Brie? Bubbly? Sushi? Help

[Gennz]

Hi everyone. I have just found out I'm expecting my first baby on 1 December. I'm a total over-planner and read a lot of books & medical studies on everything before we got the BFP, but with food I'm still quite confused ... the advice is all over the show.

I read Expecting Better which I found really helpful, and that, coupled with my own research means I'm comfortable with my usual one coffee a day (under 200mgs of caffeine) and 1- 2 units of alcohol a week in the first trimester (as a limit, not a target). I was a bit of a social smoker but I've knocked that on the head entirely.

The food thing, though, is really confusing me. No unpasturised cheese - well that's fine, all cheese where I am (NZ) is pasteurised. But then official information re soft pasteurised cheese (like brie, blue, camembert) is to only eat piping hot. Why?

I prefer my meat basically mooing in a paddock so well done meat will be a real struggle for me (but one I can live with if it's a real risk). But does the same apply to raw fish? I eat salmon sashimi at least twice a week from a good place, it's made fresh in front of us, been eating there for 4 years and never any problems. It seems like I can probably keep eating it? Some stuff says not to and some says it's fine.

I'm happy to go without various things if there's a good reason and a real risk but it seems like if I followed all the advice to the letter I'd be on dry crackers and not much else...

"as far as I can tell there has never been a listeriosis outbreak in NZ attributable to any pasteurised cheese, let alone brie, let alone any perinatal death or injury attributable to consumption of soft pasturised cheese."

To be fair, if pregnant women in NZ are warned against eating brie, and the vast majority follow that advice, then it is very unlikely that there would be any (any)-natal problems attributable to eating brie. You can't use that as an argument to decide to eat brie.

protego - good post - one thing missing is that all types of food poisoning are not equal in pregnancy. Salmonella will make you sick which is obviously grim when you're pregnant or at any time, but it doesn't pose a specific risk to the baby except indirectly through possible dehydration, other side effects of vomiting and diarrhoea etc. Listeria on the other hand could potentially cause nasty effects to an unborn baby although the effects that you experience would be similar to salmonella (I believe). Toxoplasmosis sometimes has no noticeable effects on a healthy person but again can affect the baby.

That's why I'm fairly complacent about eggs with runny yolks (salmonella risk) but would never eat steak tartar. Also I'm avoiding most shellfish at the moment because if I ever get food poisoning, it's from a prawn! No idea what delightful bacteria/toxin that is due to though.

I totally went off steak squizita so the rare/well-done question didn't have to arise for me! I ended up avoiding raw fish just in case, but I didn't really feel like it either.

Udon noodles mmmmmmm

I remember stressing out about whether it was OK to eat taramasalata, whether it was OK to eat Canadian cheddar (unpasteurised, but a hard cheese....), whether I should feel bad about having eaten salami sandwich that had been warming nicely for a couple of hours on a hot day at a function, whether the rice I was eating had been left lying around and then reheated, whether it was supposed to be OK to eat coleslaw or other salads when eating out etc, etc. What a waste of emotional energy it all was. All it did was create the added stress that being stressed in pregnancy is supposed to be bad for your baby. If you followed all the advice given in every part of the world, you would have a very limited diet, would never eat out because you couldn't only trust yourself to take all the precautions advised, and you would find eating became a thoroughly un-enjoyable experience.

No food is 100% safe. I find most of the advice unhelpful and irritating in the extreme. As for salmonella, though, I've known a few people go into premature labour as a result of a serious bout of salmonella poisoning, but have never met anyone who got listeriosis while pregnant, so I wouldn't be more complacent about the more common risks, given that they are a real possibility, but would forgive myself the occasional treat of unheated, pasteurised brie... which just goes to show that everyone has a different idea of risk, and the virtues of avoiding a lot of pleasures in order to avoid a minuscule risk of something catastrophic happening. Having a miserable, risk-free pregnancy doesn't guarantee a healthy baby, just a miserable, risk-free pregnancy.

