Flavors/Flavoring {ARGH}
Natural Beef or Chicken Flavoring {ARGH}
Seasoning {WHAT???}
Spices {OH FOR THE LOVE OF}

Food Additives That MAY Contain MSG Or Excitotoxins
Carrageenan
Enzymes {WHAT DOESN'T CONTAIN ENZYMES?!}
Soy Protein Concentrate
Soy Protein Isolate
Whey Protein Concentrate^

The stress and anxiety is likely to cause more problems. Cook her some nice dinner and let her soak in the bath every evening to relax.

Nhs guidelines actually approve eating shellfish & sushi. Things have got a lot less restrictive. I've also been eating all manner of cheese this pregnancy.

Ignore what some crank on t'internet says. If you listened to everything that is alleged to be bad during pregnancy or life in general, you'd never do anything!!!

As far as I can see, this guy's personal profile doesn't indicate any proper scientific training. Yet he claims to have disproved Einstein and evolution.

You won't find scientific debunking of his claims because he is not putting forward properly researched science. Why would scientists spend time debunking him? You can't demand evidence that random theories are untrue.

If your wife wants to read an interesting statistical book, she could try Ostler's Expecting Better. I don't entirely agree with her section on alcohol and some of the late pregnancy/birth stuff is very American and half-heartedly adapted to the UK. But the early pregnancy stuff is quite interesting and I got it from the library without difficulty.

nuts are fine, cooked shellfish is fine, sushi is fine

nut advice changed in 2009

Agree with all the sensible advice from the above - and would add that if you go looking for something to worry about on google, you're sure to find it. The only advice I follow is the nhs what-to-avoid, and even this has proven tricky at times (mostly conundrums around cheese, and is my egg cooked enough?! eating in restaurants can be hard enough if you want to follow the letter of the law on food in pregnancy, without asking how everything is cooked, is there corn oil in that? etc). I can understand that your wife wants to be in control, many of us are in the same boat. But the point about MSG and chinese babies mentioned above is a good one. Add to this the fact that many brainy people were born in the 70s and 80s, when we had little or no idea about MSG.
Try to focus on the great news from the scan and looking forward to a healthy pregnancy, there might be some hard times ahead physically for your wife so she'd do well to not focus on the unsubstantiated mess of stuff out there

Oh FFS. So you found a dodgy, unverified, scaremongering website and now you're on an anonymous forum asking strangers (with no idea of their accreditations or competence to speak on this topic, if any) what you should do. Any particular reason you're not going to a reputable source such as the NHS advisory page that was linked to in one of the first responses? Because trawling the web for random input rather than looking at facts from a robustly researched source seems a strange way to go about this.

Hey OP,
Haven't read the other replies yet, so apologies if this is repeat advice.

But yeah... that's crazy. And I speak as a lady who got VERY anxious about all this at about your wife's stage and didn't know what to eat either.
Here's what I discovered.

1. Read 'Expecting Better' by Emily Oster. Seriously, it's brilliant. She tackles the advice we're given and gives evidence to show where it's unfounded fearmongering.

2. When in doubt, the NHS site is pretty good.

3. Ok, I have chilled out about all this SO much over the months (currently 34 weeks), but there were a few herbs I decided to avoid based on repeated mentions from multiple websites (never put all your faith in one website, any nut can stick up a page on nutrition). For me, these were: Parsley, basil and sage. Even with these, I'm pretty sure I'm being overcautious (especially as one of my early cravings was basil pesto and I ate it on toast! Baby is of course fine. Ditto with a salad made almost entirely of parsley).

You have to find your comfort level and stick to it (and realise that you'll both probably relax about this stuff as time goes on).
FWIW, I've googled quite a bit on MSG and all reputable seeming sites were fine with it. It's only a problem if you're allergic, apparently, in which case you wouldn't be eating it anyway!

I really do sympathise though. It can be hugely anxiety provoking. But most pregnant women won't avoid any of this stuff and they and their babies are just fine.

Do your own research and by research I don't mean reading websites containing some random person's opinion. That's all this is, is one person's opinion, he doesn't even cite his references consistently. If you're really concerned about something being harmful (and have a lot of time on your hands) do the research yourself.

