Can I have a little piece of liver?

[TidyJane]

My doctor told me not to eat soft cheese, soft ice cream (?) or liver. Does that mean not at all or avoid? (for liver)

not at all .. its the vitamin A

no pate, no shellfish, no swordfish, avoid more than 800g tinned tuna a week

soft cheese is the unpasteurised and mould ripened like brie, camembert ... also blue cheeses

soft ice cream is the Mr Whippy variety

HTH

here .. more info

its funny as soon as you're told you shouldn't it seems to be all you want isn't it

"all you want, doesn't it"

it isn't adviseable to eat liver during pregnancy but if you're talking about a mouthful then I'd say its up to you. Everyone feels differently about the food avoidance things. I was eating runny fried eggs by the ens of my pregnancy as I'd had enough of not being able to eat them. I was really good in the early stages though!!

the vitamin a thing is probably worse in the early months when the baby is developing. It is certainly a more risky thing to eat than runny eggs.
I am quite relaxed about most of the food things but tbh, I would avoid liver, pate and the soft cheeses for the entire pregnancy.

Girls you've just frightened me, I've just had 3 mouthfuls of calf liver with apple sauce (but I will not do it again for the rest of my pregnancy) as DH had bought some without knowing that I couldn't eat it. Feeling really guilty.
On the other hand, I've just been on a french website, and they said: recommended foods during pregnancy: iron rich foods such as red meats, calf liver, lamb, egg yolk, lentils, spinach, parsley... etc...
So what's going on? Are women in France alright with vitamin A during pregnancy or something?

dont get too frightened as in the 'olden' days women were advised to eat liver to get plenty of iron. I'm sure a few mouthfuls will not have harmed your baby. I would just avoid it from now on.

I wouldn't worry about a few mouthfuls. When my mum was pregnant with us they were told to eat liver at least once, preferably twice a week, and my brother and I are clever, successful, beautiful .

Obviously I'm not suggesting that you go against current advice and eat loads of liver, just that a few mouthfuls is unlikely to harm you.

Actually the risk of any of these food-borne diseases is really small - though of course it's better to be safe.

NB on the shellfish - my OB said it was fine, once in second trimester, just to be sensible about where I bought it from and how it was cooked.

And you're right about French recommendations being entirely different - my mother and SIL are French, and were amazed at what I didn't eat first time around (much more relaxed this time ). As far as I know the French dont' have a higher rate of problems either..though I still avoid under cooked eggs, mouldy cheeses and pate.

I live in France and my French friends find the list of barred food during pregnancy incredible. My best friend ate paté, soft cheese and seafood throughout 2 successful pregnancies. If you eat in a restaurant and ask questions about whether the cheese is pasteurised or not, the staff think you are mad. My gynaecologist said seafood is fine as long as it is properly cooked and said a couple of small glasses of wine with a meal every day was no problem either, in fact he encouraged it, just said to avoid the spirits! Everything is far more relaxed.

I love the French way - so much more relaxed. But then again, I have always been into pates and soft cheeses etc so used to it, as most French women would be. I wouldn't suddenly start eating it in pregnancy, if I never had it before! And I did moderate my intake, particularly in the first trimester, but was not above a few mouthfuls, yummmm.

As far as I understand, liver is different from cheese etc., as it's not going to give you a disease/infection. The thing is, Vit A is fat-soluble, and as a result your body doesn't get rid of it easily (unlike Vit C, for example). So if you eat too much then it can, effectively, poison the baby. However, although that sounds scary, what it really means is that you need to be restrained rather than cut it out completely. The reason they tell us to cut it out completely is because it's really easy to do, and the results of eating too much are so bad. Anyway, a few mouthfuls shouldn't matter! (this is what biochemist husband says...)

I thought it was particularly liver because of vitamin A , but all pates in general to be avoided because of listeria risk, so no mackeral or mushroom? I'm not sure about it. My mw even told me to avoid coleslaw and cook chill foods from the deli counter!