All it did was create the added stress that being stressed in pregnancy is supposed to be bad for your baby

Don't get me started on that myth. Spread around in the 50s to get women back home the moment they missed a period (to push up male employment) and akin to Victorian 'scared of a dog... your baby will look like a dog' myths.
All it does is get worried pregnant women guilty and terrified of being worried.
There are 2 problems caused by stress:
-It lowers fertility (but is hard to deal with as telling someone this tends to make them more stressed and make it worse!)
-There are links to slower/more painful labours due to hormone release.
The 9 months in the middle... it's bad for the mother. Yes, the walking-incubator has feelings and stress hurts her shock horror! Far better 'they' say it hurts baby and make her feel guilty/scared (because you can't help stress happening, so it's a hindsight thing).

But to be devils advocate rabbitstew if you "have never met anyone who got listeriosis while pregnant"- To echo my previous comment - this probably means that the NHS guidelines do a pretty good job of preventing it!

Good info about the premature labour with salmonella.

moggle - my mother's never met anyone who got listeriosis while pregnant, either, though, and she was a nurse and had her children before all the NHS advice.

I guess people didn't always know what caused their miscarriages or problems with their babies' health, though.

I do know that my mother happily ate rare meat, soft cheeses, pate, etc, etc, throughout all her pregnancies, though. And probably had the occasional drink. I also think she found her pregnancy less stressful as a result!

squizita - you could say exactly the same about all the advice on eating safely: it seems designed to me to make women stay home and prepare all their food themselves, to make sure it's fresh, well washed and well cooked...

Can I just say that I've been reading this thread for a while now and am absolutely fucking CRAVING a hunk of Brie? I like Brie well enough but now it's all I can think about!

While I don't think the advice about what not to eat/drink is nonsense (and obviously heavy drinking/smoking/drugs is a complete no-brainer), I do absolutely think it's become a rather convenient way to keep pregnancy all about the little woman being good, staying in her box, and being the obeisant model of health upon which society can project its insecurities about this whole strange business of childbearing and rearing.

This morning I read a far scarier (but absolutely non DM-style) article about the effect that industry chemicals are having on foetus's brain development and despite the overwhelming evidence of problems, the governmental unwillingness to regulate. It was US-based and I believe that new chemicals are regulated more robustly in the EU, but it kind of blew all of the food stuff out the water tbh.

(Happy to pm link if anyone wants to read the article but don't want to derail.)

I guess people didn't always know what caused their miscarriages or problems with their babies' health, though.

Back in the day it was generally thought to be working, standing up, poor nutrition/morning sickness and illness (generally not the specific no-nos). The only one we rate today is the pretty obvious one- incompetent cervix.
What seemed like common sense... or social control?

And would you believe it wasn't until the 80s anyone bothered actually researching and debunking these things? Of course, that means many GPs trained at that time (or before the 90s) might still be operating on old knowledge + new scare stories.

Gets off soapbox.

Greenstone Yep if it's the ones I think it was, the EU is massively more strict! So we don't need to worry!

My diet is always very heavy in fish, I was just told to limit my intake of those high in mercury

While i wouldn't personally tell anyone what to do, I regarded all of these guidelines with a large pinch of salt. There's a whole industry at this stage solely engaged with telling women what to do when they are pregnant and it is in their interests to keep us scared and buying books and specialist or substitute foods/drinks.

I ate what I usually ate. That included all kinds of cheese and pate, shellfish and rare steak. I don't eat those things everyday, never did or do, so i just carried on eating them occasionally. I don't usually get sick when I eat these things after all, why should I now?

I had a little alcohol similar to OP's attitude. Glass of wine when out to dinner kind of thing. (Never noticed the caffeine warning at all. Is that new?)

Life is full of risks, I just didn't accept that food I had always eaten represented an increased risk just because I was pregnant.

Hello again!

Well we had people over for dinner last night and I had a slice of brie and a glass of Moet (I feel like if I only get one unit it's got to be good stuff). I did avoid the medium rare lamb and the blue cheese.

Rabbitstew I do take your point re women steering clear of brie and thus the incidence of perinatal deaths being low, but my point was that from reading a report on listeriosis by the NZ Food Safety government department, it was apparent there had never been an outbreak of listeriosis attributable to pasteurised cheese manufactured in NZ (soft, mould ripened or otherwise) possibly ever, but certainly in the period covered (to 1993). The dairy industry here is so important - basically it's the cornerstone of the MZ economy - I find it v v hard to believe that commercially manufactured cheese poses a risk.

