The issue with cheese is the small risk of getting Listeriosis from the bacteria listeria. Listeria can crop up in almost any food and every so often something will be recalled because of it - this is so rare that it makes the news.
Soft cheese is an ideal breeding ground for listeria, as are many refrigerated foods (it likes cold), and because it tends to infect after the pasteurisation process, even pasteurised soft cheese is a risk. BUT it’s vanishingly rare and if a supermarket cheese was found to have it it would be recalled and (I think) make the news. In the last few years there have been outbreaks of it in frozen peas and sweetcorn (which would be fine if cooked as the heat kills it), chicken sandwiches (if I remember it correctly they were from a chain that supplied food for hospitals and a few people died) and flavoured butters. So it’s a risk but you can’t avoid everything.
Hard cheese is deemed fine as would be extremely difficult for listeria to spread in it. The NHS includes Stilton in the hard cheese category so that was good enough for me!
As a cheese lover I did the research, weighed up the risks and decided I was happy to eat soft cheese too, because the risks are really very small. But listeriosis can cause miscarriage or still birth so it is one to take seriously.
With raw eggs the risk is salmonella, would be pretty nasty to get it but unlikely to cause miscarriage, plus hens in the UK are vaccinated against it. So I felt totally comfortable eating stuff with raw eggs in.
Sushi also fine by me as long as the fish has been frozen as that kills the nasty bugs.
I avoided raw shellfish (very sad to miss out on the oyster course at a posh restaurant we went to for our anniversary) and rare meat. Also pate, liver and other foods with a high vitamin A content, and also fish with high mercury content (swordfish, shark, maybe tuna?).
Tried to stick to one cup of coffee a day, sometimes two though.
I don’t drink much anyway, but I had the occasional small glass of wine or bubbly.
Outcome is 3 very healthy children! But obviously that’s a tiny sample size.
I also recommend “expecting better” by Emily Oster. I like how she doesn’t tell you what to think. She just gives you the research so you can make your own mind up. And feel confident in your choices.