What foods to avoid - very confused

[NichyNoo]

I have been using the list on the Food Standards Agency website about what foods to avoid when pregnant but I'm also hearing conflicting advice and am very confused.

For example - is feta cheese (when bought pre-packaged and pasteurised) safe to eat? Or bean sprouts in a stir fry? Cashew nuts? Smoked salmon? Cooked prawns?

I have googled in my confusion and different countries offer different advice. I looked at the Australian government website which basically forbids everything - even ham sandwiches and sandwich fillings bought in a cafe (chicken curry etc.)

I am at a loss of things to eat at lunch time as I live in Belgium and we don't have the same choice as in the UK apart from baguette shops which now seem to be out of bounds! Plus DH isn't happy as he has bought bean sprouts to eat in a stir fry tonight and I don't know if I should avoid...argh!!!

Ooh - I'm not sure. Never heard the beansprouts one. In my first pregnancy I avoided stuff from sandwich shops (well meats and salads) but this pregnancy (DC3) am absent mindedly tucking in.

I have eaten lots of beansprouts and am fine if that helps! I would imagine washing them and cooking them would make things fine even if there was a problem?

Nuts - have always eaten.

Cooked prawns - fine because they are cooked but make sure they are ok just from a food poisoning perspective.

I'm not sure if I'm being a lot of help. The only things I avoid are unpasteurised cheese (unless I cook it), parma ham, alcohol, very runny eggs and rare meat. Think thats it but there may well be more 'rules'.

The risk is very small anyway even if you have eaten these things.

What is up with beansprouts?

Personally I haven't changed my eating habits at all and that does include the occasional item from the "banned" list.

I work on the fact that my body knows what it is doing if something smells/tastes good then I go ahead and eat it. The human race cannot possibly be as delicate as these guidelines would have you believe or there wouldn't be 6.5 billion of us running around.

Well, this may be a controversial viewpoint but I eat pretty much what I want when pg. Soft cheese, smoked salmon, the lot.

So little of the advice has sound science or statistics behind it when it somes to diet - liver I can accept limiting due to the high Vit A content, but the rest I tend to ignore.

Interesting article IMO

Beansprouts???? cashew nuts? Have never even heard of these being not allowed.

I have also eaten what I want - including a liver a couple of times - figured that I wasn't going to get vitamin a overdose from 2 tablespoons of liver. I discussed this with my GP and she agreed that occasional small servings of liver was not a problem, and actually you can get different sorts of borth defects from vit A deficiency!

Wtf is wrong with beansprouts?!

Eat the sodding stir fry!

I eat the odd bit of camembert, stilton, etc when pg. Risk is miniscule.

The fact that different countries have completely different - and often directly contradictory - advice, plus other countries revise their own advice regularly, makes me think that it is mostly all complete rubbish. We are now living in this nightmare world of imagined litigation. So all guidance just errs on the side of caution gone mad. Yes,there are some small, minute in fact, unquantified risks, but there are risks in every single thing we do every moment in our lives. It makes more sense to just apply good old common sense, making sure food is cooked properly, fresh and from a source you trust. Some cafes, deli's and prepared foods may well be less trustworthy in terms of hygiene or how long food is 'sitting around' so it's obviously more risky, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't ever eat the foods they sell from other sources. Just make your own food where it's practical, and a balanced diet is important, so mostly everything is probably fine in moderation. I agree with QueenOf... on the liver comment above, but otherwise have eaten loads of apparently 'banned' foods, but only when I have been confident that they are not 'off' and have been properly prepared. Hats off to Morloths attitude as well. My advice - don't fret too much about it, but be sensible.

Here is some US guideline which explains the beansprouts issue (!)(fine cooked though), but also clarifies that liver is ok occasionally - its just they used to tell pregnant women to eat it (because of the iron) and some ate in big quantities hence the birth defects.

link

Risks are also different in different countries. In a warm climate like Australia they may have more outbreaks of listeria associated with food that hasn't been kept cold enough in salad and sandwich bars. Here such outbreaks are pretty rare since keeping salad below 5 degrees isn't too tricky!

So don't worry too much about what they say in Australia (or the US where the official advice is little different to ours, but the unofficial advice that gets peddled on websites can be pretty crazy).

All the things you list are fine. If you are concerned reading up on common causes of food poisoning and the types of risk it poses to pregnant women is probably the best way to empower yourself to make good common sense decisions. In most cases food poisoning may make you feel even more rubbish than usual but it won't harm your baby. Listeria is the only thing to be really careful about. A good friend of mine is a microbiologist who works for the DH so I asked his advice, and he said given my diet there wasn't much to cut. The only things I have avoided are soft mould-ripened cheeses and blue cheese (though am still eating tons of it grilled on toast). I'm veggie though so haven't had to think about giving up pate and Parma ham and so forth.

Thanks everyone - just to clarify I'm not some neurotic and I did eat the bean sprout and cashew stir fry...yum yum!

I just got confused when looking at the different guidance. I've been eating what I want and just avoiding alcohol, stilton, raw meat and the basic stuff we're advised not to eat which is why I panicked when I saw some of the guidance!

Tbh, I think I haven't got food poisoning up to this point so I'm unlikely to get it in the next 9 months.

I'm not really avoiding anything - limiting alcohol and caffeine, making sure meat is cooked through, but other than that not worrying.