The only evidence that I found linking NZ manufactured cheese with listeriosis was a scare about 4 years ago where it was thought there was listeria found on a batch of blue cheese in a factory and the batch was immediately recalled - to me, this proves its safety rather than the other way round.

I can't believe I have developed such an obsession with cheese! Usually I can take it or leave it!

I divide food advice for pregnant women into 2 categories

1. contains nutrients or additives that cross the placenta and can harm the baby ( excess alcohol especially binge drinking, some drugs both legal and illegal, nicotine, too much vitamin A from liver products, too much mercury from some types of fish ie shark tuna etc

2, foods to be avoided as they may cause food poisoning but not dangerous themselves ( soft eggs, unpasteurised dairy products, products with live bacteria, shellfish etc)

3, foods that are fine in small quantities but not in larger ie coffee, tea, salmon,

my feeling is 1. category should be avoided category 2 & 3 use some common sense. prawns, lobster unlikely to be a risk if caught this morning

you can not avoid every risk in life even with a small baby, I mean a baby would be safest if never in a car rather than the safest car seat etc

Gennz - I think you've got the wrong person. My point was, I would happily eat pasteurised brie, but would be more concerned about avoiding getting salmonella food poisoning, because that's a far more common form of food poisoning and I personally know people who have gone into premature labour as a result of it.

Can you subscribe to a recall service? I know Australia has just down a listeria recall for some sort of cheese. maybe if you could get a news feed from the food standard board (or NZ) equivalent it would put your mind at rest.

For the most part in pregnancy I stuck the guidelines although had a very nice glass of bubbles at Christmas.

TeacupDrama - I think the problem with your list is that some types of food poisoning can cross the placenta and harm the baby. Listeriosis can seriously affect the unborn baby and/or cause miscarriage (but certainly not always, even if you are unbelievably unlucky and do get listeriosis), and is supposed to be much more common in pregnant women than the general population, but it's still an exceptionally rare form of food poisoning in countries like the UK and New Zealand, where safety standards are quite high (only one or two hundred cases reported each year in the UK, as opposed to thousands every year for other types of food poisoning). The reason for it's special status is that, whilst it's really difficult to get listeriosis in the first place, it causes more deaths than other types of food poisoning if you do get it. Likewise, toxoplasmosis can cross the placenta and cause serious problems to the developing foetus, but my understanding is that it's only a risk if you are first infected during pregnancy and therefore don't have antibodies against it (it's actually pretty easy to pick up and lots of people are infected without ever having realised, given that you can pick it up from eating rare meat, gardening without gloves, eating fruit and veg that haven't been washed carefully (eg home grown veg in a garden patronised by cats...), being a kid who likes playing in the garden, sucking their thumb and not washing their hands....

Oops yes rabbitstew I meant moggle! Can baby brain kick in at 4 + 2?!

NHS choices website:
"There's little information on the safety of herbal and green teas in pregnancy so it's best drink them in moderation"
WTF!? There's no evidence so... don't do it too much. Bonkers.

God, I'm glad I didn't know all this when I was having my DC. (In OZ at the time)

I never really believed in cravings in pregnancy but looking back now I realise that I did have some.

I used to drink coffee all day but I literally threw up at the smell and taste of it when I became pregnant and never went back to it.

At work, my lunch everyday for months from the local deli was

a sandwich with processed ham, cheese, egg, tomato, pineapple and lettuce. A bottle of orange juice was also consumed with this.

I've only had orange juice a handful of times since then as well.

They used to advise pregnant women to eat liver, to help keep their iron levels up...

It seems to me, if you follow dietary advice to the letter, you might end up not only being miserable having to avoid food you like, but might also be told in a few years time that what you were advised wasn't actually very good for you after all, because it either didn't expose you to things you should have been exposed to, or exposed you to things it is now thought are bad for you...

People here drink lots of tea during pregnancy, but it tends to be various varieties of green (lower caffeine) or mugi-cha which is made from barley (and an acquired taste). I loved, loved coffee before I got pregnant but it was my first aversion and in fact what prompted me to do a test... Still can only drink it weak even now...

Oh yes, and the latest advice is to have SOME, but not excessive amounts of nori seaweed, because it keeps iodine levels up.

Yawn. Would they ever lay off!