Cider Gravy - Alcohol

[TreeSparrow]

I read something recently suggesting that alcohol isn't burnt off as much as you'd think in cooking. I normally make cider gravy with a roast pork dinner and use one bottle of proper cider to make it. Should I avoid this now I'm 8wks pregnant?

It's really up to you. It's true that alcohol is not necessarily burnt off - I think the figure is something like there's still 40% left even if cooked for hours and hours so things that are cooked briefly can retain quite a lot. It also depends on how much you will have on your own!

No, don't avoid it. If you can fancy a full roast dinner with gravy at 8 weeks then enjoy it I say!

Why not use one of the low alcohol ciders? Kopparberg do them and there are quite a few that have very low alcohol these days. They taste lovely - I actually prefer the ultra low alcohol ones to the full strength!

As miss twister says, it's a myth it's all burned off in cooking, lots is retained, especially if you're making something like gravy that's not cooked for hours. Even something boiled for two hours will retain a fair bit. ....but you can still get the taste with a lower alcohol cider :)

Also think about how much you'd actually ingest. Say x units in a bottle, half ish retained divided by x people eating it. If it's going to end up as 1/8 of a unit, then that's very different, with food, than having an actual drink. Even things like yoghurt or Fil (a sort of yoghurty milky thing we have here in Sweden) have a tiny amount of alcohol.

Look at it this way. Imagine the cider is 5% and you dilute it with water, boil it and share it with other people, you will be consuming a fraction of a pint of cider and nowhere near even a unit if alcohol. But with pregnancy I really believe it is what you feel comfortable with that is important. I drank a glass of wine a week while pregnant with no worries, but others would find this horrendous and a real cause of worry for them. If you are going to slurp up the gravy great, but don't touch it if it will give you a sleepness night.

I wonder if its really helpful to make people worry about the small amount of cider in a portion of gravy made with cider?

You can just drink the bottle, it isn't a problem. You've been sold a ridiculous idea of total abstinence, not based on the science available.

Eat it, drink it, don't....it doesn't matter in the slightest.

I don't think anyone has suggested the OP worry about it particularly. They asked for advice based on whether there's any alcohol left in it and we've responded. Fact is there will be some - it's up to them what they want to do and no-one has suggested any harm will come to them.

The problem with alcohol is that we don't have sufficient data yet. The best we do have is a couple of large scale Dutch studies that seem to show that low consumption is fine. That's low as in a couple of units a week.

The complication comes from the fact that those studies are looking at the data on a population level (which is fine of course, that's a good thing!) as an individual, we all metabolise alcohol differently. Some of us have enzymes of steel and can operate on several glasses and others, like me, get squiffy after half a glass. Some of us have only one, or no copies of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene.

The foetus is differently sensitive at different times as well, so there will be phases of development where ingesting a specific substance such as vitamin a does no harm at all and others where it's catastrophic. Also the total amount is important. To get FAS you need to drink plenty and often, but fasd is a more subtle spectrum. Where do you draw the line? The answer is you can't, so you need to give women the data to make an informed choice. We also vastly underestimate our alcohol intake - one unit of wine is about 80ml, but a small glass is 125ml (and most servings these days are 175ml upwards) so it's really hard for people to know how much they are actually drinking. The rate of ingestion and food intake also affect your blood alcohol.

My own thoughts (as a developmental biochemist/geneticist by training) is that:

1. Very low consumption is probably fine
2. The first trimester is most vulnerable
3. Women need solid data, not preaching or bullying
4. Forcing abstinence is the thin end of the wedge to making us baby vessels, not competent adults.

I've not had any booze at all so far, but if I'm honest that's more down to nausea than anything else. I will definitely say yes to a low alcohol beer or cider in the summer and I'll probably have a little toast of bubbly at the wedding I'm off to next month.

My comment wasn't directed at anyone on this thread, it was about these very new guidelines which appear to make expectant mothers fret about ingesting the smallest amount of alcohol at all in pregnancy.

We seem to have more and more threads about it. Clearly, pregnant women want to be able to drink a small amount but have been made to feel guilty/worried about it. If this weren't the case we wouldn't have so many people asking for guidance/permission or whatever it is.

We do though have lots of solid evidence that moderate drinking in pregnancy has NEVER been found to have any detrimental effects, and that children of women who drink a bit when pregnant actually do better in available measurements.
But everyone is so terrified of saying so that even the authors of the studies still follow the party line and effectively say "this should not be taken as an invitation to even smell alcohol, you stupid pregnant women".
To all intents and purposes we know that its heavy drinking and binge drinking that harms a foetus, but the advice is given on the assumption that we're completely unable to tell the difference between a glass of wine and a bottle of wine.