You could just have some fava beans and a nice Chianti

Yeah, the vit A risk is really from ODing. I had heard the risk of Vit A overdose was actually pretty low - you had to take a lot of vit A, or a lot of liver.

Liver pate is a listeria risk, so even a little bit could be a problem, but liver itself is just a vit A risk. (That being said, I ate liver pate in both pregnancies.)

It is frightening when you start looking at pregnancy diet advice on the internet generally, so many things that at least someone thinks is off limits. I am 5 weeks pg and had a rare buffalo steak on a barbeque on Saturday, had no idea rare meat was supposed to be out. I know about liver, pates, soft cheeses, but if you go by all the different internet pages, far more things can be banned. I hope no harm was done by the meat.

Littlefrog is right. Too much vitamin A is damaging to the fetus but three mouthfuls of liver really will not do any harm. Don't feel guilty.

Good leaflet here

I think it's easy to become a little too obsessive and worry excessively about this. Although I tried to make sure I avoided everything on the 'foods to avoid' list at the very start of my pregnancy, sometimes I ate things without giving them a second thought and only realised later they were supposed to be 'off the menu'. I've had quite a few prawn mayonnaise sandwiches, tuna (nowhere near 800mg a week though), a fried egg sandwich with runny egg yolk, about 10 peanut M&Ms, a Tracker bar which had peanuts in it, bought coleslaw and potato salad, a 'Whippy' ice cream, and a couple of 'cook-chill' products. Although I try to be vigilant sometimes you can't help eating things without realising you maybe shouldn't.

re. the liver. Absolutely no problem with a little bit. Just don't eat it every day. I ate haggis by mistake while pregnant (forgot it had liver in it) and spent an entirely sleepless night worrying about it. But then read up around the subject and discovered that there has never been a case in the UK of foetal abnormality definitively linked to vitamin a overdose. Reason to avoid oily fish is mercury levels, and pate is listeria - both much more problematic. The trouble with the govt advice is that it tends to assume none of us can cope with nuance!

Thank you all for your replies I feel much better. I really enjoyed the liver with apple sauce, it's such a delicacy!
I won't buy anymore though just in case.
But you're right, there are a lot of mixed opinions and such a big list in England!!
I'm french but live in the uk and when my mum came over she was gobsmacked when I refused even a small glass of wine!! And she didn't even realise you couldn't eat pate or anything like that (obviously my sisters and I survived).
On the other hand my sister who lives in France confirmed that the new advice in France is: No alcohol during pregnancy.

Yes, Sarkozy is heading a new campaign for no alcohol at all during pregnancy in France, but again, it is treating all women like they are alcoholics who can't control their drinking. Having a small glass of wine is very different to drinking a couple of bottles a day - and unfortunately there are women who still do this. I don't know if anyone heard the Food Programme from Radio 4 a few months ago, but they had some very common sense advice for pregnant women that gave the facts about what you are told not to eat and drink and what in fact are safe limits. You can still listen to it on the 'listen again' page on the radio 4 website I think. The risk to babies by alcohol was found to be difficult to prove as those mothers who drank a lot had a generally poor lifestyle and often smoked and took drugs as well, therefore the babies were at risk from a number of factors. I'm not advocating drinking loads or eating lots of the wrong things during pregnancy, but a little in modertion is fine. I get fed up of the nanny state treating everyone like a complete idiots. (Yes it exists in France as well as the UK!)

Ah, a little of everything but not too much of anything....my granny's advice, and she is 99.5 so I trust it! (She's also French, but thats probably irrelevent)

I think the reason older generations were advised to eat liver and we're not is down to the (present day) over-farming of animals and the unnatural animal version of Vitamin A that we're not able to process/eliminate. I read up on it early on in my pregnancy as my step-mother wanted to feed me up on liver, but pregnancy brain has caused me to forget the technical terms!!

LOL Greeny I thought that too

A mouthful of liver won't hurt. (Well, except for the donor of said liver...!)

Anglaise, extremely interesting!!! Probably 100% true! I agree with it I wish I could listen to that radio 4 program, in fact I'm gonna try right away.