Look for the journal articles and scientific studies and see if you can find anything statistically significant to back up any of the claims. Chances are not.

And for god's sake don't start googling chemicals! That way madness lies :)

Have to agree with everything said above by the wise ladies of MN - what you have to remember is that BEFORE the internet women have been having babies for many millions of years without all this ho ha and minute analysing of every little thing - I have to say its all a bit excessive

You won't get better and more sound advice than what has already been listed above by everyone - if you were to worry about every little thing I think you could drive yourself demented when this is meant to be something amazing and miraculous - women managed very sucessfully for millions of years to have healthy babies without the dangerous Mr Google scaring you senseless so I would step away from it right now

Most people in China eat instant noodles containing MSG every day. They aren't all ill or suffering constant headaches or whatever else MSG is supposed to do to us. It's really a load of rubbish.

maybe she should avoid dihydrogen monoxide too!! (see who works it out first )

www.dhmo.org/facts.html

ilovepowerhoop- love it! A good lesson in not believing hype

I think it's going to be a very long 9 months for you both

Oh my word. Ignore anything like that on the net and look in the NHS produced pregnancy book that the mw should have given your wife. Or the same info is available from the NHS online. You'll both go mental if you read scaremongering rubbish online. And this also applies once the baby is born. Be sensible, be realistic and enjoy the pregnancy! And congrats!

I've been thinking about this - it sounds like your wife wants peer-reviewed studies which disprove these claims. They don't exist. That's not because the claims are true. It's because it is unethical to carry out tests on pregnant women. Consequently the public health authorities have to review the evidence and make recommendations based on the balance of possible risk to mother and baby.

"No one is going to do a study to prove Worcester sauce is safe in pregnancy- not even Lea and Perrins."

Her body will tell her what she wants to eat. We're supposed to avoid unpasteurised cheese but you could always move to France. They don't rule it out there and pregnancies survive!

My poor DH existed for about seven months on nothing but steamed fish and steamed veg because I craved it every single day.

That's quite a list of things not to eat! I agree with other posters, that website is ridiculous. I'm a scientist whose pregnancy is high risk and I have coeliac disease, so I am careful about that I do eat etc, but all of that is just absurd.

Could your wife speak to her midwife or GP about her concerns? They may have more luck reassuring her. As a last resort, avoiding MSG and 'free glutamates' would be pretty easy if your wife switched to a coeliac type diet.

Coeliac UK www.coeliac.org.uk/home/ has some great advice on this, and although it can seem a bit daunting at first following a coeliac diet is actually pretty easy as all the supermarkets have things now. I should add that I really wouldn't advocate following a coeliac diet without medical need, but if it helps to keep her calm when nothing else will, may be worth a shot.

ilovepowerhoop - my A level Chemistry just about got me through working out what that name translated to. But only just. You can tell I haven't used it for best part of 20 years!

Your wife is lucky she does not suffer from HG where you become grateful to keep anything down. Why is she googling this stuff and not speaking to her GP or midwife? And why is she putting herself through unnecessary torture?

If she has gluten issues the Coeilac site mentioned above is fantastic and there are many mums to be following successful gulten free diets whilst pregnant - if you must google then google that and follow some of their blogs and recipes. I wasn't able to carry on gluten free as all I could eat for 13 weeks was white toast.

I drank a ton of diet Coke for ages, have scoffed mozorella and tomatoes covered in balsamic vinegar along with a KFC bucket and quarter pounder, whilst my best friend also pg thought 'fuck it' and ate pate which she was craving. Surprise surprise her baby is fine and I am just starting to feel mine kick.

Just call midwife with any concerns.

Seems like a very hokey website to me. For good science about pregnancy look up a book called 'Expecting Better'- proper evidence and facts. And stop expecting everything to be 'proven as safe'- they don't do medical trials on pregnant women so nothing is 'proven' to be safe although some things have been proven to be harmful, like smoking.

no... fuck all. I am desperate for pate.

Why do people believe the rubbish on quack sites like this and not look at something reputable like the NHS website, which is evidence-based?