In no other guidelines or advice, other than pregnancy, do we accept the premise that people are completely unable to process the actual information and make any decisions for ourselves. So what we get is little signs on alcohol bottles of a pregnant woman with a line through it, and instead of complaining we actually turn around and try and police each other!
It boggles the mind.

Hence my point no. 4 above. Give women solid data, treat them as adults.

The NHS guidelines are as always, sensible - nothing is best in trimester 1, and one or two units once or twice a week thereafter.

The public health boards are caught between a rock and a hard place - there isn't enough evidence to give a definitive answer so they do the best they can and err on the side of caution. They have to do that, which is why the advice is conservative. They are also conservative because for every person fretting about a small amount in food, there are two more who really want to know 'what's the most I can get away with?' We are still having 1-2% of children born who have cognitive issues due to alcohol. Public health have to walk the line between allowing free will and bodily autonomy and giving information which is designed to reduce harm. I think they do an ok job.

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'm going to make it with just a splash instead of the whole bottle and use chicken stock instead. I can't use low alcohol cider or any of those horribly sweet Kopperberg varieties. I'm a cider purist and that stuff doesn't qualify for me. I love my strong farmhouse scrumpy so would rather just go without it than sub it for anything lesser. Not the end of the world and only temporary.

I had well done roast beef after discovering I was pregnant. Eurgh...it was horrible so I'm giving up roast beef and steak completely if I can't eat it rare.

But you can eat it rare. Stop listening to half baked nonsense about what you can and can't do!

Is NHS advice half-baked? I trust peer reviewed advice over anything else so I'll stick with it for now thanks.

Toxo is not even THAT rare. Its way more common than listeria.

as long as the outside of the meat is seared at a high temp the inside can be as rare as you like. Toxo is killed by heats as low as 60c anyway. Or you can freeze it, which also works.
See, halfbaked advice. You only have half the info yet confidently advise others.

I'm sorry but that's just not correct Madreloco so please don't be rude. If you disagree that's obviously fine but its useful to post a link to back up your statements rather than calling others' advice 'half baked.'

The reason meat cant be 'as rare as you like' is that Toxo is found throughout the meat - its not a bacteria on the outside, its a parasite within - to be more specific a microscopic cyst consisting of bradyzoites. When not pregnant this usually has no ill effects hence I used to eat rare steak to my heart's content. When pregnant though the parasite can affect the foetus hence meat has to be cooked through.

Freezing reduces risk but does not eliminate. Meat needs to be cooked to 145f.

Granted, beef is less risky than say lamb or pork but the risk is still there unless you are already immune.

Oh and the link
www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/parasites/toxoplasmosis/

I could post a hundred links that agree with me, as could you. The internet is full of shit. That being the point!

No, miss twister is correct.

Toxo can and does penetrate tissue. It's not a bacterium sitting on the outside of the meat. Are you thinking of the difference between bacteria on mince and steak, perhaps? There, because the meat is minced any bacteria are forced throughout the substrate, whereas in a raw steak, only the outside is contaminated. Thus mince needs to be cooked through whereas steak is fine seared in terms of bacteria. However, because Toxo penetrates the tissue, it is recommended to cook meats through. It doesn't have to be nuked to a crisp, but you shouldn't have it pink and bloody (alas!)

I'm not getting my references from t'internet, btw (which is indeed full of alarmist shit.) I'm a scientist, I prefer peer reviewed papers and solid research.

I find comments trying to shame people for wanting to be cautious extremely unhelpful. A poster has no idea about the mental or physical situation for anyone else, so to say simply "Oh what is the point in worrying, have the drinks/rare meat/etc." is terrible advice.

I have had health problems and it took us ages to conceive. My MIL miscarried three times between DH and his younger sibling. Therefore I am not taking any chances. I don't care what study said it's OK to drink alcohol. I would feel nervous if I'd consumed alcohol and I'd blame myself if anything went wrong in the pregnancy. OP might be the same, we don't know.

My advice is - if you love that gravy and you aren't concerned based on the data you've seen and your personal situation, make it. However if you are concerned, try it once with the low alcohol version and see if it makes a difference. You might be surprised.

Madreloco - I would be interested in seeing the links/ data you're referencing that put forward different thinking on Toxo as I like to read both sides of any story. Just post ones that aren't shit / are from reliable sources.